The Fall of Lisa Bellow

An insightful and sometimes uncanny story about relationships, trauma, and the darkest corners of our secret selves.

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for rape.)

There were still little green ribbons covering Lisa’s locker, but every morning some would have fallen down overnight, scattered like tiny leaves, and she would pick them up and toss them into the bottom of her own locker. How long would they let that locker, 64C, sit there, unused? How long did missing-person ribbons stay up? Was there an expiration date, some point where they officially became irrelevant, a day when the fall of Lisa Bellow became the winter of someone else, as Evan had predicted from the show more start?

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“You’re popular,” Jules said. “I can’t believe it. Of all of us, I didn’t think it would be you first.”

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Maybe they were all bitches, Claire thought. Maybe that was all there was to be in eighth grade. Maybe you didn’t have any choice. Maybe your only choice was figuring out what kind of bitch you wanted to be.

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One crisp October afternoon, thirteen-year-old Meredith Oliver stops by the Deli Barn on the way home from school, to treat herself to a root beer soda for a job well done on her algebra test. Ahead of her in line stands her arch nemesis, Parkway North Middle School's resident Mean Girl, Lisa Bellow. Her presence so unnerves Meredith that she almost turned tail and ran - that is, until Lisa caught her eye through the door. She couldn't show Lisa any weakness, not with so much at stake.

As the sandwich farmer* is taking Lisa's order (overly complicated, natch), a masked man strides in and robs the cashier at gunpoint. He forces Meredith and Lisa to lay down on the sticky floor of the restaurant while he walks the cashier to the back of the store, in search of a safe that doesn't exist. When he comes back - alone - he forces Lisa to her feet and leaves with her. Traumatized, Meredith stays on the floor for another eleven minutes ("eleven glorious minutes"), until another customer walks in and find her. Even then, it takes a group of paramedics and "a needle full of Thorazine to peel her from her cherished spot."

The Fall of Lisa Bellow is a strange and wonderful book. It's about how Meredith copes with the trauma of the robbery and kidnapping, yes; but hers is not the only trauma we bear witness to. Meredith's mother, Claire; her seventeen-year-old brother Ethan; Lisa's mother Colleen; and Lisa's friends Becca, Abby, and Amanda - all of them are working through their own "stuff," not all of it related to Lisa's disappearance. Yet the ripples of her kidnapping and likely murder reverberate through all their lives.

Above all else, though, this is a story about relationships: between parents and children; friends and enemies; in-groups and out-groups. Perabo's writing is keen and insightful, often times cuttingly so: I found that both the child and the adult in me could relate to Meredith and Claire's inner monologues like whoah. When Meredith laments that

"It had been all downhill since fifth grade. Sometimes she looked back on that golden year and felt a pang of nostalgia so keenly that she thought she might actually die."

my stomach actually twisted in sympathy and recognition, albeit for slightly different reasons. (My school district's lines were redrawn in the summer between fifth and sixth grade, and I had to finish out my elementary education at a different school than my friends. I also got glasses, braces, and my period that year. It was literal hell, and nothing was the same after.)

Perabo isn't afraid to explore the darker, uglier corners of our secret selves, and the result is often uncomfortable - but also deeply satisfying. When Claire admitted to Mark that she deliberately hurt Evan's bully when she found him sitting in her chair - "Rewind, she thought. Rewind. She actually almost prayed this word: rewind." - I nearly squealed with shared horror and regret. Like, the panic was palpable, a thing I could hold in my hand and caress.

While the first half of the story feels like a contemporary, firmly rooted in reality, there's a weird, M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist halfway through that cleaves the story in two. You're left trying to distinguish reality from fantasy. Normally, this wondering can come to dominate a story (this isn't a complaint, just an observation), yet this isn't the case with The Fall of Lisa Bellow: Perabo's writing is so masterful that you still see the forest for the trees. It's the little details, not to mention the painfully believable dialogue, that make this story sing - and scream.

That said, I wasn't completely satisfied with the resolution, which felt a little rushed and ... maybe a bit of a bait and switch?

Nevertheless, I'd definitely read it again, if given a do-over: Perabo's psychological insights are 110% worth it.

* I love this term so much, I just had to sneak it into the review. No regrets.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2017/03/15/the-fall-of-lisa-bellow-by-susan-perabo/ show less

The Fall of Lisa Bellow by Susan Perabo is a highly recommended complex family drama about survivor's guilt.

Meredith Oliver is thirteen and in the eighth grade. She and her friends watch and discuss the popular mean girls at their school, including Lisa Bellows, whose locker is next to Meredith's. It is a struggle for anyone to get through the day when in middle school. Meredith's family is still recovering from the horrible accident her adored older brother had when playing baseball. Now he's essentially blind in one eye. All Meredith wants to do is get through this day in October and stop to get a root beer at the Deli Barn after school.

When Meredith gets to the Deli Barn, she sees that Lisa Bellows is already there, so she has to show more wait for Lisa to order her two sandwiches. Suddenly a masked gun man enters the sandwich shop. He orders both girls to get on the floor and robs the place. The two girls cower together on the floor, alternately giving each other support. Before the gun man leaves he tells Lisa to get up and come with him. Meredith remains on the floor, completely paralyzed with fear, until a customer comes in, a janitor at her school, and calls the police. Meredith is traumatized, trying to deal with witnessing the kidnapping, being the girl left behind, and processing all her feeling about the event.

The narrative has chapters alternating between two characters, following the thoughts and emotions of Meredith and Claire Oliver, her mother. While Meredith is trying to understand why she was the one left behind and find some answers, if only in her head. Claire is relieved her daughter was not taken, but struggles with confronting her inability to protect her children or even comfort them.

The Fall of Lisa Bellow is a very well-written book and was compelling enough that, staying up a bit too late, I read it in one sitting. I simply had to find out what happened. Perabo manages to capture and realistically portray the inner voice and struggles of both a thirteen-year old girl and her mother. This is a feat in itself. Both Meredith and Claire are strong characters who are dealing with their unspeakable mental anguish in their own way. They are also both well developed characters and strikingly realistic - neither of them are particularly likable. The depiction of Meredith struggling with survivor's guilt and trying to process what happened is especially effective.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Simon & Schuster.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/03/the-fall-of-lisa-bellow.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1939121206 show less

The Short of It:

A tense, finely orchestrated tale of what happens to a person when guilt works its way through you from the inside out.

The Rest of It:

Everyone has known a “Lisa Bellow” in their lifetime. Lisa is that pretty girl who can wear a pair of ugly shoes and somehow make them fashionable. She’s the girl who every other girl strives to be and she knows it. She can cut you down with a look or a couple of words and no matter how confident you are, the hurt takes its toll.

This is the story of Lisa and Meredith, victims of a sandwich shop robbery. Both, told to hit the floor. Both, scared for their lives. Only one taken as a hostage. As Lisa is forced to leave with the robber, Meredith stays on the ground, fearful for her life show more but is that the only reason she chooses to remain there?

The Fall of Lisa Bellow was a perfect read for me. It had everything I like in a book and then that human nature thing kicked in and I could not put it down. I kept asking myself, “Where is Lisa? Is she alive? Is it just a set-up? Where in God’s name can she be?” I mean, this story really worked my brain but in a totally good way.

Meredith, is also a victim. She’s the one left behind and the one who bears the weight of Lisa’s disappearance and it’s heartbreaking. HEARTBREAKING, I tell you! Her memory of the event is not reliable and she questions what would have happened if she had done something differently. Meredith’s mother is protective of her but also feels a sense of guilt as Lisa’s mom continually makes contact with them and with Lisa’s friends, all in a desperate attempt to keep Lisa in her life.

This author gets into each character’s head and really stirs things up. I’m talking childhood memories, hateful feelings, jealousy and spite and no matter how shocking some of it is, it’s not all that shocking given the circumstances. I could relate to every single person in this story and that’s rare. My heart ached for so many of these characters.

You know how hard it is to turn the last page of a novel you love? I think I read the last page at least three times. Get yourself a copy.

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In The Fall of Lisa Bellow a young girl, Lisa, is abducted from a local sandwich shop, another, Meredith, is left behind. What follows is not the standard suspense book about the search for a missing teen, but an examination of the life of a suburban family and in particular, that of the girl who remains.

Mark and Claire Oliver are dentists. They have consciously chosen careers and a life that will offer them the least amount of inconvenience and worry. Son Evan’s tragic accident on the baseball field has marred their picture-perfect life. Now they must deal with daughter Meredith’s terrifying experience. It threatens to topple their happy home. This is the main focus of the novel.

Having taught middle school English, when it comes to show more the behaviors of Lisa, Meredith and their friends, I can say Ms. Perabo knows her subject. In addition, the description of the middle school cliques made me inwardly cringe as I remember my own days, suffering through lunch hour, gym class, and those hours when I wasn’t safely cocooned in my room, away from the scrutiny of those deemed more popular than I. And as reprehensible as Claire Oliver’s reactions may be towards Evan’s preschool bullying and Meredith’s unpopularity, I as a mother understand.

The Fall of Lisa Bellow is an excellently crafted and sensitive book that examines the human emotions and reactions to a tragedy and its far-reaching effects. show less

Though wonderfully written, The Fall of Lisa Bellow is not what I expected it to be. That isn't to say that it isn't a good read, -- it most definitely is -- but because it was not as I had envisioned it, it took me much longer to get through the book than I had anticipated.

After school one day, thirteen-year-old Meredith Oliver decides she is in dire need of a large root beer as a reward to herself for completing her test in Algebra II. While there, she encounters Lisa Bellow, a popular girl she's grown up with and cannot stand. Any interaction that might have occurred between the two is cut short when an armed and masked man comes into the sandwich shop to rob it. Then, as an afterthought, he kidnaps Lisa, leaving Meredith and her show more family to deal with the trauma.

The Oliver family is horrible, though. Possessing attitudes that are largely and entirely focused on themselves, the main characters from whose perspective we read, Meredith and her mother, Claire, are absolutely unlovable. While not on the level of Gone Girl bad, they do serve as stark reminders of how low humans can sink in their day to day interactions. I do feel that Perabo fairly accurately portrayed the mind of a thirteen-year-old girl, at least, from the mindset of what those my age may have experienced in school. I can't really speak for today's children, as, contrary to the belief of our own parents, that things never change, we all know they do. In that regard, the slut-shaming was almost unbearable. It seemed the only reason Meredith had to dislike Lisa was her good looks and poor attitude, to which she responded by constantly referring to her in derogatory terms. Personally, I cannot recall referring to girls in my eighth grade class as sluts: in fact, I don't even remember which girls were popular and pretty.

Given that a young girl has been kidnapped, as a reader, you might expect the story to also focus a bit on finding said victim. Instead, it takes a unique approach by focusing not on the victim and her family, but rather the girl that was not kidnapped and her own, which is far more dysfunctional than it might seem. Some of that can be attributed to the two tragedies they've faced back to back, while the rest likely has to do with how the characters simply are. The plot follows Meredith's changes through what she has experienced, providing readers with a coming-of-age story, rather than something that is suspenseful. There's really not a whole to guess, and even as the book comes to a conclusion, there are questions that are left unanswered, issues that are unaddressed, and ultimately, bridges that are not mended.

The Fall of Lisa Bellow is beautiful, even if it isn't really much of a suspense. If you're looking for something on the more tame side of abduction tales, it fits that bill. I would like to thank NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and the author for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. show less

When Meredith Oliver is the lucky girl left behind after a robber abducts her eighth grade classmate Lisa Bellow, she is not the only one traumatized. The Fall of Lisa Bellow by Susan Perabo, looks at the aftereffects of trauma on Meredith and her family. She is the lucky one. Lisa Bellow is gone and her mother, Coleen, and her school friends are also struggling with their grief. The primary focus, though, is on Meredith and her mother Claire.

It’s not that the Oliver family didn’t have enough to deal with. Earlier that year, Evan, Meredith’s beloved older brother was blinded in one eye by an errant baseball, a simple accident with no one to blame. Evan did not just lose vision in one eye, he lost his possible baseball career, show more scholarships to college and the easy athletic primacy he enjoyed. Essentially, he lost the identity he had known and was struggling to find a new one for himself.

Claire and Mark Oliver seem to have the perfect marriage, so long as you don’t examine it closely. But trauma makes you examine everything and the flaws that were bearable become less so. Meanwhile, Meredith is drawn to Lisa’s circle of friends, mean girls who had no time for her before. She is also talking to Lisa. She knows what happened and is happening to Lisa with the kidnapper, that Lisa is being comforted by a little dog named Annie, that Lisa is being raped though it’s happening out of Meredith’s sight, she is also seeing what would happen if the kidnapper had chosen both of them. We know and Meredith’s parents know she needs help, but what kind and how?

The Fall of Lisa Bellow is an effective family drama, an exploration of the silences and absences of family life, the sudden chasms that erupt between people who love each other. It is also a book about family love, deep and abiding, even violent and superhuman. Claire loves her children fiercely, even when they are fighting her. There is a shocking scene where she exacts petty revenge against a child who bullies her son–and she’s not sorry. She will never be sorry. She understands Coleen Bellow’s anger and pain, even if she feels glad it’s not her pain.

This is a compulsive read that takes us from the first day of school until Christmas vacation, the Fall of Lisa Bellow, the Fall that fractures a family and offers hope that they will knit back together. When Perabo writes about the compulsive power of maternal love, she is at her most poetic and lyrical. This is the best writing in the book.

There is a troublesome suggestion when Meredith is imagining that the abductor has sex with Lisa, that it isn’t exactly rape, defining rape as someone jumping out of the bushes and tearing your clothes off. I don’t know how being abducted at gunpoint differs from jumping out of a bush, but Meredith is in eighth grade and clearly ill-informed about sex and rape and the difference between them. She thinks it must be unpleasant but not horrible. I am sure the author knows better, that sex and rape are not on the same spectrum, that rape is violence–about power, not sex. However, this never gets corrected. It would be one thing if there is any corrective to this idea, but there is not. Meredith is young, so are her friends, and she’s not talking to her family.

I would not recommend this book to young people without some serious discussion of this fallacy because it really sucks. The book is interesting and I cared about the people, but just because an eighth grade girl is likely to have internalized rape culture to the degree that she thinks an adult kidnapper forcing an eighth-grader to have sex is not exactly rape does not mean it should stand without correction. Yes, it’s very likely girls that age may think that. Someone needs to set it straight in the book. Uncorrected, uncontradicted, it’s dangerous and irresponsible.

The Fall of Lisa Bellow will be released March 14th. I was provided an e-galley for review by the publisher through NetGalley.

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2017/02/23/9781476761466/ show less

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

To be clear right away, Susan Perabo's The Fall of Lisa Bellow is not a crime thriller, despite its salacious premise of a 13-year-old girl who is kidnapped at a convenience store one random day for mysterious reasons; and fans of that genre who are expecting one will be profoundly disappointed by this book, which is why I warn you right off the bat. (Just for one big example, we never do learn the fate of the kidnapped girl, which will make fans of whodunits throw this book across the room in anger by the end. Buyer beware.) What this book show more actually is, then, is a smart and deep character study about all the people who were incidentally affected by this crime in the small suburban community where they live; chiefly fellow 13-year-old Meredith Oliver, who was also at the convenience store during the botched robbery, and comes to realize that the reason Lisa was taken hostage and not her was precisely because of the better looks and more expensive clothes that made Lisa a bullying "Mean Girl" who Meredith hated, an emotionally complex realization that she then grapples with to various levels of success and failure over the next year. This in turn then affects her mother, Claire, already struggling with the normal travails of Meredith becoming a teenager that year, questioning her identity as a parent and wife as she grows from middle-age into a "woman of a certain age;" and meanwhile there is older brother Evan, who has recently suffered through a trauma in his own right (an eye-socket baseball injury that has left him semi-blind, his theoretical future career as a pro player now over), and whose own recovery is compared regularly to the ever-widening rabbithole of despair that Meredith finds herself falling into as the months continue.

It's a pretty great domestic drama as far as domestic dramas go, although that comes with the usual caveat that you need to be in the same position as the protagonist (a middle-class, middle-aged, suburban mom, that is) to enjoy this book at its fullest; as someone who's the diametric opposite of that, Claire's hand-wringing over being a good parent, and her struggles to be her own unique person within a stultifying suburban environment, largely went over my head, a specific weakness of author Perabo herself that I didn't experience in, say, the similarly set but much better Little Children by Tom Perrotta. But that said, there are some wonderfully nasty little moments thrown in here and there as well, a reflection of this short-story veteran and Pushcart winner's revered status among fans of edgy academic material, that keep things lively no matter what kind of reader you are. (I especially loved dentist Claire's flashback experience with causing deliberate pain to a seven-year-old patient she had discovered had been bullying her daughter at school, and the way she simply shrugs off the offended horror of her goodie-good husband when she admits it to him, a nice shorthand method for getting across just how far Claire will go as a mother to protect her children.) Not a book I would've sought out on my own, but one I'm glad that Simon & Schuster sent my way, this is perfect reading material for those who are usually force-fed an unending sludge pile of "chick-lit" nonsense by the mainstream media, and are desperately on the lookout for something darker and meatier.

Out of 10: 8.2, or 9.2 for fans of domestic dramas show less