Falling

by Elizabeth Baines

Then one year she started falling ...

5 pages, ebook

About the author

Novelist, short story writer and playwright. Latest novel ASTRAL TRAVEL, published by Salt. Also available from Salt: novels TOO MANY MAGPIES and THE BIRTH MACHINE, and two collections of stories, USED TO BE and BALANCING ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD.

Praise for Elizabeth's work:

'Intricately beautiful and abruptly brutal ... I greedily consumed every paragraph, and yearned for more free time when I had to put the book down to do something inconsequential like work or sleep ... I can't remember the last time a work of fiction aroused such sympathy and indignant anger in me ... one of the most memorable and brilliant books I've read this year' - Bookmunch on Astral Travel.

'It'll blow you away when you least expect it' - Charlie Place, The Worm Hole on Used to Be.

'Moving and compelling' - Sarah Salway on Too Many Magpies

'Quite swept me off my feet' - Dovegreyreader on Balancing on the Edge of the World

'A gripping story, a pithy book' - Katy Campbell on The Birth Machine

Reviews

[Josephine Johannes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would recommend this short story because it is intriguing and is a story you can not stop reading. More specifically, I would recommend this story to people who like cliffhangers and people who are in for a more complex read. Although the story may be complex in the storyline, at the end, the story ends with a cliffhanger, which is why I could not stop reading. The story is about a main character who begins to fall more often, and the author gives a backstory that somehow relates to each fall.

The story starts with, “Then one year she started falling” which caught my attention. The first sentence could be perceived as the main character literally falling or maybe a metaphorical meaning such as falling for someone, which makes the story even more interesting. It was written from a third person point of view which allows the reader to “peer” into the character’s world. Not only did the main character go through some obstacles, but there is also a plot twist at the end of the story. The diction of the story is standard, so it was easy to understand what was going on in the story.

I think that some people could find this short story relatable because there are some events where the main character could have been put into the same situation as the reader. The short story could also represent the challenge to distinguish between reality and dreaming, and also how some painful events are able to bring one back to reality.

[Cath Go · Rating 4 out of 5]

We sometimes don't know if we're dreaming or not. Whether it's real or not. Sometimes we got to choose between fantasy and reality, some indulge to fantasy because its much more tolerable than reality. However, we can't just give up with reality because it will always be better.