Free Fall

by Jenefer Shute

Whem Kim Roth hears on the kitchen radio that flight FIN 770, bound for London from New York, has crashed off Long Island that evening, she realises that she doesn't know which of the many London-bound flights her mother has just taken. A call to her sister Anna in Johannesburg confirms her worst fears. She is asked to go to the crisis centre in the ballroom of an airport hotel, where five hundred bereaved relatives are told of the plane's three mile descent into the Atlantic. The mechanisms for dealing with tragedy on a massive scale are swiftly put in place; the refrigerated trucks, the grief counsellors, the briefings about the debris field. Rumours of missiles and friendly fire begin to circulate. A fragile comradeship forms among the bereaved. And Kim is forced to re-examine the bitterness and recriminations of her forty-year relationship with her mother, culminating in the final irony of having persuaded her to fly from South Africa to New York. Free Fall is both a riveting novel and a brilliant exploration of what happens when we are drawn into the vortex of a major tragedy.

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 2, 2002

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of this book sounded very interesting to me, but overall I found it a very disappointing read. It could have been a great book, but writing style and lack of character depth stopped it achieving its potential.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great novel by Jenefer Shute, this one about bereavement, tragedy on a grand-scale and the unresolved relationship between a grown woman and her mother.