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The Bowl Is Already Broken

A Novel

Mary Kay Zuravleff

Picador

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ISBN10: 0312424981
ISBN13: 9780312424985

Trade Paperback

464 Pages

$24.00

CA$26.99

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Promise Whittaker, the diminutive but decisive acting director of the Museum of Asian Art, is pregnant again—and that's just the beginning of her difficulties. Her mentor, the previous director, suddenly walked away from his job with no explanation, and now is on a dig somewhere in China's Taklamakan Desert. Her favorite curator has dropped their newest treasure, a porcelain bowl once owned by Thomas Jefferson, down the museum's stairs. Another colleague, desperate for a son, has been embezzling from the museum to pay for her fertility treatments. And Promise's far too handsome, far too elusive ancillary director is clearly up to no good.

As if that were not enough, Promise must defend her museum's very right to exist to those who contend that housing Asian art on the National Mall is un-American. "Never underestimate the power of an original work of art," her mentor told her. But he neglected to teach her that behind the marble walls, museum work has much in common with mud-wrestling.

Reviews

Praise for The Bowl Is Already Broken

"[A] genial comic novel . . . A tart, affectionate satire of the museum world's bickering and scheming."—Gregory Cowles, The New York Times Book Review

"An authoritative novel about the museum world . . . Her wit is equal to her wisdom."—The Seattle Times

"Zuravleff is very smart, knows her subject and writes very well."—The Washington Post

"This multi-layered, erudite novel implies that it is only in the face of destruction, in the gathering of the shards, that meaning and humanity reside."—San Francisco Chronicle

"In this intriguing tale of a museum-as-microcosm, the atmosphere is richly evoked, the art history fascinating, the issues thought-provoking, the characters deftly drawn."—Library Journal

Reviews from Goodreads