WHILE I'M FALLING
Laura Moriarty
Hyperion
Fiction
ISBN: 9781401302726
The epigraph to WHILE I’M FALLING, taken from J. K. Rowling’s commencement address at Harvard University in 2008, perfectly sums up the theme of the novel: “There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.” In this, Laura Moriarty’s third work of fiction, Rowling’s words come to life both literally and figuratively, as Veronica Von Holten feels her whole life --- not to mention a borrowed Mini Cooper --- veer out of control.
Although most of the events of WHILE I’M FALLING happen during one pivotal week in Veronica’s life, they have their genesis earlier that year, when her seemingly happily married parents file for divorce after her mother sleeps with an itinerant handyman. Veronica, a pre-med student at Kansas University, is stunned by this tidal wave in her usually placid life, but her life at school usually serves as a useful distraction from her parents’ problems (except when she learns that divorce-induced money problems require her to work in the dorm as a resident advisor, a job she both despises and is bad at).
That is, until the winter of her junior year, when all the crises in Veronica’s small world manage to come to a head in the course of a single terrible week. Feeling stifled by an impending Organic Chemistry exam, her insular dorm life, and her boyfriend’s suggestion that she move in with him, Veronica leaps at the opportunity to housesit for a weekend, especially when it means the use of the owner’s car. Never mind that the homeowner is a truly scary individual named Jimmy, who makes thinly veiled threats about what will happen to Veronica if anything happens to his townhouse, his car, or his extremely expensive wine collection. Veronica is eager to taste freedom for the first time in recent memory.
But freedom is the last thing on Veronica’s mind when, in the wake of a notorious Midwestern ice storm, she wrecks Jimmy’s car, setting off a cascading series of disasters that leave her grades, her relationship and even her personal safety in tatters. And when Veronica’s mother shows up at her daughter’s dorm room with surprising, heartbreaking news of her own, Veronica starts to realize that this might be an opportunity for both of them to make new, more adult choices in the wake of some pretty childish behavior. Moriarty continues to explore relationships between mothers and daughters, as she has done in her previous novels, THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING and THE REST OF HER LIFE.
Here, Moriarty cleverly parallels Veronica’s story with that of her mother, Natalie, as both women struggle to get their lives back on track and define their futures on their own terms. Most of the novel centers on Veronica’s escalating crises, told through the college student’s occasionally petulant, sometimes naïve and completely convincing voice. A handful of chapters, however, offer glimpses into Natalie’s point of view, as readers come to discover not only the story behind her divorce but also the stakes involved with the kinds of choices Veronica is just beginning to make.
WHILE I’M FALLING takes place over the course of just a few days, a condensed time frame that grants the novel additional intensity. Readers, too, will want to absorb the book in a concentrated period of time, as they find themselves absorbed in both Veronica and Natalie’s stories, desperately hoping, just as the two women do, that they somehow will find a way to make everything OK --- or maybe even better than that.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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