The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer

I really appreciate how honest and real this novel was. There wasn’t any melodramatics, there wasn’t even much of a plot. It was fragments of Matthew’s life, from the untold “fall”, to the development of his schizophrenia, to his life in the psychiatric ward. I especially like how Filer framed it as Matthew typing on the ward’s computer (or his personal typewriter back in his flat which you could tell with the font changing), so most of the “chapters” and memories told by Matthew retroactively have this seamless transition of being completely immersed into the past, to the reference to video games of Matthew’s childhood, the Scout Hall where his brother Simon had his birthday party with all the snacks (this comes back later on and almost made me cry), all the while keeping itself grounded in the reality: Matthew is a schizophrenic, but I find him incredibly reliable.

The interactions are so well done. The ward staff is deliberately grey, but that’s people, right? They care for Matthew but occasionally misread his expressions as malicious. He doesn’t mean it, we know he doesn’t, and we cannot exactly blame others for not knowing. It’s nice that the novel, and Matt for that extension, doesn’t point any fingers. It’s telling events as it were. And I quite like that. It’s both a character study, a coming-of-age story, and a remarkable novel that plays with visual and text placements. I know it might seem little, but I always love novels that play with the placements of text or the manipulation of them. From the font change, to the letter writing, to drawings from Matthew, when the ink ribbon of the typewriter fading out, to some words breaking apart like a stream of consciousness poem. I’m a simple person, I see that and I can’t help but stare at the page.

Anyways, this was a great novel. I highly recommend it.