In Denis Emorine’s new novella Broken Identities, gifted young Hungarian student Nora writes a paper on the works of main character and writer Dominic Valarcher, which she describes as “a lot and a little at the same time.” That phrase serves to describe the entire novella.
On one level, Broken Identities seems to be an intimate domestic drama about a professor caught in a love triangle. Dominic has a wife of many years, Laetitia, a talented concert pianist whom he genuinely loves and finds extremely attractive, yet he also feels passion for Nora, a younger graduate student who admires his writing.
Yet, through the inclusion of minor characters, we see that this novella draws on these relationships to probe broader historical and psychological themes. Dominic lives haunted by the thought of his mother’s earlier days, how she survived losing her first husband in a concentration camp. A therapist with whom he built a close relationship suggests to him that his fascination with younger women who seem in need of his care and mentorship might stem from a wish to have protected his mother.
The real region of Eastern Europe is complex and represents much more than tragedy, in Dominic’s mind, it stands in for a shadow, an irreparable loss stemming from his inherited childhood trauma which obsesses him more than he realizes.
Broken Identities is told through poems, diary entries, and letters accompanying the prose, which underscores the theme of fragmentation.
--Cristina Deptula, "A Lot and A Little: The Psychic Fragmentation of Intergenerational Trauma in Denis Emorine’s Broken Identities"