BOOK REVIEW: The Shock of the Fall
For people who are...
Feeling: grief, depression
Wanting to feel: like someone understands, hope, compassion,
sympathy
Needing: a fresh start, to understand mental health
Review...
I was lent this book by a friend who told me it was sort of
a YA book. It’s definitely more of an Older Young Adult Book, themes of
suicidal thoughts, self-harm, grief dealt with at a very young age make it
pretty intense at times. If I were to have any criticisms, I found that the jumping around in the timeline, though it made me curious to read on, was occasionally slightly confusing to the point where I was brought out of the story. BUT STILL READ IT! It is most definitely a hopeful
book without being trite or patronising.
It includes one of the most accurate descriptions of mental
health I’ve read other than Reasons to Stay Alive:
“The worst thing about this illness isn’t the things it makes me believe or what it makes me do. It’s not the control that it has over me, or even the control it’s allowed other people to take.
Worse than all that is how I have become selfish.
Mental illness turns people inwards. That’s what I reckon. It keeps us forever trapped by the pain of our own minds, in the same way that the pain of a broken leg or a cut thumb will grab your attention, holding it so tightly that your good leg or your good thumb seem to cease to exist. I’m stuck looking inwards. Nearly every thought I have is about me.”
And all this despite the author saying he himself has
“robust” mental health. How he can have that insight…
This is a book which looks at things we often turn away from
in day to day life, and I think that was what kept me reading. To be honest that is why we read and why we write, to to talk about things that are often hidden away.
Thoughts...
The book is written by the main character, on his old typewriter, on a support centre computer all while struggling with mental health problems and with no higher education. What this reminded me, was that anyone can
write, no matter their situation in life. I think I often imagine a white middle class man in slippers sat in an armchair or a young millennial with a mac book in Costa. And though Matthew is fictional, the author paints a different picture of what a writer is "supposed to look like".
The book also shows how important writing can be for those with mental health problems. Writing is not just for publication, just the act of writing can be therapeutic for individuals. It's a way of talking to yourself and working out how you feel. I always felt like my thought would go around and around in my head until I put them down on paper and then I could deal with them once they existed on the page.
The book also shows how important writing can be for those with mental health problems. Writing is not just for publication, just the act of writing can be therapeutic for individuals. It's a way of talking to yourself and working out how you feel. I always felt like my thought would go around and around in my head until I put them down on paper and then I could deal with them once they existed on the page.
As Matthew says at the end of this story he has written,
“this story has never been a keepsake – it’s finding a way to let go”
Further Reading...
Reasons to Stay Alive - Matt Haig
A Grief Observed - C.S.Lewis
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