Since We Fell

Sollte man dieses Buch in ein Genre einordnen, wird es schwierig. Denn auf diesen mehr als 500 Seiten findet sich so gut wie alles: Familiengeschichte, die mehr einem Drama ähnelt; eine Liebesgeschichte, die zu schön ist um wahr zu sein; und nicht zuletzt ein Thriller, der sich bereits auf den ersten Seiten des Buches ankündigt, denn Rachel, die Hauptfigur und Icherzählerin, erschießt ihren geliebten Mann.
Nach diesem furiosen Auftakt berichtet Rachel, wie es soweit kommen konnte: über ihre Kindheit mit einer (vermutlich) neurotischen Mutter und die Suche nach ihrem Vater; ihre Karriere als Journalistin und der bodenlose Absturz; ihre erste, glücklose Ehe. Doch dann trifft Rachel Brian, den sie Jahre zuvor kennengelernt hat und show more mit dem sie sehr lose per Mail in Kontakt geblieben ist. Er wird die Liebe ihres Lebens und ihr Glück scheint perfekt, als gewisse Unstimmigkeiten in ihrem gemeinsamen Leben auftauchen und schlussendlich zu Brians Erschießung führen.
Für viele AutorInnen wäre hier vermutlich das Ende schon erreicht (immerhin Seite 338 und auch bis dahin bereits eine klasse Unterhaltung), aber bei Dennis Lehane beginnt nun erst der dritte (Thriller)Teil, der mindestens ebenso viele Überraschungen zu bieten hat wie die ersten beiden.
Dieses Buch hat nicht nur eine spannende und äußerst wendungsreiche Geschichte zu bieten, sondern vermittelt zudem sehr überzeugend die Verfasstheit der Protagonistin. Wie sie über einen Parkplatz geht und überall erwartet, von Kugeln niedergestreckt zu werden - das lässt sich kaum besser schildern. Die Panikattacken, die sie in den unpassendsten Momenten überfallen - ich musste während des Lesens tief ein- und ausatmen, um sicher zu gehen, genügend Luft zu bekommen. Kein Wunder, denn Lehane, der als therapeutischer Berater geistig Behinderte und sexuell missbrauchte Kinder betreute, kennt solche Empfindungen wohl sehr genau.
Ein rundum gelungenes Buch, bei dem kleine Unstimmigkeiten (weshalb wundern sich die Gangster nicht, dass Rachel alleine ist?) nicht weiter ins Gewicht fallen. show less

I've seen some complaints on this book being two different stories, and about the ending. I'll tell you right up front, I won't spoil either, but I will say, I quite enjoyed the full ride, two stories, ending, and all.

I'll fully declare my Lehane fan-card. I became a fan with the brilliant Mystic River, then went back and read every single word the man had published. I've long declared that The Given Day was my favourite book of the year when it was published (though I think each of the two follow ups did offer diminishing returns).

I was deliriously excited to see a standalone novel. Haven't gotten one of those from Lehane in a while. And it was also contemporary. Bonus.

So, I dived in. There's certain authors that I don't even bother to show more read the back cover or investigate the book in any way. Lehane is one. Elmore Leonard, Andrew Pyper, Stephen King, and Jack Ketchum are a few of the others. So I went into the story completely cold, knowing nothing about it.

At first I thought it was going to be the mystery of Rachel's father. Then it seemed to morph into wonderfully sweet romance. Then it took a dark turn. Then it was full-on action for the last third.

So, was it a little schizophrenic? Absolutely. But Lehane has done this is the past, led us down a path, only to take an unexpected turn and flip the story on its head. So I'm completely okay with that. Life is a bit messy at times, and he doesn't mind making it the same for his characters.

All I'll say about the ending is that it's a touch--just a touch, mind you--open-ended. And seriously, with all that led up to that point, if it doesn't satisfy you, then I'll say you completely missed the point of the novel...and the thing that makes that messiness all right.

The point of the story is Rachel's journey from who she was, to who she will be.

Understand that, and you'll be fine with the book. show less

3.5

Dennis Lehane no tendrá tan extensa bibliografía como, digamos; Stephen King, John Grisham y Michael Connelly, para mencionar algunos, pero, en su limitada publicación literaria, prácticamente no hay desperdicios.

Arrancaré diciendo que Since We Fell, entre las que he leído, ha sido la novela que menos me ha gustado de Lehane. Es un libro que pareciera estar escrito por dos autores diferentes. La primera mitad por Lehane y la segunda mitad por un autor menos experimentado y menos preocupado por sus lectores.

La primera parte es una serie de saltos en el tiempo presentándonos a la protagonista Rachel Childs, quien tuvo una difícil niñez creciendo con su madre, Elizabeth. Su padre las abandonó a temprana edad y Elizabeth show more siempre le ocultó su identidad. Rachel creció teniendo una difícil relación con su madre, quien era manipuladora y dominante, siendo a la vez carismática e inteligente.

También tendremos pinceladas de Rachel como adulta, trabajando como periodista y visitando (como parte de su trabajo) lugares como Haití, después del evento real que sucedió en el 2010.

En Haití y, frente a las cámaras, Rachel sufre un colapso mental que la afectará para siempre y, a partir de allí, sufre un cambio radical en su vida.

La primera parte de la novela, como decía, abarca todos estos sucesos de una manera inmersiva y con una prosa elegante, como es de costumbre en Lehane. Se lee más bien como un non-fiction y quieres conocer y saber más de Rachel con el pasar de cada página.

Pero es entonces cuando debemos recordar la primerísima oración de la novela:

On a Tuesday in May, in her thirty-fifth birthday, Rachel shot her husband dead.

Ahí llegamos al punto de la vida de Rachel donde ella está casada y el hombre con quien ella está no aparenta ser lo que dice.

Todo ese rollo "barato" y "casi gastado" de los thrillers contemporáneos donde hay pistas, ligeras investigaciones y la típica confrontación. A diferencia de que en Since We Fell hay más contenido después de dicha confrontación.

En resumen, tenemos casi la mitad de la novela siguiendo los pasos de Rachel Childs, desde su niñez, la relación con su madre, la búsqueda incesante de su padre, su profesión, matrimonio, viajes y colapso mental.
Luego, la novela da un giro de 360 grados y se vuelve un thriller comercial, un libro de aeropuerto. Y tenemos todo eso para la segunda mitad. A eso le sumamos un final insatisfactorio, abrupto y con muchas preguntas sin responder.

La primera parte del libro, personalmente, pienso que merece un 5/5.
La segunda parte del libro... Talvéz un 2/5. Siendo considerado. show less

From its fabulous opening sentence to its chilling and yet hopeful final one, Dennis Lehane’s latest thriller is the epitome of a compulsively readable story. Rachel’s story is a twisty tale of betrayal and love that really does leave readers guessing all the way to the very end. Also, Mr. Lehane takes his time establishing his characters so that when the action takes off, readers know them well enough to add an additional layer of interest to the story.

In truth, the deliberateness with which Mr. Lehane develops Rachel is one of the story’s best features. He does not rush into the action but allows it to build naturally as Rachel asks each new question. Even better, Rachel is not a one-dimensional character with minimal backstory show more and little development. She is a rich, deeply defined character that readers intimately know. We see her love/hate relationship with her mother, the hole in her life that is her missing father. We see her career take off; we see her first marriage blossom and fail. We watch her spectacular breakdown on national television, and we see her attempt to build herself up again after her very public downfall. We know her motivations, her passions, her fears, her worries. By the time her second husband enters the picture there is nothing we don’t know about her, and the story is better for it.

As for the story itself, that is one better discovered for oneself. Mr. Lehane does a fantastic job presenting clues that you recognize as clues but that only make sense in hindsight. He also skillfully keeps the plot a complete surprise while minimizing the use of plot twists. Since We Fell is a thinking person’s thriller – erudite and thoughtful as well as intense and entertaining – and would make a great summer read or book club selection. show less

Rachel Child is an agoraphobic. She had been a foreign correspondent before her very public meltdown on live TV while covering the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. As a result, she lost her career. But this was not the first or only cause of her affliction. She had been raised by a brilliant but cold mother who refused to tell her anything about her father except that she was better off without him. She had spent a year searching for him including hiring Brian Delacroix, a handsome and kind Canadian-born private detective to find him. Eventually, this too leads only to disappointment.

But one good thing comes out of all of this; although he wasn’t able to help her, Brian continues to offer his friendship through all of her disappointments and show more her slide into depression and as she becomes a virtual prisoner in her own home. Eventually, they marry and he coaxes her slowly out into the world. He is no longer a detective and his new work takes him away a lot but he never fails to give her encouragement even when he’s away. One day, however, when he is supposedly in England, she sees his doppelganger (maybe) on the street…except he is wearing clothes exactly like the ones Brian was wearing including his very expensive camel coat. Is it just an amazing coincidence or is their whole life a lie?

Since We Fell by author Dennis Lehane is a fascinating psychological thriller. But it is so much more than that. Unlike your average thriller (and this is definitely not that), this is not the kind of book that can or should be read quickly. In fact, the thriller aspect, as good as it is, takes a back seat to the psychological. It is his portrayal of Rachel’s mental illness as he lays out her thoughts, her self-doubts, and her slow and tentative steps towards recovery that make this an extremely complex, compelling, and engrossing read.

Thanks to Edelweiss and Ecco for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review show less

[This was also published at my website, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography.]

If you were to hold a contest to find The Most Underrated Commercial Author Who's Sneakily Actually A Pretty Great Literary One, certainly Dennis Lehane would be on the shortlist, a Boston native and graduate of Florida's prestigious Eckerd College whose string of crossover popular/critical hits include such Hollywood blockbusters as Gone, Baby, Gone, Mystic River and Shutter Island (and who in fact now lives in southern California himself, where he's been a staff writer on such critically lauded shows as The Wire and Boardwalk Empire, and regularly plays himself on the metafictional crime-novelist action-comedy TV show Castle).

And this streak show more continues with his newest, Since We Fell released just a few months ago, which technically is an action-packed crime thriller (and make no mistake, that's not "crime thriller*" with an MFA asterisk), but that is set up and reads at many points like a slow-burning literary character study instead, one that wouldn't be out of place sitting next to books by Joyce Carol Oates or Doris Lessing. And I specifically mention those female-oriented novelists, of course, because this is famously Lehane's first-ever book to feature a female protagonist, from an author who got famous writing about a series of blue-collar white male tough guys from poor neighborhoods on the Eastern Seaboard, but who Lehane has publicly talked about "no longer connecting with" now that he's a rich and famous middle-aged celebrity out in Los Angeles.

Switching to this new kind of hero has turned out to be a smart move for him, because Lehane has been able here to take all the push-pull between toughness and tenderness that's marked his earlier novels, and apply it again but to a situation that's the opposite from previous audience expectations, here presenting a woman who's as hard and unrelenting as any of his male protagonists but whose softer and more complex side works particularly well within the realm of literary fiction. Specifically, it's the story of Rachel Childs, whose tale wanders and meanders for the entire first two-thirds of the page count before we even get to the thriller setup that so strongly defines the last third.

The daughter of an equally complicated woman, a once-famous but now faded '70s self-help author who's turned into a manipulative but genteel alcoholic in old age, the main issue propelling the first two-thirds of the book is the mystery over Rachel's long-fled biological father, and the equal mystery of why Rachel's mother refuses to divulge even the tiniest little clue about his identity, even taking the mystery to the grave which sets Rachel on an obsessive quest in her twenties for the answers. And indeed, it's tempting to call this book a bait-and-switch when we finally get to the last third, and learn that the main crime-thriller storyline actually has not a single thing to do with anything that happened in the first two-thirds, at least when it comes to the literal plot elements not aligning together between the two sections in any way.

But that's why I call this a sneakily literary character drama, because what the first two-thirds of this novel does is give us an ultra-deep, ultra-complicated look at Rachel, what makes her tick, and what things have happened in her life all the way up to this point that makes her tick in the way she does; and all of that, from the trust issues to the bad relationships, her time as an investigative reporter in developing nations undergoing revolutions, her panic attacks and eventual time as a shut-in, gives us a richly dense sense of why she behaves as she does when the traditional genre part of her story finally kicks in. Most genre authors would make their entire book about just that last third; and that's what makes Lehane special (and in turn has made projects he's been a part of like The Wire special), that he takes the time and effort to let us get to know what are usually in genre novels a series of cardboard-cutout plot-mechanic-shufflers, to understand their motivations and what in their pasts make them behave the way they do here in the present.

As a result, it makes Since We Fell a fascinating novel, the rare crime thriller for those who usually don't like crime thrillers, and an opportunity for usual genre fans to get a sense of why fans of richly layered literary fiction become so obsessed with their own form of "genre" writing (that is, if you count "MFA fiction" as a type of genre unto itself, which I do). I've been burning through a whole series of books here recently that have each scored in the high 9s, and this is another of them, one of the most thought-provoking and thrilling reads I've had in the last year, and that will undoubtedly be making CCLaP's best-of lists in December. It comes strongly recommended today, whether or not you're a usual fan of crime fiction.

Out of 10: 9.7 show less

Lehane has been one of my “auto-buy” authors for a couple of decades now even though I haven’t read one of his books in a few years. So that made me extra excited for a new book that wasn’t part of his historical fiction series. This one is squarely set in present day and at first the female protagonist gave me pause. Male writers don’t get women right a lot of the time. They try too hard to be politically correct and make her all ass-kicker all the time. Or they fall on old stereotypes and make her clumsy, weepy and baby crazy. Luckily Rachel is none of these things. Mostly she reads like a person and I’ll be damned if Lehane didn’t even make her have a sense of humor. Most men write women as humorless as a fire in an show more orphanage.

That didn’t make it perfect. As much as we got Rachel’s back story, I just couldn’t connect her symptoms to her trauma. It didn’t make sense. So mom was a narcissistic control freak and wouldn’t tell her who daddy was. Then she threw herself into the horror of Haiti after the big earthquake and blamed herself for the deaths of some young girls. That might have brought on panic attacks, but she was having them before that and I couldn’t find the justification for that or the agoraphobia.

I also admit to some eye-rolling when we got to Brian’s double life. OMG really? Please Lehane, do something different with this well-worn trope. And to some extent he does, but there’s only so much that can be done. A hidden life is a hidden life and what he could be keeping from Rachel is a short list. The fact that he was working on her for so long, trying to get her over her fears. It seemed a bit too orchestrated and thought out. Why did he pick her? That wasn’t entirely clear. Love it must be because there is no other plausible reason.

Some people won’t like the fact that there isn’t a definitive ending. Things just conclude loosely and that was ok with me, but I would have liked a bit more concrete in Brian’s back story. That seemed a bit tacked on, like he was making that up, too.

The writing is as excellent as ever. Yes, there is a dreaded prologue, but it works in an interesting way. It sets the reader up to expect Sebastian to be the one shot, but events don’t turn that way. I love how well Lehane portrays reality. The scene around page 201 where Gattis crashes the party comes to mind. Sure, it’s a bit stagey, but once you realize that it literally is a set up, it’s perfectly pitched. There’s dialog, stage-direction, set dressing and the whole thing plays itself inside your head like a movie. It was pretty great. Also great are these lines -

“...structures that gave the impression of aggressive indifference to both history and its sob sister, nostalgia.” p 155

“In the past week, they’d made love once and it was the carnal version of their distant smiles - as binding as water, as intimate as junk mail.” p 201

Overall it was pretty great though. Tense, interesting and well-written. I won’t call it a slow burn because it really isn’t, but it does take a bit to get galloping. show less