Product Description

Julieanne Gillis's family collects them. An advice columnist for a local newspaper, Julie dispenses wisdom to her readers, but somehow missed the signs that something was wrong in her own home. Devoted to being a good mother and keeping her twenty-year marriage fresh and exciting, she is shocked by her husband's surprise announcement that he needs a "sabbatical" from their life together -- and devastated when he disappears, leaving Julie with no funds to raise two teenagers and a small daughter alone. But it is the discovery that Julieanne suffers from a serious illness that truly crumbles her family's foundation -- setting her children on a dangerous, quixotic journey to locate their missing father . . . before it's too late.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #381978 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-01
• Released on: 2005-04-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
No one could blame Julieanne Gillis, beleaguered heroine of this no-holds-barred family drama by Mitchard (The Deep End of the Ocean, etc.) for not seeing the signs. At first her lawyer husband, Leo Steiner, seems to be in the throes of a midlife crisis, informing Julieanne that he is planning to take early retirement and go and live on a commune in upstate New York for six months. The next thing she knows, he's vanished, leaving her with three children and only her meager income from her advice column for the Sheboygan, Wis., local newspaper. To make matters worse, she's diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The narration alternates between plucky Julieanne and her 15-year-old son, Gabe, a handsome Holden Caulfieldesque loner with a mild learning disability. When things get desperate, Gabe and his 14-year-old sister, Caroline, scan their dad's old e-mails and learn where he might be. Then, during spring break, lying like troopers, the two juveniles take off by bus to find their father. Surely, they think, he'll come home when he learns that their mother is sick. He comes, but the baggage he brings along means further disaster. Leo's behavior is almost campishly craven, but the novel's soap-operatic bathos is perversely satisfying. Rousing melodrama; fluid, often funny, dialogue; and the convincing portrayal of children involved in the collapse of a marriage add up to another page-turner from Mitchard.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Look up the word cad in the dictionary, and you should find Leo Steiner's picture beside it. Selfish, shallow, and arrogant, he epitomizes a middle-aged man undergoing a midlife crisis, and deserves a high rank on anyone's list of low-life losers. In Mitchard's latest foray, Leo abandons his 20-year marriage to Julianne, parentage of two teenagers and a toddler, and a lackluster legal career in favor of a utopian existence on a commune with some erstwhile hippies. His departure comes just as Julie is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and the teenagers and toddler all hit the peak of their age brackets' vulnerability. It is how Julie deals with this despicable lout, the dissolution of her marriage, the disruption of her family, and the deterioration of her health that showcases Mitchard at her relationship-defining best. Julie is admirable yet approachable, neither a long-suffering martyr nor a whining, clueless cliche. She copes, she cries, she fusses at her kids, they yell back. The eldest, Gabe, a learning-disabled teen outcast, is both his mother's rock and the novel's heart, his journal entries revealing a preternaturally wise and sensitive young man. An astute observer of family dynamics, Mitchard renders her characters flawlessly, endowing them with a humanity that is both accessibly grounded and astonishingly deep. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"...An intriguing study of a quintessential American family...[a] thought-provoking, introspective novel." -- BookPage

"From our petulant, prideful heroine to her sullen-yet-saintly son, each character’s complexities shine..." -- Washington Post

"Mitchard dissects feelings of loyalty, betrayal and guilt with such aplomb, the book moves along like a thriller." -- Life magazine

"Mitchard’s work...is filled with vivid characters who live out loud, and in vibrant color." -- Capital Times

"THE BREAKDOWN LANE takes the reader on a journey of love and loss, self-discovery and synergy, a satisfying story. -- Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

"[Mitchard] takes emotional family events and makes something fresh yet familiar about them..." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"[Mitchard’s] tale of an imploding American family will rule the beaches this summer." -- Associated Press

Customer Reviews

An Honest, Moving Novel
I really loved this book. I won't go into details of the plot, amazon and the other reviewers have done that already, but I just want fans of Ms. Mitchard's Deep End of the Ocean to give this one a try. I have not loved all of her other books since Deep End, so I wasn't sure about reading this one but the other Amazon reviews sparked my interest.
The writing was honest and real, the characters had their flaws and blemishes, just like real people. Most of the time, a book about a woman who gets dumped, has children and has an illness, is made out to be a saint, an angel, a hero. Well, not here. She is real....As I got to the end, I was concerned about the way the story was going, everything tied up with a bow, nice and neat, I was afraid Ms. Mitchard was giving into happy ever after land...but she didn't. Even the ending was like real life, not perfect.
Once I started this book, I couldn't put it down, give it a try, I think you will be glad you did.

Where is the Real Jacquelyn Mitchard?
The Deep End of the Ocean was one of the best books I've ever read. Twelve Times Blessed was one of the worst books I've read and The Breakdown Lane? Not great and not terrible just...disappointing. The story was interesting, engaging and kept me reading, but the dialogue was so unrealistic and stilted that I found myself getting annoyed. Leo and Mark were the kind of one-dimensional stereotypical characters that are often found in "women's novels". Mitchard is capable of better. The happy ending was just plain unbelievable--the odds of something like that happening in real life are incredible. Seems to me that Mitchard couldn't figure out how to end the book, so she just tied a pretty bow on it and hoped for the best. Too bad. She's a better writer than this book reveals.

Good book!
THE BREAKDOWN LANE by Jacquelyn Mitchard
April 5, 2005


THE BREAKDOWN LANE was my first book by Jacquelyn Mitchard, and it was not what I had expected. In some ways, her writing style reminded me (at first) of Joyce Carol Oates, a writer that I have read once and had a very hard time reading, but by the time I read the last page, I said, "Wow!". Mitchard writes her stories in somewhat the same way. At least in THE BREAKDOWN LANE, the characters reminded me of those in Oates' WHEN WE WERE THE MULVANEYS. Lots of characters that you aren't sure you will like, and one that I totally loathed and despised, populated THE BREAKDOWN LANE.

Julie is a middle-aged woman who has never been called traditional. And neither is her husband. Julie grew up with a famous father (a writer) and lived with wealth. Her husband is Jewish and his childhood was quite different. This book isn't so much about their relationship, but about two people that go through some really weird stuff as her husband Leo seems to be going through a really bad mid-life crisis, but it's more than just that. Leo pretty much "drops out" of society and lives his life as he pleases, not really caring about how it impacts those around him. Julie in the mean time is going through some major health issues, and eventually finds out she has MS. With a jerk of a deadbeat husband and three kids that need them both, she is at her wit's end.

While I enjoyed this story, I don't know if I liked the way that it was told. There was something missing. Sometimes I felt that the author jumped ahead when she shouldn't have, skipped things to make time pass faster. Sometimes it worked, but I felt that this is one of those instances when a book should have been longer. My guess is that either the editor made her cut out a lot (to keep it a mainstream novel) or the author simply got lazy. I'm guessing it's the former.

I really admire a writer, however, that can make you hate a character as much as I hated Leo. There are men (and women) like this in the world. Leo was a sociopath who can justify everything he did. He was a poor excuse for a father, a husband, and a human being. He definitely needed psychological help. I felt bad for Julie, although I can't say that I "liked" her. But I liked the way the author portrayed her.

I did feel the ending came on too soon, that things were wrapped up too quickly, and I didn't think this book should have had a "happy" ending. But, maybe that was better than a totally sad ending, since readers would have really been upset. I have one more book by her on my TBR shelves (her Oprah selection) that I guess I should try to read later this year. It would be good to compare the two books.