Customer Reviews

The Long Falling

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3 star:		(1)
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A debut novel of almost miraculous courage and brilliant lyricism. Ridgway is fearless in his exploration of the human heart; he beautifully explores the pain inherent in love and loss. This prose will haunt you. One can only hope that Keith Ridgway's career is just beginning -- he has the writer's gift of language, and a heart that's open and unafraid.

As the story unfolds and the characters take on different dimensions, the reader is overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the writing. A brilliant debut by a very talented author.

This is an astonishingly beautiful novel. Anyone who has thought about their relationship with their mother..the love and the anger will undoubtly be moved by this very powerful story. The insight of character thoughts are remarkable. It is a very sad book that deserves enormous attention. Someone tell Oprah..this should be on her book club list..it is the best novel I have read in years. I'm telling all my friends..I love every page of this novel and know I will read it over and over again through the years. If you love a great story, well written and written from the heart..this book is for you.

To my mind, this is great writing. You can turn to virtually any page and find a sentence that will knock your socks off. "The warmth of the place became brazen," or "She wondered if the farm still stood - the line of trees like broccoli that cut the sunset in two. . . . She had not thought of it before. Now she knew that places were not constant. They were the inventions of minds that stayed still for a moment. They were a gathering of walls and shelters, and certain odours in the air, that served to divide and define and keep a person real."

The story is of a woman who has intentionally run down her abusive husband on a road and killed him. She is trying to make a way to find a new life, but "she had not thought it through." She goes to live with her gay son, Martin, "to make out of the space at his side a place of her own." But that, of course, is not possible. Not only because she has killed his father, but also because the space at his side is filled wi! th Henry, who is soon returning from Europe.

When he learns what she has done, Martin cannot abide her. He throws her out. Yet he is the only one in the book who feels no sympathy for her. Even the policeman on the case warns her to go away. Martin's friends, even Henry, want him to feel some compassion for his mother, but he won't. In fact, when he finds where she has gone, he calls the police.

Relaying the plot this way does not do it justice. It's really the way the story is told that makes the book. The descriptions, the reactions of the characters, and the interior reactions they have are really more important than the plot. It's a book about the spaces between people, not about a murder.

This is a well written novel with depressing subject matter. Each chapter is written in third person and is written from the point of view of one of four characters: Grace, Martin, Sean, and Mrs. Talbot. Most of the chapters are from either Grace's (the mother) or Martin's (the son) point of view. The technique increased my interest in the book. The author is able to come up with an abundance of pertinent details for every scene. As a gay man, I thought Ridgway portrayed the gay characters and settings in a realistic, unsensational way. The book reminds me of the type of novel that William Trevor might write. Not as good as William Trevor, but few authors are that good. There's probably a lot more to the book than what I've grasped in one reading. If the book gets great reviews, I'll read it again.

This author told this spooky and sad story well. The problems I had were: A few times I felt his prose turned a little purple, especially with some of the internal ramblings of Grace; I wondered about Henry's motives in how he related to Martin at the end of the story; and I stumbled over Martin's reaction to the news that his mother killed his father. I didn't find enough background, or motive, or psychological basis for his extreme behavior. But the main character, Grace, was well-wrought enough to carry the story as a whole, and it is clear that Mr. Ridgway is a perceptive and sensitive writer. I will definitely keep my eye out for his next work.

Keith Ridgway tackels serious moral dilemma's in his finely crafted first novel, "The Long Falling." Told primarily through the voices of mother and son, Mr. Ridgeway explores, in each of them, the bonds that link them together and the struggles each must encounter for their actions not only with themselves but with each other as well. Grace is brought up in a traumatic family enviorment losing in many respects her religion and identity only to enter into a destructive marriage. In an act of desperation, Grace murdeers her husband. "I wanted to be free of him, and so I did it, but I'm tied to him now like I never was," says Grace. "I wanted to spit him out and I swallowed him instead." Martin loves his mother very much but leaves home after he tells his parents he is gay and is met with disapproval by his father who is unwilling to accept his homosexuality. Martin, like his mother, has his demons which he must face. Grace stays with her son, Martin after her murderous act and although Grace's moral dilemma haunts her since the committed act, Martin's moral dilemma's begin once he learns what his mother has done. Masterfully, Ridgway intertwines this story with an actual case in Ireland involving a unamed 14 year old girl named X. The government would not allow her to go to England and get an abortion as a result from a rape. On the one hand we are presented with the moral ambiguities of allowing an unborn child to die and conversly we are presented with the moral ambiguities of Grace's act of violence as well as Martin's decision how to proceed with his mother. Does Martin keep quiet? Does he turn his mother in? Can he understand his mothers behavior given the abusiveness of his father? Even Martin's issues with his Dad are tumultous. These moral dilemma's are the heart of "The Long Falling." And as we see Grace's descent into the long falling, Martin is right behind her. Other characters play prominently as well - Martin's lover, Henry and Mrs. Talbot, the woman who assists in hiding Grace from the authorities. "The Long Falling" is a multi-layered, complex novel told in simple, although sometimes disjointed, clean prose. Ridgway chooses his words and images carefully and gives us insight into the complexities of morality and the bonds of love which always binds us with the past, present and future. This is a difficult book to read, but well woth reading.

This is a promising first novel. The book is divided into sections in which a different character relates their perspective on the events in their lives.

The novel centers around Grace who has murdered her alcoholic, abusive husband. She then travels to Dublin to try to reconcile with her estranged son, Martin. They became estranged five years ago when Martin was banished from her home fo disclosing his homosexuality to his father.

This book is dark and brooding with the spaces of silence as rich as the words describing events and feelings. How Grace and Martin come to relate again is rendered very poignantly. Aspects of Martin's homosexuality are addressed well and unpretentiously. I look forward to further books by this author.

If you liked this book, I recommend The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle.

Grace Quinn, of English origin, has been married for 30 years to Michael Quinn, a violent and alcoholic man and has lived for the same time as an outsider in Ireland, in a small place called Monaghan. Her first son Sean drowned in a ditch when he was 3 and her second son, Martin, left to live in Dublin. He was forced to lave Monaghan after having admitted to his father that he was homosexual, a fact his father couldn't admit since "the animals in the fields don't even do that". Finally Grace can't take the violence anymore and runs over Michael with her car one night as he is coming back home, drunk.

After her crime, Grace joins her son Martin in Dublin but she soon understands that it is difficult for her to come to terms with her son's way of life and she can't help feeling out of place, bored and tired of staying in the house Martin shares with his boyfriend Henry. Furthermore there is neither escape nor redemption to be found in Dublin for the crime she committed.

An altogether interesting first novel with an original plot structure although perhaps a bit lengthy at times. Certainly Grace's psychological instability in a life which became devoid of meaning after Michael's death and her son's difficulty in trying to comprehend her behaviour in Dublin are the strong points in Mr Ridgway's novel.

From the dark atmosphere of the novel, to the murder and eventual redemption of the murderer, this has to be the Irish equivalent of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Of course there are no real plot-point comparisons, but Grace, the main character, might possibly have been able to get away with the murder of her husband, just as Raskolnikov could have gotten away with the murder of the old pawn-broker woman. But both characters provide their own punishment, both give themselves up to authorities, and both characters redeem themselves of their acts. Ridgway, however, provides us with a likeable and sympathetic character in Grace, and a very believable family dynamic in the way she relates to her gay son. This was a surprisingly mature treatment of a complex plot, seamlessly presented, with equally in-depth character portrayals. --Ronald L. Donaghe, author of Common Sons