Play Book Tag discussion

I hardly know where to start a review of The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin. Should I talk about the beautiful writing, what it seems like and what it is, the use of nature, art and artists, the fluidity of memory, family dynamics, or permanence?

Danielle McLaughlin really knows how to write, she captures her characters in multi-faceted light and the best side of them is not always the one which is revealed. Nessa, the main character is working to curate for a museum an artist's, Robert Locke's studio and famous sculpture:

"The Chalk Sculpture stood in the middle of the room. It had achieved notoriety some years before when it came to be regarded as embodying fertility powers. The public had sought it out in their hundreds; they came in a spirit of supplication, less to marvel at what critics had described as the piece’s “gritty transcendence,” its alien, unsettling beauty, than to plead their case."

The Art of Falling, with its title, its cover, its sense of impending doom, a cheating husband, a strange possible stalker, almost seems as if it could be a psychological thriller, but will it go there is that what it is?

Nessa, who works for an art museum and has degrees in Art History, admits to not finding comfort in nature, yet repeatedly in her writing McLaughlin pulls our attention to the nature in the world around us:

Nessa paid for the groceries and hurried out to her car. As she drove back to the city, even the ordinary fields were beautiful, with yellow bursts of furze in the thick green ditches and everything overrunning its boundary, the grasses on the shoulder toppling long and heavy onto the roads. To the other side was the sea, gray and solidly forbidding, none of the shallow turquoise tomfoolery that passed for sea elsewhere.

We come to the provenance of art, the truth of our memories, the permanence family, art, nature and memory. How reliable are any of these?

This is for the most part a beautifully crafted book, but for me the drawing to conclusion, felt a bit wobbly, unhinged, like crossing the i instead of dotting it and that brought my rating down just a notch.

But perhaps, I need to let it sit and molder and my memory of it will shift, change or perhaps fall apart.