And Then She Fell
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
And Then She Fell is an unflinching and fiercely witty debut novel of Indigenous life, womanhood and mental health, heralding the arrival of an important and urgent new voice in genre-bending fiction.
Longlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction.
On the surface, Alice is exactly where she should be in life: she's just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her ever-charming husband Steve a white academic whose area of study is conveniently her own Mohawk culture is nothing but supportive; and they've moved into a new home in a wealthy neighbourhood in Toronto, a generous gift from her in-laws.
But Alice could not feel more like an imposter. She isn't bonding with Dawn, a struggle made more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother. Every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from Steve and their picture-perfect neighbours, amongst whom she's the sole Indigenous resident.
Her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.
And then strange things start happening.
Alice finds herself hearing voices she can't explain and speaking with things that should not be talking back to her, all while her neighbours' passive aggression begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve urges her this is all in her head, Alice suspects something is very, very wrong, and that her creation story holds the key to her, and Dawn's, survival... She just has to finish it before it's too late
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Elliott (A Mind Spread Out on the Ground) expertly mines the challenges faced by a Mohawk woman as her world threatens to fall apart in this ambitious offering. New mother Alice has moved from the Six Nations reservation to Toronto with her white husband, Steve, and their newborn, Dawn, but now lives with an "inescapable feeling of hopelessness." As Alice tries to write a "modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee Creation Story" while surrounded by racist neighbors, she feels disconnected from her baby, processes guilt over her mother's recent death, and worries she's just a trophy wife as Steve pursues tenure as an anthropologist studying Mohawk culture ("Everything Indigenous seems to have more value when it's utilized by white folks"). Meanwhile, a voice first heard in childhood through the Disney movie character Pocahontas has begun communicating with Alice once again, as are trees and insects, and she inadvertently discovers a portal to another world. As the reality Alice is clinging to becomes more unstable, she must interpret the creation story for herself to understand the importance of her own life and those of other Mohawk women. This novel is part time travel and part horror, as full of heart as it is bold.
