Breaking and Entering

by Eileen Pollack

Set against the tragic events of the Oklahoma City bombings, Breaking and Entering follows Christian/Jewish couple Louise and Richard Shapiro as they move from California to rural Michigan with their daughter Molly in an attempt to save their marriage. They find their core beliefs about life and love tested as school counselor Louise's students blame Satan for their homosexuality while Richard's new buddies gather arms to defend themselves against enemies at home and abroad. Pollack's America is divided and splintered, yet she writes with hope and humor...Breaking and Entering challenges the stereotypes we hold about our fellow Americans, reminding us of the unexpected bonds that can form across the divide between so-called Red and Blue states.

Genres: Fiction, Marriage

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Eileen Pollack grew up in Liberty, New York. She has received fellowships from the Michener Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, and her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, the Literary Review, the AGNI Review, Playgirl, and the New Generation. She lives in Belmont, Massachusetts, and teaches at Tufts University. She won the Pushcart Prize for her story “Past, Future, Elsewhere.”

Reviews

[Bren fall in love with the sea. · Rating 2 out of 5]

“You can't get sentimental about houses. Or bodies. They're just, I don't know, the Tupperware of the soul.”
― Eileen Pollack, Breaking and Entering: A Novel


I really wanted to like this way more then I did. While not bad, did not love this one.

When Louise and Richard move to small town Michigan, from sunny liberal California, they find themselves amongst people who do not understand them and whom they do not understand. Many of their neighbors are part of the Militia. This book is also set right after the Oklahoma City bombings. I thought I'd love it.



I think part of the issue for me was the "bait and switch" component. The focus really is not on the things I just described. Those things seem to be more of a backdrop.

Rather, more of the book is focused on Louise and an affair she starts with an (also married) man. That plot point seems to take over the whole book and I did not know and was not prepared for that.

I thought I'd get more of a literary story on how people with different political believes from different social classes learn to live alongside each other. And really, that is a heck of a selling point with me because I love books that focus on those issues.

Reading about the affair was a bit tedious and I wasn't all that invested in what happens. It was not the political and literary read that I'd thought it would be.

I did enjoy aspects of Breaking and Entering but it felt to me anyway, like a bit of a bait and switch as I said. I also felt the end was a little to pat and wrapped up to neatly.

It was not my favorite but is not bad by any means. Different people have different tastes. With this book, I loaned it to a friend who adored it.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually thought that the beginning was wonderful. After reading "Five Days Left" with its flat sentences and flat characters, this book felt brilliant. The sentences were interesting, the characters were complex, the plot...liberal Marin County, California family moves to rutal Michigan after husband misses a patient being suicidal and then lights a fire in a wilderness area and starts a forest fire (small, but still). The husband, Richard, is a mess...completely depressed and sure he is going to "drop the chalice of perfection" that he's been carrying for years, ever since he heard the stories of his parents suffering through the Nazis in Germany. His wife, Louise, loved California, and her job as a counselor. Their daughter, Molly, is also misplaced because her parents, in their anguish...about the suicide and fire, about the move, are essentially unavailable to her. Here is an opening sentence: "What Louise loves about Potawatomie (the town in Michigan that is now home) are the parts that time forgot--the seedy luncheonette, the Hemingway Arms Hotel, the shop that sells prostheses, or maybe it sells socks, it's hard to be sure from the amputate leg in the display." Contrast this with this description of the home of the main character in "Five Days Left": "After the bus left, Mara stood at the kitchen counter and ran a hand over the cool granite. This was her favorite room in the house. She had always found it so seductive, with its sleek, gunmetal granite counters run through with a thin line of limestone green, its tall rich-warm cherry cabinets, its sexy slate floor, lighter gray that the granite but with a delicate vein of the same limestone green." I opened the book to random sections in the beginning of each book...and each one gave the feel of the book it was excerpted from.

Many Goodreads reviewers don't like Breaking and Entering because the characters aren't likable (indeed these are troubled characters...wonderfully explored, I think) and because the rural Michigan population comes across as redneck anarchistic terrorists, a la Timothy Mc Veigh. I've read quite a bit about McVeigh, given that we share a surname and my son looked like he could have been his brother at the time he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. People in Potawatomie believe either that McVeigh was being framed and that the govt. had blown up the building or that McVeigh was associated with the local militia who were gun toting, small-bomb-making terrorists themselves. I think both liberals and conservatives come off as close-minded in this book--with some exceptions. The main message the book carried for me is the way each of us carry some kind of heartbreak. Few of us (any?) escape that. And the book explores the ways in which we hurt each other, abandon each other, seek solace ...as a result. It is an exceptionally interesting book...and I just gave it three rather than four stars, because it takes such risks and is so much more politically, psychologically, sexually and spiritually interesting than most of the fiction I read. It isn't a relaxing book, nor is it a "here's the life you are living...only more deeply explored." It's the kind of book that shows me how narrow my focus us. Because of that, it's pretty spectacular.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first picked this up, I was choosing between what I saw as a pensive, somewhat unmoored generational novel vs a novel fully rooted in the here and now (even if that "now" happened to be over 20 years ago. :P) The focus on fissures between "red" and "blue" states in America felt particularly prescient in the Trump years, not to mention with an election coming up. Then, before I even cracked the spine, there were two white supremacist attacks against minority groups in one week, including the worst loss of life in a single American antisemitic incident. Suddenly it felt like even less time had passed between 1995 and now.

We open in rural Michigan, home of many right-wing militia groups, during and after the Oklahoma City Bombing. This is a multi-perspective story, technically, but far and away Louise is our primary protagonist. She's a California transplant, uprooted from home when her husband's patient kills herself and he can't get over it without a change of scene. He takes a job in a prison and she, a social worker, takes what she can find at a local high school.

On a personal level, most of the story revolves around Louise entering into an affair and all of the interior (not to mention exterior) drama that follows. More broadly, she's responding to the bombing, and to her neighbors who, for the most part, are so politically different than her that she can barely identify. Her husband Richard, on the other hand, the son of a Holocaust survivor with a lot of baggage about strength and masculinity, gets involved with some of the less hateful militia members. Though at work he gets into run-ins with the active antisemites.

To be nitpicky, I'm not thrilled with how Pollack represents Judaism, though to be fair I think that's more the fault of the characters than the author. Richard is your standard "nominally Jewish out of guilt" guy--y'know, because his father survived the Nazis and "we can't let Hitler win" sort. Not that he actually feels any real connection to Judaism beyond being bullied for it. There's a question over whether his new militia friends are curious about his ethnicity or if they're just trying to convert him (and a really creepy scene with his pal, Floyd, on a survivalist hunting trip). But Louise, too, a non-Jew, admits that a big part of why she married him was to be "alternative." Both political spectrums have folks who tend to fetishsize.

On the opposite end of the scale, we have Natalie (the wife of Louise's lover, Ames.) Raised by a nominally Jewish mother to be mostly Unitarian, she has a balaas teshuva moment before the start of the novel, where she starts to keep kosher and observe the laws of niddah (sexual purity laws...which particularly gets to Ames since he's a very sexually motivated person.) This is where I might say that Pollack dropped the ball. Natalie is a straw woman, perhaps mostly there to cause more conflict. She never gets a POV and her actions feel a bit shallow. Meanwhile, on the surface she seems like she'd be the most interesting to me--because if you are starting to identify so fully with Jewish practice, what compels you to stay married to a non-Jew anyway? Does that even make sense? I'd know, if Natalie was more of a person than an obstacle.

(Then there's Lowenstine, Richard's Israeli colleague, who tries to get him involved in speaking out against a school janitor with a racist radio show. Though with his macho, sabra attitude and some derogatory remarks about Arabs, I think that Pollack drew some discomfiting lines between right wing American Christian and right wing Israeli Jewish forms of posturing and bigotry. Mostly a small aside, really.)

I have mixed feelings about the POV chapters, really. Because Louise had the most chapters, and a couple of other people only had one or two, it felt like a gimmick. Her young daughter, Molly's, was particularly bad, since all it really did was relay information to which Louise couldn't be aware at the time. The other two--Richard and their neighbor, Matt (known in part for his "tax blast" events where he and others shoot their tax forms to smithereens) add nice perspective. Matt certainly provided "the human side" to the right-wingers. I think Pollack struck a great balance with him. And Richard provided some perspective on...himself. Because, stuck in Louise's head as we often are, her personal adversary (Richard) and her broader adversary (her right-wing neighbors) come off as a little cartoonish.

So I'm giving this a 4.5 stars. Because it's about broad enough issues that we need other perspectives, yet it's so narrowly about Louise's life that she took the tide. I don't know where the balance is, really. I do know that I was incredibly invested. Louise was empathetic--particularly at work, albeit that was more like a subplot--but also self-absorbed and needy. A great, flawed character. She (and both of her sexual partners) also had enough parental drama backstory to rival any YA novel. :P Beyond all of this, there was enough of an external plot in the town to keep everything moving towards a resolution, complete with the promise of societal reflection as well.

To hearken to the title, in both the public and private spheres, there's a question of how much we can interfere with each other's lives and beliefs. As Louise realizes, near the end, "People believe what they want to believe, and there is surprisingly little you can do to persuade them. No matter how right you are, you are never allowed to invade another person's house and make the sort of mess Louise is standing in right now." The characters and situations are complex enough that this doesn't just feel like sermonizing, imho. Instead, it's a personal realization garnered authentically through the narrative.

I think I might try and find more of this fictional conflagration between the personal and the political. Hopefully it's mostly done right.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not great. just another story of two married folks having an affair. No insight.

[Stephen Dorneman · Rating 4 out of 5]

My rating is really closer to a 3 1/2, but I gave Pollack the benefit of the doubt, in particular for (mostly) avoiding caricaturing the small-town Michiganders that populate this novel and are contrasted with the main characters, two liberal social workers from California who move to the Heartland after a series of personal misfortunes. But much, if not most, of the book is spent on yet another extra-marital affair, with yet another liberal (a Unitarian Minister, no less), while the more interesting and fraught interactions with the champions of the local culture are downplayed or nonexistent for much of the first half of the novel. Worth my time overall, but recommended for Lit Fic fans only.

[Jana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a drawn out book about a family who moved from CA to Michigan. He’s a nonpracticing Jew and she is searching, attending a Unitarian church and having an affair with the pastor. Their daughter is caught between two unhappy parents, they have strange neighbors, both parents are psychologists who need their own therapists. Everything comes to a crashing conclusion at the end. So much religion, politics, anger, and hatred throughout the book.

[Liz]

Thrifted Autographed copy originally from Nicola's Books.

[The Book Maven · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the early months of 1995, a family struggles with their own quiet, yet riveting (to them and to us) domestic dramas. Without either of them being consciously aware of it, Richard and Louise’s marriage has hit a pretty rocky point, created—or perhaps only exacerbated by—a couple of personal and professional setbacks. To make a fresh start of it, they and their daughter decide to make a drastic life change, leaving the “left coast” of California and settling in rural Michigan, where Richard pursues his dream job of a prison psychologist. Louise is not nearly so lucky—she lands only a part-time gig at the local high school, and spends most of her days overseeing renovations on the house, feeling alienated from and looking down her nose at the local conservative Christian population, and increasingly obsessing over the Unitarian minister Ames. Meanwhile, her husband is taking the exact opposite approach, throwing himself into the local interests of hunting, camping, fishing, and criticizing the United States Government.

And then the explosion at the Federal Building in Oklahoma leaves America rocking, and the reverberations are felt, all the way to the heart of the Shapiros’ increasingly fragile marriage. This quietly compelling novel—I hate to use the term “domestic fiction”—populated by compellingly flawed and not-entirely-trustworthy characters is a wonderful snapshot of life in 1990s Middle America, and the ways in which faith, family, and friendship intersect in our daily lives and in decisions both big and small.

[Ava Butzu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Ms. Pollack's short stories, which I find to be biting, poignant, funny, and smart. I was excited for her to take on the Michigan Militia in this novel, and though "Breaking and Entering" opened up with a plausible outsider-looking-in scenario, the story fell apart in the middle and disintegrated at the end, when about 200 pages of story were crammed into 20. Overall, Characters were unlikable, underdeveloped, and unrealistic, even on the most basic human level of desire, remorse, and regret. Michiganders as a whole were painted to be racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-semitic yokels who thrill most when hunting, intimidating others, and destroying lives. The oasis of liberal Ann Arbor is dropped into the narrative from time to time as the only place that civilization prevails, but just as Ms. Pollock drops volatile and compelling characters into the story and leaves them with one or two small and minor appearances that rather fizzle out, so is Ann Arbor never explored.

I will look forward to Ms. Pollack's next book of short stories and will hope that she returns to her scale of plumbing the depths of the human experience rather than spanning the breadth of it.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Breaking and Entering" was a let-down for me. It has a promising start and features a family of three who move to Michigan after the father experiences a minor mental breakdown. The book jacket claims this story is set against the tragic Oklahoma City bombings; however, the bombings hardly make it into the story at all. They take the backseat to the personal problems of the main characters, particularly a love affair that ends up being the bulk of the story. And a character-based story with hard-to-like characters is not an enjoyable read. Pollack is extremely heavy-handed in her portrayal the right-wing Michigan community that sets the stage for most of the book. The descriptions of conservative, gun-loving characters that fill the book are dripping with disdain and insincerity (even for a bleeding-heart liberal like myself!). They turn into caricatures with no redeeming qualities. The story did have a few poignant moments, but I wouldn't read it again.

[Natalie Serber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pollack is an engaging and thoughtful writer. Her novel deals with important issues, personal and political. One thing I really admire is her honesty and ability to let her characters, people she clearly feels compassion for, behave badly. And they do. The novel follows Louise and Richard from the politically correct Bay Area to their new home and new life in rural Michigan, in a very intolerant town. The narrative arc loops around themes of fidelity, arson, religion and seeking out love. What I admire and grapple with in this novel is the ending. Pollack chooses to end the novel with a ton of muscle, many things happen quickly and great movement occurs in mere pages. Things are told in summary, as if the reader is watching from another room. Things I might have preferred to see close-up, in scene. What I admire about this ending however is that it doesn't simply fade away. Overall, Pollack is deft and insightful. This novel was a pleasure to read.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this author at the summer book fest in Ann Arbor and enjoyed her contribution to the panel discussion with other Michigan authors so I bought her book. I was pleased to find out that the story takes place in Michigan and was really interesting and well written. Although slow to begin the plot thickens and I couldn't put it down.

The novel follows the experiences of Louise and Richard Shapiro, who, with their young daughter, Molly, move from ulta-liberal Marin County, California, to a quaint, rural town in the Midwest, only to discover that most of their neighbors belong to the Michigan Militia.

The topic in someone else's imagination could have been distressing but Pollack stays calm and real adding some twists and romance that are very clever and keep the reader interested in finding out how it will all end. The wide variety of characters are well developed and not just cliche'. I'd like to read more by this author.

[Martie Nees Record · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story takes place in rural Michigan in 1995 at the high point of the militia movement but before the Oklahoma City bombing. In real life, the bomber Timothy McVeigh attended militia meetings on a Michigan farm. I was expecting to learn much of this famous event. However, The Oklahoma City attack comes about a third of the way through Pollack’s fictional book and I never really got a good understanding of the thoughts of the right-wing extremists. It was an interesting story of isolation, family, religion and politics but not the story I was looking for when I began the book.

[Debbie Levine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Breaking and Entering by Eileen Pollack is a fictional account of a California couple Louise and Richard Shapiro who decide to move to a small town in Southern Michigan in the wake of the Oklahoma City shootings. Transplanting themselves and their young daughter proves to be devastating to their core: their selves, their marriage and shatters the family unit.

The book is well written and kept my interest. I had a difficult time relating to either Louise or Richard and was not sympathetic to them, despite what they went through.

[Chris Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of layers to this novel. Aside from the intrigue and suspense built into the story, there are many moments (a brief aside, simple analogy, or a subtle detail) that one could spend an hour reading into, before continuing onward with the story.

This is a book to read over the course of a week or so, when you can spend an hour meticulously reading its pages. I was doing this for awhile before the actual plot gripped me to the point where I was flying through it, in order to see what happens next.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one of those stories that start slowly and you're not sure whether you like the characters completely or not. And then it builds from there until you can't put it down! I find myself continuing to think and wonder about some of these characters after having finished the book. I wish my library carried the other books that Eileen Pollack has written because I would sure like to read them. I definitely recommend this book!

[Heathermarvell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started with what I think was an imperfect use of third-person omniscient, which made it seem at times that attitudes I believe were supposed to be the protagonist's were actually the author's. Still, it was engrossing at times, and, even though the observations about the cultural left and right were heavy-handed and obvious, they somehow seemed better done (because more nuanced, which isn't saying much) at the end.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Geography initially drew my attention to this book... a couple starts off in California and moves to Michigan. I thought it was an interesting story, but given the amount of drama that occurs the telling of the story seemed somewhat detached. The book is well written but this was one of those stories where I didn't particularly like the main characters.

[Amanda Nan Dillon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book! I definitely thought it would be more about the Oklahoma City bombing being related to the Michigan Militia. All I'll take away from this book is the gritty, no frills lives the characters lead. The only frills were in the protagonist's dreams about her dalliance with the minister.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

A liberal California couple moves to a small town in Michigan, with their young daughter. There they confront threats both real & imagined from neighbors with, shall we say, very different view of life.

[Shelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Relatively interesting, partially because the book is about a family moving from California to Michigan and trying to fit in and make friends. Some of the language was a bit clumsy, and the shifting narrators seemed a little awkward and not fully developed.

[Connie Hess · Rating 5 out of 5]

A couple hopes for their relationship to renew itself after moving halfway across the country.
They have a precocious daughter who gets lost during their selfish pursuits.
Their beliefs are challenged at every turn by their new neighbors and friends.

[Janice · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not like this story was boring because I didn't ditch it like I have with others. However, I didn't like the story or the characters much.

[Adria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Um, boring.

[Abby Willemsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a good storyline, but I was hoping for a little more to happen. I found it a bit slow.

[Kathy Tweeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had my interest with several plot lines going. I'm familiar with Michigan and its fringe elements. Held my attention

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unlikeable characters... a plot that lurched from improbable to dull... and yet strangely readable.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointed. Could not like any of the characters.

[Corinne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had such high hopes for this book when I started it. Those hopes were dashed at about the thirty percent mark. I hated the two main characters.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the plot of this book wasn't overly exciting, it did make me think more about gun rights and gun owners in this country.