Breaking Clean (edition 2003)

Judy Blunt’s memoir Breaking Clean is a crisp, sharp, enjoyable read. Blunt carries her reader through a wide range of emotions as she travels through her youth in Montana. Her writing is engaging in its simplicity. Her subject matter, in many ways, familiar.
Though few of us have experienced Big Sky country and all of the harsh realities that go with that life, especially as a child, we have all experienced isolation, disappointment, parental abandonment, and rebellions in one way or another. We have all experienced a sense of different-ness in our worlds, a sense of being disconnected from those to whom we should feel most connected. Or at least I did. Blunt captures the emotion of her turbulent youth eloquently.
Blunt carries her readers through the experience of her youth and while one is given the impression that the author has had to distance herself from this lifestyle it is deeply ingrained in who she is. Her rural youth defined her adult life. The life she lives today seems to always be seen through the lens of where she came from. In her discussion of feminism, and she sees herself as a feminist, Blunt writes of the women of her youth, whom she does not view as feminists, “I grew up admiring a community of women whose strength and capacity for work I have yet to see equaled, true partners in the labor of farming and ranching.” (153). She goes on in the next passages to flesh out these women as able to endure anything, in silence. While Blunt refuses to be silent she endeavors to carry forward the ideal of enduring.
In the end, this is a lifestyle from which she fled, it is clear that it is this lifestyle that has shaped her views. The text is a vivid reminder of how we come to be who we are, by facing and owning who we were and from whence we came. ( )

Thomas Mcguane recommended this in an interview. Having spent some time on farms I found it engrossing, particularly the effects of a terrible winter storm on cattle. The aftermath of the freeze is harrowing. If you have any curiosity about what its like to live on a remote ranch I'd pick this up.

I had expected the book to deal with the author's married life, but instead it focused primarily on her life as a child and a teen. I never found a good answer to the main question I had going into the book: Why did she "break clean"? ( )

I really enjoyed this book, which I happened to purchase for .50 at the neighborhood yard sale. Blunt's descriptions of ranching life in remote Montana (50's-60's) is graphic and beautiful. ( )

I kept trying to find something to criticize about this book, but everything I found centered around the fact that I wanted to know more -- about the author, her life, her family, what inspired them. And yet, after reading this tale of growing up in a very hardscrabble, even mean, isolated environment where "nonsupportive" governs everything, I still felt I had been deeply involved and given understanding. A really well written, illustrative view of a way of life that, while modern, seems timeless and certainly not to be envied. Would recommend to anyone. ( )