When Broken Glass Floats
By Chanrithy Him
Review by: Wyatt Baquial
When Broken Glass Floats is my least favorite book out of all the books I've read. I would give it a one out of five stars. It may have had it's good parts and I do applaud the author for her amazing description throughout the book however, to me it just wasn't that interesting.
The book When Broken Glass Floats is a book written by Chanrithy Him and her journey through as she puts it “The Killing Fields” in Cambodia. That's really all you need to know about this book. To me it was very unoriginal and there are very many refugee stories like this one. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. The book is a slow read, quite boring, and very dark. Maybe if you like dark, slow stories about refugees then you would like this book. In my opinion it was nothing special and wasn't very grabbing at all. I thought the ending lacked descriptiveness. I didn't like the fact that Chanrithy put what happened to her family and her on the back of the book. If someone were to pick up the book and read the back, it might spoil the ending.
The only well written and nice things about this book are the description she used and how she talked about her culture and her family's traditions. I found it interesting that it is a normal thing in Cambodia for a cousin to join another cousin in marriage. Otherwise than those two reasons I didn't like the story at all.
I don't think that the people I had to read it with helped my opinion on the book at all because I was completely non-compatible with my partners so we never really had a real conversation about the book.
In conclusion, this book would be a good book for people that like dark descriptive refugee stories. If you are someone that is looking for an adventure story like me I would definitely not recommend this. If you are a person that has a lot of time on their hands and loves to read slowly then this is the book for you. If you're someone that wants an adventure/action thriller like me then you will not like this book. As I said before I give it a one out of five stars and do not recommend it. You can never really know if you like a book or not by a review. To get a real opinion pick up the book and try it out.
