CarolG's Reviews > And Then She Fell

Alice is an indigenous woman living in a posh Toronto neighborhood with her husband Steve, a white man, and she's recently given birth to a baby girl named Dawn. Alice isn't connecting with her daughter, feels out of place in the neighbourhood and is suspicious of everyone. Her goal is to write a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story. I looked it up and apparently Haudenosaunee means “people who build a house”. The name refers to a confederation or alliance among six Native American nations, more commonly known as the Iroquois Confederacy.

I had a tough time reading this book and was tempted to give up more than once. By the time I got past 50% I decided I might as well continue until the end but I skimmed a lot and only read it in short bursts. At around 80% I felt like I'd accidentally picked up the wrong book as the characters were totally different. I eventually figured out what was going on but it was very confusing especially when the narration switched from first person to second person to third person from paragraph to paragraph. I had no idea who was talking half the time. As you'll gather from reading the blurb and other reviews the story follows Alice's descent into madness and the supernatural and it just wasn't for me. I'm definitely the outlier here so I recommend you check out some of the other reviews if you're interested in reading this. I keep wondering what I missed when I see all the 5 star reviews.

Parts of the first half were reminiscent of The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar, overly descriptive of the after-effects of childbirth. Do women really want to see what their vagina looks like after giving birth. Shudder.

TW: Post-partum depression, mental illness, racism.

My thanks to Penguin Random House Canada via Netgalley for the opportunity to read an ARC of this novel. All opinions expressed are my own.
Published: September 26, 2023