Free Fall
Ratings3
Average rating2.7
15
Ratings3
Average rating2.7
Sammy Mountjoy, artist, rises from poverty and an obscure birth to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War Two, he is taken as a prisoner-of-war, threatened with torture, then locked in a cell of total darkness to wait. He emerges from his cell transfigured from his ordeal, and begins to realise what man can be and what he has gradually made of himself through his own choices. But did those accumulated choices also begin to deprive him of his free will.
Reviews with the most likes.
It's difficult for me to completely size up a book when the intent of the writer is unknown. I've only read one other book from Mr. Golding (Lord of the Flies, of course) and that was written in an entirely different style from Free Fall, so I couldn't help but be SLIGHTLY suspicious of some pretentious play going on here. Regardless, I am grateful for having a book like this in my collection. For one, it had one of the best opening paragraphs I've ever read. Another is that you end up a different person upon finishing it. The waterfall of curiosity, honesty and passion was rendered with such grace that it is almost unparalleled by any piece of literature I've come across. My copy of this book has been marked with underlines and scribbles and that is how I know that it did its job well. At one point I imagined what I was reading to be an autobiographical account, as it all sounded like unfiltered truth coming from the writer himself. The way the words were thrown in and around and how the conventions of grammar were ignored presented this book as a stream of consciousness that can also serve as a “literary cassette” for the suffering romantic, something to fall back to when you're having one of those days.
