The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer

I can’t be honest about this one. I had become quite distracted by the fact that there is a dead child in this book. It would not normally happen but when we picked this book, I couldn’t know that someone close to me will lose their child. It wasn’t possible for me to continue reading this book and not see the parallels with the real world and that is despite the fact the circumstances were completely different. A family lost a child. That is a profound and changing experience and I was heavily affected by it, albeit indirectly.

I finished The Shock after I got over the shock of this tragedy but I found it quite hard to get into Matthew’s head after the break. It was hard to swim in the whirlpool of thoughts and very confusing to figure out what is going on. That is not a bad thing in this case. The writing is brilliant and the scattered mind of the main character is speaking in many voices to us. We know we can’t trust the narrator but we believe him.

I think this book deserves my full attention so I will read it again.