I want to write a thoughtful and well structured review. The kind that speaks on the subtleties and shared experiences that wind throughout the story. But I can't even cry so there's not much else I can really say and someone else has probably done that already; or else someone else has written the exact opposite and then we'll descend into the endless loop of differing opinions and the rest. This was the hardest book I have read in a while. Arriving late here, apologies, but so glad I did. A joy absolute joy.This review will tell you little about the story, that is special and rich and immersive and so diligently constructed you can almost hear the words clicking to place. There is suspense, darkness, difficult moments and human kindness and there's hope too. This is a humane book, a loving book, a book that is about walking in the moccasins of our fellow man, a troubled and sick young man called Matthew Homes.Matt is not well. Matt is really struggling and we experience this poignant and traumatic struggle from the inside out. Matt has schizophrenia, Matt lost his brother in a tragic accident when he was so small he cannot delineate between what is real in his memories and what is not. His illness doesn't help, his rapacious, slithering snake of an illness, a disease that shares the same mind he does. The paranoia is captured superbly, the tissue-thin barrier between what is real and what is not is shown to us live, the way real-events inspire the gyre of the mental fugue and the way those terrifying imaginative flights of fancy then propel behaviour back in the real-world. Thought sick and not, experience real or not, bouncing off each other to build an individual tower of madness all Matt's own. This is also a story of how some events are so traumatic the grief they create never eases so a normal life can never resume, grief so powerful it leaves those it hits so hard broken they cannot be rebuilt.Read this book to see how first person narrative is done, it is quite literally an out of body experience. Matt is strange, dislikeable and at the same time deeply, deeply caring. He is misunderstood, a loner who plunges into savage addictions (nicotine, marijuna) pretty early on to help no doubt ease the scratching-tugging-biting intensity of his illness. In many places this fiction reads like biography, actually autobiography. Fiction at it's very best, taking us to new worlds and galaxies all stuffed claustrophobically inside the tight skull of another being, be it the character we're reading or the quiet diligence of the author creating that world. Fiction that does exactly what Steven Pinker lauds it for, building on the argument from philosopher Peter Singer about the importance of "The Expanding Circle" as a strong explainer of the civilising processes that have under-pinned the rise of free, inclusive societies. The development of literacy across the civilised world through the ready availability of the printed word changed our cultural milieu, enabled us to push our experience outside our own, to quite literally live other people's lives from the inside out. This step enables us to understand other's predicament from a different perspective giving us experiences of empathy and sympathy and of wanting to help. Slowly, surely this acid of inclusivity and equality burn their way through the dark and wild prejudices (see school based blog here on the roots of prejudice) of the human animal and The Shock of the Fall is part of the expansion of that process into the minds of the seriously mentally ill. Dismissing such people crazy and mad and just moving on is less possible after reading this book. Fiction like this breaks down walls more effectively than any hammer, the virtual walls people erect between themselves. This kind of fiction asks us to put away our prejudices and spend time in other's heads and the world is different, more complex, more understandable as a result. Nathan Filer has done such a superb job here. Beautiful story, never trumping storying over reality, we are allowed to hold our sense of suspended disbelief right to the end, but the author leaves us with enough threads of hope to imagine a better future for Matt might be possible.***** Five stars
What do You think about De Schok Van De Val (2013)?
I liked it, except from the end. It was sometimes boring. I wouldn't recommend reading it.
—miriam9810
Sad tale about a mentally ill teenager trying to come to terms with his brothers death.
—Kate
Meh - not convinced. Character didn't work for me, and story didn't grip me...
—hmlikjtg65
An absolutely amazing portrait of mental illness. Just incredible. Read it.
—AndreaStar
