After the fall

I have been struggling a little with reading the past month or so. Not that I haven't enjoyed the books I've read but my concentration and time levels have been constrained. I decided to see if Charity Norman's novel After The Fall could snap me out of my reading funk.

And boy did it do just that! This is the first book I've read by Charity Norman and so I just hoped for the best and went based upon the dust jacket blurb.

This is the story of Martha & Kit who emigrate to New Zeland with their twin boys and teenage daughter. Another book about emigration but oh so different in tone to my last book by Nick Spalding. The book opens as Martha deals with the immediate aftermath of her young son Finn falling from a balcony in their New Zeland home and the questions asked about the circumstances surrounding the fall.

From the springboard the story jumps back to 18 months earlier and the chain of events leading to the fall right back to the family's decision to leave the UK. We are clearly told something is amiss but the book beautifully leads us through the story.

It was such a gripping book, the first in a long time I've been desperate to get back to. Choosing it over the latest episode of Greys Anatomy and Dr McDreamy is high praise indeed. The characters are well written and the book beautifully atmospheric.

It doesn't over dramatise the events in the book, it isn't so extreme as to be unbelievable and it is sensitively handled. It evoked real tears from me in the closing chapters as it reached it's conclusion. It didn't lead us into an easy tale of heroes and villains but one of shades of light an dark.

A truly wonderful read, I would very thoroughly recommend this as a 5 out of 5 stars