Free-Falling in Aussie Readers

Jan 06, 2012 Shelleyrae at Book'd Out rated it it was amazing

Shelves: arc-are, aussie-author

Nicola Moriarty has an impressive pedigree, her sisters are well known Australian authors Liane Moriarty (What Alice Forgot, The Hypnotist's Love Story) and Jaclyn Moriarty (Feeling Sorry for Celia, I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes).
Free Falling is Nicola's debut novel and it is a wonderful story of love, family, grief and moving on. It begins when Andy is killed and his mother blames his grief stricken fiance, Belinda. While Evelyn rages, alienating her surviving son, refusing to return Nicola Moriarty has an impressive pedigree, her sisters are well known Australian authors Liane Moriarty (What Alice Forgot, The Hypnotist's Love Story) and Jaclyn Moriarty (Feeling Sorry for Celia, I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes).
Free Falling is Nicola's debut novel and it is a wonderful story of love, family, grief and moving on. It begins when Andy is killed and his mother blames his grief stricken fiance, Belinda. While Evelyn rages, alienating her surviving son, refusing to return to work and taking up sky diving with a young man named Bazza, Belinda is falling apart. She is drinking too much, blaming herself and wakes each morning forgetting he is gone. When strange things begin to happen - a delivery of flowers, a repaired letter box hinge, Belinda thinks Andy may still be with her, and he is in a way. It is weeks before she discovers he has left her with a surprising parting gift. Both women must learn to let go of their anger, their sadness and their grief to create a new future in honour of the man they have lost.

I admit I was a little nervous accepting Free-Falling for review, as a fan of both Liane and Jacyln, I felt Nicola had a lot to live up to. Thankfully I was captivated by this novel from the first when we are introduced to Belinda in the rawness of her grief. Moriarty is not only able to capture Belinda's immediate grief, as the novel develops, she realistically portrays the range of emotions Belinda experiences. Her sadness, fear and courage create a well developed protagonist that I cared about.
Moriarty takes equal care in developing Evelyn who is not immediately sympathetic, especially after the events at the funeral, but as her character is revealed I began to understand her better, even though her behaviour continued to be unpleasant.
Moriarty slowly reveals the the circumstances of Andy's death, initially the event that led to his death is barely mentioned and it isn't until the near the end of the novel that we learn the truth. While we never meet Andy we get to know him a little through the people he left behind, Belinda and Evelyn of course, but also Andy's twin brother, James. Naturally enough James struggles with his brother's death especially given that James is the less responsible of the two, more likely to take risks.
Bazza, a sky diving instructor, becomes an unlikely confidante for Evelyn. I found him very likeable but I would have liked to have learnt a little more about him as he plays such a surprisingly pivotal role in the novel.
While Free-Falling is a character driven story, well grounded in human drama, it does have it's lighter moments and a touch of magical realism. I found the story well written and was quickly engrossed, reading it straight through, from beginning to end.

Free-Falling is both a delightful and heart breaking story, described as a tragic - romantic comedy it is light women's fiction at its best. Free - Falling should be on your reading list and I am eagerly looking forward to her next book.
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Feb 25, 2012 Bree T rated it it was amazing

Shelves: romance, arc, australian, women-s-fiction, aww2012

Belinda is reeling after losing her fiance Andy in a terrible event. She’s left alone to pick up the pieces of her life without him, struggling to move on. At only 24, they had their whole lives stretching ahead of them and now their future together has vanished. Belinda finds herself starting to spot little signs that maybe Andy isn’t entirely… gone. She seems them everywhere, believing that he’s sticking around to give her a little help. And soon she’s about to discover that Andy may have give Belinda is reeling after losing her fiance Andy in a terrible event. She’s left alone to pick up the pieces of her life without him, struggling to move on. At only 24, they had their whole lives stretching ahead of them and now their future together has vanished. Belinda finds herself starting to spot little signs that maybe Andy isn’t entirely… gone. She seems them everywhere, believing that he’s sticking around to give her a little help. And soon she’s about to discover that Andy may have given her the most amazing parting gift of all.

Evelyn is Andy’s mother, who is struggling to cope with the loss of her golden boy. Needing someone to blame, she launches into Belinda, hating her privately and denouncing her publicly. A dignified, straight-laced sort of woman, she finds herself shoplifting and taking up skydiving as ways to deal with her grief. To her surprise, she makes a friend in ‘Baz’, her sky-diving instructor who couldn’t be more different from her. Not the sort of person Evelyn would normally associate with, she finds that she can confide in Bazza and she enjoys his frank comments and attitude to life, even if he does insist on being called such a ridiculous nickname.

Belinda and Evelyn, linked by their overwhelming grief at the loss of a man they both adored but yet divided because of the sheer overwhelming pressure of it. Can they ever find a way to reconcile and come together in order to look towards their future?

Free-Falling is the first novel from Nicola Moriarty, sister to already well known Australian novelists Liane and Jaclyn Moriarty. I’ve read books by both Liane and Jaclyn and jumped at the opportunity to read and review Free-Falling and also interview Nicola. I had some expectations going into Free-Falling and I’m happy to say this book lived up to every one of them.

Split into three narratives, this novel is beautifully written in that over the course of the time it took me to read it, I giggled, I cried (more than once) and I couldn’t put it down. I read it in one sitting, totally immersing myself in the lives of Belinda, Evelyn and Bazza. Andy’s death is a tragedy, he’s so young and it’s an utterly senseless and unnecessary way in which he dies. We learn about him and Belinda as a couple in flashbacks, memories and thoughts she has of their time together.After he is gone, she stays in their apartment, surrounded by these memories, using them as a blanket. She drinks too much, she doesn’t always take care of herself whilst she is moving through the stage of crushing grief. By the time she gets some startling news, she has not a lot of time to prepare for it but the way in which she copes with this little gift shows her strength of character.

Evelyn is difficult to like at first, which is I’m sure, the aim. She’s cold, unforgiving and what she does to Belinda is so terrible it makes you want to jump into the book and slap her! But she’s a grieving mother too, having already lost her husband she has now lost one of her sons as well. She funnels her grief into jumping out of planes, an endeavor that leads her to meet Bazza, a young and experienced sky diver with whom she strikes up a very unlikely deep friendship. Some of the scenes between Evelyn and Bazza were the highlights of the novel for me – watching them connect and seeing Evelyn relax a little of her icy exterior and start to open up to Bazza was a lovely experience. I really enjoyed watching Evelyn become changed, little by little, through her association with Bazza, who provided a sympathetic ear and was someone that knew nothing about her, didn’t judge and didn’t coddle her either.

I have to admit I was a little wary of the story line where Belinda believes that Andy is hanging around, due to such things as mysterious flowers turning up on her doorstep, her shopping being brought upstairs to her apartment one day from her car, because those types of things rarely register as believable for me! I can understand it – if I lost my fiance/husband/etc in the tragic way in which Belinda did, I would cling to any hope that he was still around, in any capacity. But I’m quite a skeptic from way back so I was happy that I really enjoyed the way in which this story unfolded and although it wasn’t entirely hard to guess what was happening, the way the three narratives (Belinda’s, Evelyn’s and Bazza’s) all married up and presented events from different points of view was very well done.

Free-Falling is such a lovely novel, even though it’s based around a tragic and sad event, there’s a lot of warmth, humour and hope within it too. It’s the kind of story you can get lost in, where you end up caring for all the characters (yep, even Evelyn!) and become invested in their lives and you find yourself mapping out their futures in your head. A highly impressive debut and I can’t wait for her next novel.

Recommended! ...more

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May 30, 2012 Tien rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, australian-author, contemporary, signed-by-author

Whilst I prided myself to read pretty much everything, there is actually a type of book I usually try to avoid and that’s any contemporary chick-lit type of story. Nevertheless, I think I still read an average of 2-3 a year (out of my usual 200+ books). So why did I choose to read this obviously girly book?

The first seed of interest was sown when I first read the blurb, it brought to mind PS I Love You by Cecelia Ahern which I have a read a couple of years ago (after the movie) and absolutely lo Whilst I prided myself to read pretty much everything, there is actually a type of book I usually try to avoid and that’s any contemporary chick-lit type of story. Nevertheless, I think I still read an average of 2-3 a year (out of my usual 200+ books). So why did I choose to read this obviously girly book?

The first seed of interest was sown when I first read the blurb, it brought to mind PS I Love You by Cecelia Ahern which I have a read a couple of years ago (after the movie) and absolutely loved, mostly due to the supernatural possibility it represent. After the read, I can confirm that whilst the blurb made them sound similar, it's a very different story whilst tackling same topic (grief).

I actually found out about this book from a flyer at my local library promoting a book launch. My interest was piqued even further when I found out that Nicola Moriarty is a local. I mean that she lives 2-3 suburbs away from me (approx 20 mins drive). This got me totally excited and in a bid to support a truly local author, I took the plunge.

The first line of chapter 1: I really didn’t know whether I was supposed to laugh or to cringe knowing that something is bound to go wrong.

The day after her fiancé died, Belinda drove to the RSPCA and picked up a puppy.

I totally get it why this makes complete "sense" but… if you know me, you know that I’m a proud mother of a gorgeous pug so whilst I wanted to snicker knowing something is bound to go wrong (this is soo not why you get a puppy), I also wanted to cringe for the poor puppy. You’ll have to read it to find out what actually happen ;)

To begin with, I didn’t like Belinda at all due to the way she was dealing with grief however as she dealt with it and her real-self started to show about mid-way of the novel, she grew on me. She was actually quite a sweet, confident, and capable young woman.

This book is told from 2 main perspectives: Belinda and Evelyn. Evelyn was Belinda’s mother-in-law-from-hell-to-be. She doesn’t sound very pleasant at all, huh? But, actually, she’s the one I like from right near the beginning. This is because I feel that I can relate to her better. Okay, not the criminal inclination nor the skydiving but her way of dealing with grief; of anger, of shutting everybody out and yet still seem to be altogether in public. I can understand this and sympathise with her but I just couldn’t sympathise with Belinda’s break-down.

Most memorable bit for me:

But then that moment passed and Evelyn remembered why it was that she kept doing this [skydiving]. That feeling of absolute freedom exploded from within and a gleeful smile was pasted across her face – despite the fact that her cheeks were rather unattractively flapping in the wind and her skin was being stretched back as though she’d just had an intense does of Botox.

Despite my initial reluctance, this was an easy book to read and love. 60 pages from end, I found myself thinking that I didn’t want it to end. It’s a very sweet and heart warming story which tugged and squeezed not only your heart but your tear-ducts. (Disclaimer: I cry pretty easily whilst reading :p) So, what does it say when someone who doesn’t usually read chick-lit type books like a chick-lit type of book? I say, you should give this book a fair go ;) ...more

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