The Free Fall [Hardcover]

Jane Ratcliffe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2001

A brilliant debut novel that perfectly captures a teenager's struggle to stay real.

I suppose the whole thing began with me looking for the shine. That's what I used to call that trippy kind of grace some people just seem to be born with.

Jane Ratcliffe's debut novel perfectly captures the voice of a girl turning sixteen in a wealthy suburb of Detroit. By turns funny, perceptive, innocent and yearning for experience, Let is a character you immediately feel you know. Let's family lives by its own rules and routines which Henry, an irresistible nineteen-year-old with cheekbones like a mad dog totally disrupts. He leads Let on a wild ride of drugs and sex, and when Let meets Ryder, who is half wise beyond his years, and half lost boy warehoused at an exclusive private school, she is fully in the free fall.

Older teenagers are eagerly responding to books that tell the truth about coming of age, which is not so much bleak as it is beautiful, terrifying and dream-like. In The Free Fall, Jane Ratcliffe announces herself as one of the new generation of fearless yet lyrical chroniclers of coming-of-age.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Violet Gwendolyn Hitchcock, called "Let" by her friends, is the disarming 16-year-old narrator of Ratcliffe's engrossing first novel. Let is searching for "the shine" (an elusive feeling of "grace"), but she looks in all the wrong places. Nevertheless, she maintains an aura of innocence even as she slowly surrenders to a downward spiral of alcohol, drugs and sex. The author sustains sympathy for her heroine by making readers privy to the obsessive thoughts that begin to drown out the girl's rational impulses, as well as the sense of humor that keeps her afloat. For instance, as Henry, the 19-year-old man of her dreams, begins to pressure Let sexually, she says to herself, "The thing was, I did want to be with him, just not quite like that. Not quite so all at once. I guess I was wanting at least a first date." Other scenes in which a note of comedy takes the edge off of Let's fears: her best friend, CJ, instructs her on how to apply a condom, and her first time snorting coke. But the cumulative effect of Let's breezy tone has strange repercussions when, inevitably, tragedy does strike: readers may come away ultimately unruffled by the event. Ratcliffe also sets up the novel as a flashback, and Let's judgment in hindsight occasionally detracts from the developing action. Still, readers will keep the pages turning as this credible protagonist chronicles her disturbing descent. Ages 14-17.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 8-11-Violet, known to friends as Let, gets a brand-new car for her 16th birthday. She has begun to look for what she calls "the shine," which is her way of describing people and feelings that are strong and powerful. She meets Henry, an older boy with a wild streak, and believes he has this "shine." She also meets Ryder, who seems to be searching as well. Henry is distant, hard, and dangerous; Ryder is gentle, earthy, and drinks too much whiskey. With these two boys, Let steps into a spiral of drugs and alcohol that whirls out of control, into what she describes as a "free fall." Her dysfunctional parents, who are dealing with their own issues, seem unaware that she has begun this decline, even when her new car is dented. Let's brother, Logan, is troubled as well, and adds turmoil to her family. This morality play, set in Detroit's ultra-rich suburbs, features unsupervised teens drinking, partying, and doing drugs. There's sex, plenty of street language, but also a search for spirituality and God. Ratcliffe has done a good job of opening Let's mind to readers, but the book tries to answer too many questions. Teens will relate to Let's precarious search for meaning, but may not have the patience to ramble along to the book's tragic ending.
Angela J. Reynolds, Washington County Cooperative Library Services, Aloha, OR
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company; 1st edition (August 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805066675
• ISBN-13: 978-0805066678
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,032,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Free Fall, December 21, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Free Fall (Hardcover)

Maybe I haven't read a coming of age story in a long, long time but there are so few that stand out in my mind. Even fewer that I would call current and hand over to my niece or daughter with confidence. Although Jane Ratcliffe's first novel is less than delicate at times, it is in just those times that it shines. The brutle honesty with which Ratcliffe allows this story to unfold is both timeless and timely. We follow anxiously (even though the story is told in flash back) as Let's (our protagonist) journey darkens taking each step with her as she spirals further from her goal, the elusive search for the "shine" as she calls it...Happiness and security. Let's life darkens and dulls and becomes heartbreakingly hopeless the way life does...slowly, subtly, until one can't remember the light. A family that from all outward appearances seemed fine, troubled, as most families are, but not without it's bright spots, gradually turns rancid with lies and hostility. Niether parent is capable of connecting with their two children and ultimately seems to silently agree to ignore them...even as they clamour for attention. Let's drinking, drugs and casual sex all take root innocently as if she only stumbled upon them, not sought them out as she clearly begins to. Like most bad habits they begin as a test, then a possible cure, a cure indeed, and then the line blurs between choice and control and there is no choice anymore. No right or wrong. And we are right there beside her, without the answers. When the book begins we, as readers, know that Let has found herself in a hospital bed, but even as she recounts the details of her fall we would never guess that this child of hope and innocence would ever find herself with bottles of southern comfort hidden under her bed as she drank wine at her parents kitchen table with her boyfriend and brother...no sign of her parents...It is a precautionary tale that does not reek of a lecture. It is rather one that unfolds as life does, slowly and with lessons that are true and hard to recover from.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A harsh and beautiful coming of age, September 24, 2001

By 

"evilgrrlfriday" (the US of A) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Free Fall (Hardcover)

First time writer Jane Radcliffe makes a hell of an impact with her poetically written, strangely beautiful and painfully honest account of a young girl's harsh coming of age in an affluent Detroit suburb in 1994. You know from the title that the protagonist, Violet "Let" Hitchcock, a troubled teenage girl, will somehow and somewhere hit the bottom, but you just don't know how hard.
Let has just turned sixteen and has a new car which she christens The Flame. Almost immediately, she becomes enamoured of Henry Edwards, a sophisticated and seductive nineteen year old, who calls her "baby girl" and hands her the keys to a tumultuous ride into a dangerous, dark world of casual sex, drugs and alcohol. Along her dangerous way, Let meets the oddly alluring Ryder Hadley, a worldly and wise sixteen year old who isn't without his own share of problems. Against this dramatic backdrop, Let watches her parents' marriage breaking up and nearly trapping her beneath its broken timbers.
One of the strongest points of The Free Fall is its lack of sensationalizing the heavy subject matter. It is told in flashback, intercut with poetic musings on life. Radcliffe wisely steers clear of rolling in the gutter by writing too many graphic and potentially objectionable scenes, or on the other side, coating everything with glitter and making it a confusing, shimmery mess (think the God-awful The Fool Reversed.) That talent is most clear during the scenes involving drugs or sex - written in a lyrical but mysteriously coherent way that leaves you with no doubt of what is going on, but avoiding heavy handedness or ugly details. The plot sounds so incredibly banal and done-before: a rich girl has a destructive affair with a dangerous older man, develops drug habits, watches her parents' marriage dissolve, and meets an intelligent boy her age, but Radcliffe deftly captures the spirit of the novel: an adventurous free spirit infected with the breathless insanity of obsessive, teenage love.
However, Let is anything but a typical teenage girl having problems with sex and drugs. She is neither an innocent angel nor a jailbait tart, but a refreshingly ambitious, reflective and intelligent center for the novel. Radcliffe neither attempts nor makes excuses or explanations for her reckless behavior. All the characters are unusual, real and complex, especially Let's mother, who swings from ultra friendly and loving to psychotic and obsessive.
Don't look for any happy endings here. The ending is an unexpected tragedy that can keep up with the saddest of them ("Beauty Queen", "The Killer Angels"). You feel for Let throughout her turbulent, exhilarating and ultimately heartbreaking ride through rebellion - except you can get off in the end with the bittersweet and haunting beauty of The Free Fall lingering in your mind long after the book's 342 pages are up.

5.0 out of 5 stars Realistic and gripping coming of age, July 28, 2004

By 

susan_d - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Free Fall (Hardcover)

Violet Hitchcock is a sixteen year old girl searching for what she calls "the shine". It's a rare and ethereal quality, an essence of grace. And she tends to chase after people who have it, and discard people who don't.

For her 16th birthday, Violet is given a new Honda, a beautiful car that she cherishes. However, she also rapidly matures and rebels against her incredibly rich, incredibly dysfunctional parents by descending into drugs and booze. Although she watched her older brother tank his life in the same manner, she's ultimately repeating his pattern in the face of her manic mother and detail obsessed father, neither of whom have the brains or decency to place the necessary limits on her, for fear of her turning as sour as her brother.

So Violet focuses on Henry, a leather-clad older boy, also from super- rich parents, in whom she thinks she detects the shine. Despite warnings from her friend when her life starts to deteriorate as she drinks, snorts, and sexes even more. And while scratching and dinging her new car, she soon finds herself torn between the sexy Henry and a new friend, the laid-back, wizened Rider.

Ratcliffe never backs off in The Free Fall. Not only does she loving craft a rich and thoughtful literary novel that's exceptionally well written. She's also honest in her portrayal of teenagers, including drugs, sex, liquor, and heaps of self- involvement. It's with this honest and vivid description that she can create this fast-paced and moving story, a modern coming-of-age with serious repercussions. Though some of the material may shock and scare some parents, I'd think that teenage girls in particular will not only be riveted by Ratcliffe's graceful prose, but may value the most from having read and learning from Violet.