Breaking Her Fall

Rating:
Summary: Goodwin eclipses his wonderful "The Blood of Paradise"....
Review: "Breaking Her Fall" - the title says what we all feel about our daughters; about the peculiar loss of them as they enter the teenage years, the years in which their ability to be a person in their own right is eclipsed by the pressures of a society gone mad in depicting the sexuality of a "woman" as young as 14. Tucker's daughter Kat, at 14, is in the throes of this hormonal madness, and he doesn't even know it. Tucker's an oddity, a father who has won primary custody of daughter and son when his former wife moved up the social ladder and mostly out of their lives.

It's hard not to like Tucker, who's a self-made man, with a love for music and a need to be there for his children. It is with some trepidation that we watch him turn to rage when Kat is involved in a sex scandal at the home of a boy he knows nothing about. In slow motion, his rage leads to injury and disfigurement of the boy, and incarceration and trial. But his trials are many, both in trying to understand and protect his daughter, keep his younger son from fear, his love for his best friend's wife at bay, and himself from going mad.

The strain of parenting adolescents in this mixed up world is brought to the fore in Kat's tale, and although it is written in first person from Tucker's point of view, there is no doubt that author Stephen Goodwin was able to get inside the heads of all his main characters...from children Kat and Will to the amazing Lilly, from Trish, his ex-wife who attempts to preserve her motherhood from the tragedy, to the teenaged Jed Vandenberg, with a permanent scar from a heated misunderstanding. Goodwin makes them all come alive on the page. And he does more, something more, that, for me, brings the book to life - he brings in the ordinary; talks about the what the notes on his refrigerator say, talks about the demise of his marriage, has a remarkable reaction (like many of us) to the first time he hears the beautiful songs of the posthumous Eva Cassidy CD, "Songbird". ..."as I danced with my daughter, her eyes searching mine, the two of us just floating, I felt something give way inside of me....as though all our old love, every particle of it, had been restored to us by the music we were hearing."

As my own daughter grew up, I remember times of anger and despair that seemed like an out of body experience, and so it is with Tucker... in describing his violent reaction to young Jed Vandenburg, at a time where he had no idea where his 14-year old daughter was and if she was all right..."I can remember how the air seemed to stiffen and tighten, how every word and tiny gesture took on a huge significance, and how the hair on the back of my neck suddenly bristled".

Goodwin is a writer of style and grace, his book a revelation and a scare for parents and adolescents, a book that will stay with you longer than the details of the story itself.

A definite must read!


Rating:
Summary: Nice to get a father's perspective
Review: After a rough summer night -- which I'm sure you've all read about now -- a father and daughter retreat into their separate worlds of hurt, ostracized and alone, and the bulk of the novel describes how they find their way back to each other. Goodwin's prose is spare, genuine and convincing, much like Richard Ford's, his characters fallible and convincing. No great truths are revealed, no envelopes stretched, but Goodwin's is an engaging and satisfying story.

Rating:
Summary: I loved this book
Review: As a writer, and avid reader, my critique criteria are simple: I want an engaging story (and that includes well-developed characters) and strong writing. Breaking Her Fall has both. I give extra stars when I don't want the book to end, when I feel true pleasure in the experience of losing myself in a story, and that's how I felt while reading this book.

I loved the plot, characterizations, pacing, and dialogue. I particularly enjoyed the tender, emotional moments between the protagonist and his children, a man trying to be a good father, who fails but keeps trying, and ultimately is successful. The relationships portrayed in the story felt authentic, very human.

My critiques are nitpicky: I occasionally was pulled out of the drama by the narrator's references to writing the story after the fact, now that he was looking back on these events. Too many times, the character, Tucker, spoke directly to the reader and apologized for using "cheesy" language to describe things. This worked for a while, but it eventually sounded too much like the author was stepping in to apologize for not being able to write as well as he wanted to. And this was unnecessary because Goodwin is a wonderful writer.

Rating:
Summary: Shocking!
Review: From the moment I picked up this book I couldn't put it down. The book begins with the shocking account of how the author's 14-year-old daughter was invited to a party where older boys gave her drinks and then took advantage of her, ending in oral sex with a whole parade of boys. The book is disturbing because these boys were the "nice guys" in the community, from good families. It made me fear for my own children, and it made me angry, because everyone seemed to excuse the boys' behavior as "kids being kids", and they never faced any consequences. Read this book if you have children, or if you want to know what issues today's teens and their parents are facing.

Rating:
Summary: Nice to get a father's perspective
Review: I liked this book immensely. As a woman, I like getting into into a man's head, and Stephen Goodwin's hero, Tucker Jones, is compelling and believable. I was rooting for Tucker and his children throughout. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Clinton-Lewinsky, upscale D.C . setting.

And Tucker's relationship with Lily is spot on believable.

My only problem with Tucker is that he never seems properly cognizant of the fact that, because of his actions, a boy lost his eye. Tucker obsesses about a lot of things, but the attention he pays to Jed's lost eye is cursory at best. (And Jed doesn't seem adversely affected by the fact that he lost an eye. He still is the star of his soccer team; is this normal?) I kept excusing the slim treatment of Jed's injury as denial on Tucker's part, but since the novel is over 400 pages anyway, I think Goodwin could have devoted a couple more paragraphs to Tucker's presumed remorse about it.

One more thing - Tucker tells us that Lily's baby Julia died on April 19, 1987, a work day in the novel. April 19, 1987 was, however, Easter Sunday. I know because my oldest child was born on Saturday, April 18, 1987, the day before. A tiny careless error that momentarily pulled me out of Tucker's world.

Rating:
Summary: It's about honesty and forgiveness
Review: I won't go over the plot of the book as most reviewers have but rather the feelings of the book which is what hooked me. At first rage is the consuming emotion. What parent wouldn't be so angry that they don't think but just react. Then as the story goes on, all the charactors have to face themselves and open up to each other. I feel that behind every closed door there are families that are dealing with these emotions. They may not be the same situations but the emotions are the same. The charactors seemed so real and honest, and often not very likeable, but they all seemed to be trying to get to each other. I agree with many readers that Tucker should not have had the affair with Lily, but as a result of the affair and his overwhelming love for her, he was finally able to forgive Trish for leaving him--because he could now understand her overwhelming emotions when she left him. Human emotions can overtake reason, and that happens in this book often. I loved the charactors and the story line. They were so painfully human. Thank you Stephen Goodwin.

Rating:
Summary: Shocking!
Review: Rapid-fire, Goodwin gets right to the issue, and the pace continues. He captures the struggles of parents and adolescents to communicate and grow, but it's more. It's a view into the heart of one man who thought he had it all together.

Goodwin captures a time and place--Washington, DC, yay!!--and his dialogue is spot-on. Most important, he makes you care for everyone, with all their flaws and stupid choices.

I'm a non-fiction published author and I'm working on a novel. Would love to accomplish what Goodwin has--a work you don't want to put down.

Rating:
Summary: A father ¿ daughter relationship caught on the brink
Review: The year is 1998 and the Clinton sex scandals are plaguing the White House; all over the country people are talking and passing judgment on the President. This unlikely setting forms the backdrop for Stephen Goodwin's ambitious, intelligent and somewhat overemotional story of teenage sex, and family relationships. Although to some extent melodramatic in places, Breaking Her Fall is still a very accomplished, and at times, quite riveting domestic drama, that really captures you from the outset, and embraces you in its entirety.

One night Tucker Jones, an American "ordinary man" - a loving and devoted father receives a hostile phone call from another parent who blames his thirteen-year-old daughter, Kat, for indulging in a drunken sexual orgy with some boys at a party. This sets of a chain reaction of violence and recrimination, which reverberates throughout Tucker's entire life affecting his children, his ex-wife, his current girlfriend, and his best friends. On the surface, the story passes for an attention-grabbing legal drama, where Tucker - accused of assaulting one of the boys - fights to save his reputation, and his innocence. But, in reality, the story is much more than this: Goodwin introduces us to a subtle domestic world seething with pent up tensions - strained relationships between ex-wives; father-daughter relationships that are not what they seem; unspoken sexual passions between best friends that are clandestinely acted upon, and teenage pregnancy which inevitably rears its controversial head.

Goodwin writes with a clear confidence of a professional, and he keeps the narrative taught and tight by placing the story in the first person and always telling the story through Tucker's point of view, The narrative flows with a gentleness and ease, never loosing sight of its focus, and the author is determined to share with us every aspect of Tucker's life - from his days doing drugs in college, to the history of his courtship with his ex-wife Trish, to his decision to leave the corporate world, and build an independent life for himself as a landscape gardener. The strength of Breaking Her Fall is also in its enthusiastically believable characters: There's the somewhat self-obsessed and hot-headed main protagonist Tucker, who doesn't think before he acts, but who loves his two children dearly; there's Kat, Tucker's teenage daughter - impetuous, rude, conflicted and unhappy, and there's Tucker's best friend Lily, naive and kind, whose only crime is to want more passion in her life and be the woman who Tucker really loves. There are lots of other supporting characters that weave with equal grace in and out of the narrative, each contributing their own stories, and each influencing Tucker's life in one way or another.

About half way through the book, the character of Lily, speaking at her father's funeral talks about how her father made her feel safe and rescued, and that if she "fell" her father would be there to catch her. Perhaps this reflects the thematic core of the novel in that there should always be someone there to catch us if we fall. Loneliness, loss, the inability to communicate, family structures, the value of friendships, and the ability to be able to make the "right" decision are all presented in Breaking Her Fall with an astute and sensitive clarity. This is a very perceptive and emotionally sensitive piece of work.

Michael

Rating:
Summary: Lisa from Boca Raton
Review: This book was excellent. The writing style was so "there" that I was drawn into the lives of each character.

Rating:
Summary: This novel should be much better known
Review: What a terrific book this is. Absolutely absorbing from the first page on. It's about the dilemmas both parents and teens face in this confusing world of multiple values. Beautifully written and very resonant for any parent raising a child today. I'm teaching a university course called "Fathers, Sons and Daughters in Literature and Film" and this is an instant addition to the book list.