When I read about Susan Johnson’s From Where I Fell in the program for the 2021 Sydney Writers Festival, I was intrigued. How could someone write a novel using only emails?
From Where I Fell, published this year (2021), begins with an emotional private email from an Australian woman to her ex-husband, Chris Woods. The problem is she knows he has a new email address but doesn’t check before sending her message to two addresses she guesses might be his. An American woman with the same (shortened) name receives it and writes back. So begins a correspondence between the two women who are the main characters in the book.
Through their emails, we learn about Pamela Robinson and Chrisanthi Woods and their families, their fears and desires and the mutual support they provide as their lives shift and change over the period of their correspondence.
With its reliance on emails, the book is presented in short eminently readable chunks of text ranging from one line to a rare five pages. I came back to it a few times and found it no trouble to pick up from where I left off. That said, I found it was difficult to put down the witty exchange between these two very different women as they write about the issues faced commonly by women in their middle age years.
Contrary to my expectation that emails reporting events days or weeks after they had occurred would make the action appear more distant, I found the format did not interfere with the immediacy of the unfolding story. I felt as if I knew these women in real life. There was enough tension in their lives and their developing relationship to keep me eager to learn what happened to each of them and if they ever met in person.
If your experiences during COVID 19 restrictions left you craving more social contact with women willing to share with you their experiences, emotions and humour, From Where I Fell will give you great satisfaction and entertainment as well as a few tears.
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| Title: From Where I Fell Author: Susan Johnson Publisher: Allen & Unwin Year: 2021 ISBN: 978-1-76087-655-5 Pages: 338 |