Amelia Geist, Holly Schenck, and Tris Holloway are all broken—in one way or another.

In a lifelong act of penitence and defiance, Amelia Geist has remained a virgin and saved herself for Tris, her first love, who abandoned her more than fifty years ago.

A few weeks from retirement, Tris Holloway has led a separate life of his own in the hills above Silicon Valley, sealed by inertia within the confines of a loveless marriage and shattered by his decision to leave Amelia.

The only person who can repair the rift between Tris and Amelia is Holly, a single mother without means, who is trying somehow to mend her life while laid out in a hospital bed, a victim of her own suicide attempt.

The stories of Tris, Holly, and Amelia are presented in Fragile as broken fragments, woven together by profound truth and an astonishing connection that transcends the boundaries between this world and the next.

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The Author

Chris Katsaropoulos is one of the founders and partners at Emergent Learning LLC, developers of educational content for major publishers. He has traveled extensively in Europe and North America, and enjoys collecting books and music. Fragile is his first novel.

Excerpt

If he concentrates, he can make out the features of her face that he once recognized, the compressed, rosebud mouth, the broad forehead, the eyebrows slightly raised, as if she always expected to be asked a question. But the skin is a shade of gray he has only seen in skies that threaten rain, and the cheeks have been rouged in a clownish attempt to hide what everyone can plainly see. The hair still clings to a remnant of the blond he remembers, but it has been flattened and shortened by death and by time. The lips are pursed shut, manipulated by the undertakers into a contour that would not dare to suggest a smile. Perhaps he had a premonition of her death, through some undefinable connection, and he has been mourning these past few days not her, but the missing part of him that was lost when he made the decision more than fifty years ago not to see her any longer--mourning the unfulfilled potential, the life he might have lived.

But who's to say he would have been any happier had he chosen to stay with her, to remain at home here in Middlesborough? Perhaps he is merely mourning the fact that he must choose, at every step in life, one place over another, one person over another, and these choices only serve to narrow him, to dwindle him down to a single straight line and, finally, to a solitary, terminating point. These choices have defined his life by constructing a set of infinite impossibilities, all the many things he will never see or have or do.

Reviews

"When your own life is shattered, sometimes the pieces needed to repair them lie in the broken lives of others. Fragile tells the story of three individuals who face their life-long celibacy, their loveless marriages, and their own self-loatihng. An elderly virgin yearns for her lost lover, the lover faces the passionless life he chose, and a mother bottomed out on her luck wonders what drove her to try to end her own life. Poignant and thought-provoking, Fragile is a fine piece of fiction to add to any collection."

--Midwest Book Review

"In Fragile, Katsaropoulos has written an experimental book that, like its title, is fragile. This is a book of fragments that, not unlike the encounters we all face in life--moments that seem coincidental and unimportant at the time but which later lead to insights and even behavior changes [that are] completely unexpected."

"There is an element of higher meaning in this story that makes it fascinating to finish and to contemplate the experience of reading it. For lovers of experimental literature, this book is tasty."

--Grady Harp, Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

"Fragile is a fine first novel by Chris Katsaropoulos. It takes getting used to the 'broken story' technique as three people are introduced and then followed about in succeeding fragments. Bit by bit we come to know the main characters, Amelia, Tris, and Holly, and what happens to them through choices they make, and how they affect and are affected by others through a series of relationships that stop-start in present/past with inner monologues and outer dialogues."

"The wonderment is how easily we are able to edge into this disjointed style, and how readily we become part of this shattered and shattering story. At the end it's a 'whew' and a 'wow' because it was a pleasurably demanding experience."

"When we're thrust into a different setting mid-sentence or mid-word, it seems natural because of the circumstances. These characters are not whole--pieces of their lives are missing. Why? Perhaps what we learn is the most fragile truth about ourselves--would we, could we be these people?"

--Rita Kohn, Nuvo Newsweekly

"Fragile is a work of literary fiction riven with scintillating poetic expression which hangs together in spite of the deliberately fractured nature of the book . . . It did not take me long, however, to get drawn into the rhythm of thought processes, which, although resembling a shattered vessel, retain a coherent design."

"Fragile, as earthly as it is ethereal, shows that in spite of the bleakness and lovelessness of the modern world one hidden life of prayer and good works can have far-reaching effects upon the cosmos. And yet such souls must often struggle alone in darkness, as Amelia does through most of the book, blind to her unique and radiant gifts, which shine forth at the finale."

--Elena Maria Vidal, Tea at Trianon

"Fragile is a beautifully written novel. It is unusually written in how the stories blend in to each other. I felt that this style of writing was very appropriate for the story . . . This technique of writing was uniquely refreshing. The author also does a beautiful job of bringing both the scenes and intense emotions experienced in them to life."

"After reading Fragile I found myself feeling very contemplative. . . By reading this story, I thought about how many of us tie up our opportunities for a happy future based on our past decisions. I see this so many times. Reading “Fragile” was a wake-up call to me to keep myself aware that this can happen."

"The spiritual component of the story added beauty to the book. I believe that readers will really enjoy reading this book and find meaning in it to be applied to their own lives. Fragile by Chris Katsaropoulos is highly recommended."

--Paige Lovitt, Reader Views

"Fragile by Chris Katsaropoulos focuses on the lives of three main characters: Amelia Geist, Holly Schenck, and Tris Holloway. All are in some way broken. Amelia is an older lady who is still a virgin as she has been saving herself for Tris, the man who left her over fifty years ago. Tris is married and the decision that he made to abandon Amelia still haunts him after all of these years. Holly, who is a hairdresser with issues of her own, becomes a part of the story after Amelia comes in to get her hair done for her fiftieth high school class reunion."

"The style in which the book is written is very unique. It is presented in broken fragments linking all of their lives together . . . Each time the author shifts to a different character he starts a new indented paragraph so it is easy to see when the story is going to jump somewhere else."

"Katsaropoulos does a wonderful job of developing the characters and intertwining all of their stories. The tale which he creates is intriguing and attention grabbing. If you are interested in reading a book unlike any that you have ever read before then I recommend giving this author’s first novel a try!

--Kam Aures, Rebeccasreads.com

"Fragile is like a version, in words, of Paul McCartney's song 'Picasso's Last Words,' in which the former Beatle used an unconventional, interweaving song structure to pay aural tribute to an unconventional, gifted artist."

--Joseph's Reviews

"Fragile is an experimental novel about what pulls us together and apart . . . Three very different people who are all struggling to feel love and be loved are all portrayed as vulnerable by Katsaropoulos . . . The stories are sad, but Katsaropoulos does a wonderful job of keeping the thread of hope alive in each of them, as though a happy ending is just around the corner. It's a small story with a large impact."

--Christina Lockstein, Christy's Book Blog

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