Book: The Shock of The Fall
Author: Nathan Filer
Pages: 310
Read On: Paperback
How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days
Plot Summary: I’ll tell you what happened because it will be a good way to introduce my brother. His name’s Simon. I think you’re going to like him. I really do. But in a couple of pages he’ll be dead. And he was never the same after that.’
There are books you can’t stop reading, which keep you up all night.
There are books which let us into the hidden parts of life and make them vividly real.
There are books which, because of the sheer skill with which every word is chosen, linger in your mind for days.
The Shock of the Fall is all of these books.
The Shock of the Fall is an extraordinary portrait of one man’s descent into mental illness.
General Thoughts: This book always caught my eye in bookstores and I've picked it up and put it down numerous times. Till I finally bought it a few months ago. I am always interested in reading books about mental illness. It's an area of interest of mine, since I studied it in college and graduate school. It always intrigues me to read a first person account of what it feels to slowly loose a grip on your mind, from what I've read and studied and on occasion observed and helped treat, it seems to be the scariest thing to loose your mind. Though this is only a fictional account of a young man's failing mental health, it was real and genuine and captured the essence of grappling with mental illness.
Things I Liked:
1. The writing was spot on. The book is told in the first person, journal style, memoir writing style and it reads wonderfully apt as the writing of a 19 year old boy.
2. The back story of Matthew's childhood, his brother Simon especially were simply wonderful to read about. The family dynamic was messed-up but it made for some very interesting reading, crappy family stories always are always good to read about.
3. Matthew himself was a good person to get to know, to read about his life, his thoughts and his descend into mental illness was both heart-breaking and scary. I really liked him and wished him well.
4. The book was full of little illustrations and I like books with details like this.
5. Matthew's mother was a very intriguing character, lost, sad, scared and even cruel and clingy and flawed. The way she reacts after the death of Simon was peculiar and it made me mad to see her treat Matthew so coldly.
6. The thing I loved best about this book was reading about how it's like to be the 'normal'/'ordinary' child in a family with another child with special needs. The benign neglect. The not being the focus of your parent's attention. Having to be older than your years...stuff like this is my jam. I love reading about these subtle feelings of hurt and the long-lasting effects of this sort of unintentional parental slights.
Things I Didn't Like:
I really loved this book, most of it, parts of it were very slow. Too slow and the pace slowed down quite a bit and I was a bit bored.
Rating: 3.5/5
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