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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Goodwin eclipses his wonderful "The Blood of Paradise"...., December 26, 2004
This review is from: Breaking Her Fall
"Breaking Her Fall" - the title says what we all feel about our daughters; about the peculiar loss of them as they enter the teenage years, the years in which their ability to be a person in their own right is eclipsed by the pressures of a society gone mad in depicting the sexuality of a "woman" as young as 14. Tucker's daughter Kat, at 14, is in the throes of this hormonal madness, and he doesn't even know it. Tucker's an oddity, a father who has won primary custody of daughter and son when his former wife moved up the social ladder and mostly out of their lives.
It's hard not to like Tucker, who's a self-made man, with a love for music and a need to be there for his children. It is with some trepidation that we watch him turn to rage when Kat is involved in a sex scandal at the home of a boy he knows nothing about. In slow motion, his rage leads to injury and disfigurement of the boy, and incarceration and trial. But his trials are many, both in trying to understand and protect his daughter, keep his younger son from fear, his love for his best friend's wife at bay, and himself from going mad.
The strain of parenting adolescents in this mixed up world is brought to the fore in Kat's tale, and although it is written in first person from Tucker's point of view, there is no doubt that author Stephen Goodwin was able to get inside the heads of all his main characters...from children Kat and Will to the amazing Lilly, from Trish, his ex-wife who attempts to preserve her motherhood from the tragedy, to the teenaged Jed Vandenberg, with a permanent scar from a heated misunderstanding. Goodwin makes them all come alive on the page. And he does more, something more, that, for me, brings the book to life - he brings in the ordinary; talks about the what the notes on his refrigerator say, talks about the demise of his marriage, has a remarkable reaction (like many of us) to the first time he hears the beautiful songs of the posthumous Eva Cassidy CD, "Songbird". ..."as I danced with my daughter, her eyes searching mine, the two of us just floating, I felt something give way inside of me....as though all our old love, every particle of it, had been restored to us by the music we were hearing."
As my own daughter grew up, I remember times of anger and despair that seemed like an out of body experience, and so it is with Tucker... in describing his violent reaction to young Jed Vandenburg, at a time where he had no idea where his 14-year old daughter was and if she was all right..."I can remember how the air seemed to stiffen and tighten, how every word and tiny gesture took on a huge significance, and how the hair on the back of my neck suddenly bristled".
Goodwin is a writer of style and grace, his book a revelation and a scare for parents and adolescents, a book that will stay with you longer than the details of the story itself.
A definite must read!
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26 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Breaking My Fall, August 3, 2003
This review is from: Breaking Her Fall
This book is awesome! From the first moment I cracked open Breaking Her Fall, I found myself a huge fan of Tucker Jones, rooting for his safe return from his perilous journey-entirely modern, entirely timeless-into all matters of the heart. Graceful, deft, humorous, more than a heartfelt account of fatherly love, Breaking is the story of a single father trying to reach his teenage daughter, his son; it's the story, also, of a man who must learn to put the past behind him and venture out into unchartered territory, towards relationships where love-meaningful love-is honored above safer, more complacent, constructs. By book's end I felt appropriately challenged-to love honestly; to love better. To find a love that matters. Thank you, Mr. Goodwin. You have delivered us a true gift: a story that is both a marvelous adventure and a call to action. Wake up! Read the book. Your heart will thank you.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A father daughter relationship caught on the brink, November 5, 2003
This review is from: Breaking Her Fall
The year is 1998 and the Clinton sex scandals are plaguing the White House; all over the country people are talking and passing judgment on the President. This unlikely setting forms the backdrop for Stephen Goodwin's ambitious, intelligent and somewhat overemotional story of teenage sex, and family relationships. Although to some extent melodramatic in places, Breaking Her Fall is still a very accomplished, and at times, quite riveting domestic drama, that really captures you from the outset, and embraces you in its entirety. One night Tucker Jones, an American "ordinary man" - a loving and devoted father receives a hostile phone call from another parent who blames his thirteen-year-old daughter, Kat, for indulging in a drunken sexual orgy with some boys at a party. This sets of a chain reaction of violence and recrimination, which reverberates throughout Tucker's entire life affecting his children, his ex-wife, his current girlfriend, and his best friends. On the surface, the story passes for an attention-grabbing legal drama, where Tucker - accused of assaulting one of the boys - fights to save his reputation, and his innocence. But, in reality, the story is much more than this: Goodwin introduces us to a subtle domestic world seething with pent up tensions - strained relationships between ex-wives; father-daughter relationships that are not what they seem; unspoken sexual passions between best friends that are clandestinely acted upon, and teenage pregnancy which inevitably rears its controversial head. Goodwin writes with a clear confidence of a professional, and he keeps the narrative taught and tight by placing the story in the first person and always telling the story through Tucker's point of view, The narrative flows with a gentleness and ease, never loosing sight of its focus, and the author is determined to share with us every aspect of Tucker's life - from his days doing drugs in college, to the history of his courtship with his ex-wife Trish, to his decision to leave the corporate world, and build an independent life for himself as a landscape gardener. The strength of Breaking Her Fall is also in its enthusiastically believable characters: There's the somewhat self-obsessed and hot-headed main protagonist Tucker, who doesn't think before he acts, but who loves his two children dearly; there's Kat, Tucker's teenage daughter - impetuous, rude, conflicted and unhappy, and there's Tucker's best friend Lily, naive and kind, whose only crime is to want more passion in her life and be the woman who Tucker really loves. There are lots of other supporting characters that weave with equal grace in and out of the narrative, each contributing their own stories, and each influencing Tucker's life in one way or another. About half way through the book, the character of Lily, speaking at her father's funeral talks about how her father made her feel safe and rescued, and that if she "fell" her father would be there to catch her. Perhaps this reflects the thematic core of the novel in that there should always be someone there to catch us if we fall. Loneliness, loss, the inability to communicate, family structures, the value of friendships, and the ability to be able to make the "right" decision are all presented in Breaking Her Fall with an astute and sensitive clarity. This is a very perceptive and emotionally sensitive piece of work. Michael
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