A Book Review of Broken Memory by Élisabeth Combres

The title of this book caught my eye because it has countless implications behind it: Broken Memory. Memories are a beautiful thing; they are remnants of the past that we can relive in our minds in the present. Some are joyful and effervescent yet others are haunting.
In Élisabeth Combres’ first novel ever which has been translated from French into English, memories of the cruel Rwandan Genocide are replayed over and over again by a girl named Emma whose mother gave up her own life to save her daughter’s. Ten years later, Emma is trying to get by since being taken in by Mukecuru, a sweet old woman and widow, but cannot relinquish her haunted past. The novel chronicles Emma’s journey towards mending her “broken memory”, which throbs as the anniversary of the genocide approaches and gacaca courts are being held to try the criminals who killed over a million people, Tutsis as well as Hutus who disagreed with the Hutu dictatorship. Without giving away too much, the reader is sure to experience the wide range of emotions that Emma goes through as she befriends a boy who has an equally if not more somber past and as she struggles to remember what her mother looked like.
The genocide of 1994 was an offspring of the building ethnic tension between the Hutus and the Tutsis that was unfortunately, largely overlooked at the international level, but through awareness of the atrocities that took place, hopefully history won’t repeat itself, and readers can find peace through Emma’s story of gaining closure.
Review by Katherine Kuang
Thanks to Katherine for the eloquent review.
Sharon Long
Teen Services Librarian