Susan Johnson - From Where I Fell (2021)
Book Review
Susan Johnson is an Australian author who has been publishing books since the 1990s. This is the first book of hers that I've read. My partner bought the book during one of the earlier lockdowns for something to read during iso. She read it in a day, and has been on me to read it for the last month or so.
I also read the whole book in a day. From Where I Fell is a an epistolary novel, comprised entirely of back and forth emails between Pamela - a Sydney based newly single mother of three French-Australian boys - and Chris, an upstate New York based university admissions officer. Pamela accidentally emails Chris when she was trying to reach out to her ex-husband and apologise for the way she left him, and messed up his email address and reached our other main character instead.
Both of the women are infuriating and loveable in their own idiosyncratic ways. Pamela has a tendency to go on (and on, and on, and on...) about herself and her hardships, and Chris is constantly checking her and reminding her that the whole world doesn't revolve around her. After a small hiccup where Pam really offends Chris, the two women open up to each other and tell each other their deepest secrets.
I didn't love this book. Pam being inside her own head for so much of the book, while completely understandable, did not make for a particularly compelling character. I spent the first 2/3 of the book just asking why Chris would even bother replying to this person who never asks about her, is so unobservant, and completely self indulged. A lot of the early emails attributed to Pam is overly flowery and borders on purple prose, and Chris doesn't react to it in the way any real person would. For much of the book, Chris feels like a mix of a cardboard cut out and a mirror. She mostly serves only as "the angel on the shoulder" of her email compatriot, giving her worldly life advice she's picked up from God-knows-where, and when she's not fulfilling this role she bounces Pam's own thoughts and feelings back at her, with not much in the way of actual engagement.
There are some really nice quotes throughout the book, though, two of which I've attached below.
Waiting for death is like waiting for birth. You know it's soon, you just don't know when.
We miss you like a dream which left our eyes before we could remember.
At the end of the day, I feel like I'm just not the target audience for this book, but I have a fair bit of trouble working out who is the intended reader. The writing is pretty good for the most part, but does border on flowery sometimes. The characters are pretty lacking, but I feel like that's more a function of the epistolary nature of the book, than any particular lack in the author. I usually judge my enjoyment on the book based on how much I think about what might happen to the characters post-ending, but I just didn't really care for these two.
Rating: 43.