Most Helpful Customer Reviews
58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The Fall" Explores The Gamut Of Human Emotions - Superb!!, September 27, 2003
This is a powerhouse of a novel that will have you reading compulsively until you've turned the last page, and will leave you deep in thought long after that. "The Fall" has achieved a place on my Top 10 list of favorite works of fiction. Rob Dewer hears on the car radio that his old friend and mountain climbing partner, Jamie Matthewson, has fallen to his death while making an almost suicidal solo climb. Although the two men have not been in touch for years, the news hits Dewer hard, stirring up a series of memories and strong, unresolved feelings from long ago. He immediately turns his car towards Wales and begins a journey, not only to bring comfort to Matthewson's widow, his old friend and former lover, Ruth, but into the past where decades old secrets and betrayals are disclosed. Author Simon Mawer writes, "At some time or other you must confront your past. We are our past...There is nothing else, and none of it can be undone." Mawer visits the past of a group of people who are intimately connected through friendship, love, lust, jealousy, competition, hatred and blood ties. The enormous power of some of Mawer's characters is almost overwhelming at times, as is their extreme fragility and vulnerability. His prose is masterful and poignant. The plot is riveting, compelling, almost brutal, in its honesty. I have never been very interested in the sport of climbing, but Mawer's narrative transported me, time and time again, on exhilarating treks up mountainsides; the action so vividly described that I felt that I was one of the climbers. His descriptions of landscapes, both fierce and bucolic, are as visual as paintings. Mawer is indeed a master craftsman. This is a novel of love, of moral choices and decisions that life forces us to make. Sometimes the repercussions of these decisions echo into the future, for generations to come. This is truly one of the most amazingly original novels I have read in years and it has effected me deeply. I cannot praise "The Fall" highly enough!
JANA
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42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As Good as it gets, February 12, 2009
This review is from: The Fall: A Novel (Paperback)
I do not write long reviews. I am 82 years of age and try to read at least 1 book a week and have done so most of my life. Everything from good Histories to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Balzac, to the great mysteries of Hammett, Chandler and Michael Connelly.
Put quite simply, The Fall may be the best book I have ever read. I may be a bit carried away as I just finished it last night--in 2 days--and at the moment it is terribly fresh in my mind. They say a good book needs good metaphors--there are some awful ones in so many books that I often wish they were not there at all--but Mr Mawer's are so good I almost filled the book with underlines.
The story is about 2 boys and their parents. There are a number of very intricate loves affairs and criss-crosses, but one way or another they all make sense and keep the reader fascinated. The other big part of the story is about mountain climbing, but don't let that put you off. I think they are crazy, but it surely makes for very exciting reading. To put it squarely, I had never heard of this writer until I read a review of his newest book--not publihed here yet--in the Finanial Times--He is British- and although maybe he isn't the super man that I think, he certainly should be talked about and reviewed more prolifically in the USA
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Page Turner of the First Order, May 21, 2003
I spent a day and a half gobbling this imaginative, enveloping novel down. I don't think I need to say much more than the fans here have said already, except perhaps to add that at year's end, THE FALL is going to stand among the year's best for me, perhaps even at the number one spot. For me, everything in this tale of passion and friendship, love and betrayal, worked. Don't let the thought of the moutaineering scenes scare you off, they're superbly done, and metaphorically valid. The scenes of London during the Blitz are among the most vivid descriptions if that time I've ever read. I look forward now to going back and reading earlier Mawber. This is definitely an incredibly versatile author with an important future.
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