RRP $32.95
Author: Kylie Ladd
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Format: Paperback
Review:
When I read a book, one of the ways I decide how good it is depends on how desperate I am for the kids to finally be in bed so that I can pick up where I left off. After The Fall – the first novel by Australian author Kylie Ladd – had me virtually counting the minutes until bedtime.
After The Fall tells the story of two couples – Luke and Cressida and Kate and Cary – who become social friends. Both couples seem to have the ‘opposites attract’ vibe happening. Luke is charming, good-looking and maybe a little shallow. His wife Cressida is the ‘good girl’ of the piece. A dedicated paediatrician she comes across as a cool beauty in the Grace Kelly mould. Cressida’s more retiring nature is the foil for Luke’s sexual magnetism and her trusting nature allows her to have faith that he will never act on his wandering eye.
Cary works at the same hospital as Cressida, although they were only nodding acquaintances when single. Cary is now married to Kate. Kate is perhaps the most strongly drawn character of the novel. She is vivacious, free-spirited and has an echo of the traditional femme fatale about her. Her marriage to Cary comes off the back of a disastrous relationship as she is drawn to his steadfast nature and obvious adoration of her.
What follows when these two couples become friends is almost a chemical reaction. Luke and Kate are inexorably drawn to one another and start an affair. The novel then tells the story of the unfolding of the affair and the fallout in all directions.
Author Kylie Ladd told Sunny Days, “I have always been fascinated by people but more specifically relationships and how they work - the decisions and compromises and allowances that people make. The concept of fidelity is something that has always fascinated me as well - that it really began as a political tool, to safeguard inheritance and bloodlines, but we've made such a virtue - and, at times, millstone - out of it.”
Kylie’s previous book, Naked (co-edited with Leigh Langtree, Allen & Unwin, 2008), is a collection of first hand (anonymous) accounts from people who have in some way been touched by infidelity – ‘the unrepentant, the guilt-stricken, the bewildered, the forgiven, the abandoned and the damned’, as the book’s blurb says - so there is obviously a point of intersection between the two books and a fascination for the subject. Kylie says, "Something else I was really interested in exploring in both ATF and Naked was what happens after the fall, so to speak. Literature is full of infidelity, but that's usually where the story ends, with Anna Karenina under a train or Emma Bovary poisoning herself or Gatsby dead at the bottom of his pool. But that's not often what happens in real life, and I wanted to think/write about not only why people make the choices they do, but how they live with them afterwards".
After the Fall explores these ideas through the use of six different viewpoints. Each person in the tangled foursome speaks in alternating chapters. Outsider’s impressions are also offered with chapters in the voices of two other friends. It is this structure which drives the narrative at a riveting pace and gives a real sense of suspense to the novel as we push on to discover what each character is thinking. We read a chapter from Kate’s perspective which tells of her illicit liaison with Luke and then we read about the same event from Luke’s standpoint. We are then forced to consider it from a different perspective as Kylie skillfully brings Cary or Cressida’s voice to the fore. In this way the book avoids preaching. Readers are almost like voyeurs as we watch on, and the flaws and foibles of all of the characters make it difficult to clearly delineate ‘right’ from ‘wrong’. What we end up with is a real moral conundrum. Is Cressida’s weakness as ‘wrong’ as Kate’s flirtatiousness? Has Cary’s choice to marry a woman to whom he seems so wrongly matched resulted in the ultimate punishment? Should we follow our heart or our head? Are cultural 'rules' appropriate to everyone? Is sacrifice and compromise more important than self-realisation and being true to your own intrinsic nature?
While reading After the Fall I couldn’t help but think, “This is all going to end badly’, and I was intrigued to find out how it really would end. As I rushed headlong (like the characters) to the painful climax I was thrilled by the way the author avoided cliché resolutions. You might be surprised at the way things turn out – the comeuppance for one character is deliciously wicked and quite funny. For the others there simply seems to be more questions – just like in life, there is no neat tying up of loose ends.
This is a thought-provoking, highly readable and, dare I say it, sexy book. If you like your pop fiction with a moral dilemma you might just fall for it.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/hide comment form