While I'm Falling

Was searching for books by Laine Moriarty & purchased this book thinking it was by Laine and was not until I received it that I realized the author is Laura Moriarty. I was disappointed & was going to return it but decided to read it and I'm so glad I did!! What a great book! Love it so much I searched for more books by Laura Moriarty and ordered 2 more! Can't wait to get them and read them :)

This book started off well, was interesting to read, but the main character was so depressing over every little thing it just wore me out. It started getting rather boring in the middle, and ended up very lukewarm. The main character, Veronica, makes some bad choices, but they stem from a bad day, and they are totally blown out of proportion. Come on...she has a party at the house that she is housesitting, some things get dirty, she cleans them up but for ONE thing, and he goes postal on her. Her relationship with her family is ridiculous, and the character of her father was awful. All in all, quite a depressing book.

Some of the best books are set on a small stage, focusing narrowly on a few people in a short span of time. Author Laura Moriarty ([[ASIN:B000ETQQ3C The Center of Everything : A Novel]], [[ASIN:B0020MMBNA Rest of Her Life, The]]) takes this approach again with her latest novel. College student Veronica Von Holten sees her life unraveling after her father finds his wife in bed with another man.

Veronica is having problems with her courses (she's the unlikeliest pre-med ever), her boyfriend (he wants her to move in with him), and her job (she's a resident assistant at her dorm but can't stand the residents). A house-sitting weekend goes horribly wrong when she wrecks the car and throws a wild party. Her mother's behaving strangely and her father, an overbearing lawyer, is argumentative and blustering.

OK, this is the point at which I put this book in time-out for a couple of weeks. It seemed relentlessly depressing and Veronica seemed unable to behave with a normal amount of self-interest. But when I picked it up again it took a turn for the better, as the story moved to focus on Veronica's mother. Natalie has her own problems, which intersect with Veronica's when she arrives at the dorm one winter night with no money and no place to go.

Laura Moriarty's prose is lovely and within the narrow boundaries she sets herself, the story evolves and resolves well. It's just not as ambitious a story as I believe she will write. Most of the story is told from Veronica's naive point of view, without much introspection but with an incongruent irony. We see what she does, but not why. Someday I hope Moriarty will write in her own voice, and I think the results will be more effective.

The relentless bad news of the first half dissipates and the book finishes better, with a Christmas scene and then a long epilogue taking place the following Christmas. The epilogue carried too much resolution in it for my taste, possibly more suited to a screenplay than to a novel.

So [[ASIN:1401302726 While I'm Falling]] is a book that is executed quite well but doesn't aim high enough. Three stars. I'll continue to read this author, expecting to see her stretching her boundaries any day now.

Linda Bulger, 2009

While I'm Falling is the story of two women's lives falling apart. Veronica is a college junior struggling to keep up in her pre-med classes, and not doing well at her job as a resident advisor. Natalie, Veronica's mother, is on the brink of homelessness after a divorce.

Both women's lives are in a downward spiral, due to events both in and outside of their control. Both women make some really bad choices. And both women display very admirable qualities, which ultimately allow them to help each other out of their predicaments. This is a novel of the mother and daughter growing up, together.

This was a very enjoyable read. The characters are likeable, but flawed. The situations, emotions, thoughts, and conversations are realistic and engaging. The pacing is good - it's not a fast-paced novel, but it never drags, either. This book didn't make a huge impression on me (I won't remember it for years to come), but I definitely enjoyed it. Recommended.

Another reviewer likened this novel to Jodi Picoult's books, and, while I've only read two of Picoult's novels, I'd say that that is a fair assessment. I won't go into a plot synopsis about _While I'm Falling_ since other readers have already done so, but I will say that this story is interesting. Veronica's path to adulthood and her way of coming to terms with some of the issues surrounding her family make the story worth reading.

However, as some other reviewers mentioned, the story line itself seemed a bit predictable to me, too, and the writing didn't grip me all the way through. I tend to read literary fiction and knew that this novel would fall a bit outside that genre, but wanted to give it a try nonetheless. It's not a story or novel that will stay with me, but I did find it interesting to read. I'd give it 3 1/2 stars.

This is the first book I have read by this author. I'm giving it four stars because the writing is really good, she brings the setting and the characters to life, and the plot moves for most of the book. In spite of that, I found the book depressing (which does not necessarily make it bad) and I really didn't like Veronica and her mother Natalie. They seemed to have a knack for doing things to their own detriment. Nothing went right for them, but it was their own fault. Why did Natalie end up homeless? Lots of people get divorced and this doesn't happen. What did Veronica do to help herself with school, with her job, with her boyfriend? She made disastrous choices. Neither of them seemed to ever try using common sense. Veronica is house sitting for someone with an expensive townhouse and decides to have a wild party and lets people totally trash the place. I feel sorry for the poor dog, left in the care of such irresponsible people. Elise, Veronica's older sister, and Dan, her father, both lawyers, are exactly the opposite, but they are mostly in the background. I actually knew a mother and daughter like Natalie and Veronica. I finally stopped having anything to do with them because they were determined to head down the path of disaster. This is not a happy book, but it's worth reading.

After reading the description of this book, I was anxious to begin reading. I took the book to the pool ready for a few hours of relatively undisturbed reading. Usually this is enough time to put a good dent in a book this size (just over 300 pages). Not so with this one.

I never felt connected to the main character, Veronica. She makes one bad decision after another. She treats others poorly and she seems very immature and selfish. I kept waiting for her to have an ephiphany and grow up. With the exception of 2 small incidents (Marley & the pie party), I don't feel that her character grew.

Had this not been required reading for me, I doubt I would have finished the book.

An engrossing story about the end of a family, and new beginnings. Veronica's emotional struggle following her parents' divorce draws her into a downward spiral. She's struggling in school, hates her job, and yearns for the home that is no more. When her mother arrives at her dorm with no place left to go, Veronica begins the painful business of growing up.

An engrossing story about the end of a family, and new beginnings. Veronica's emotional struggle following her parents' divorce draws her into a downward spiral. She's struggling in school, hates her job, and yearns for the home that is no more. When her mother arrives at her dorm with no place left to go, Veronica begins the painful business of growing up.

I felt like "While I'm Falling" was well written, but I just never really connected with the characters. Veronica, the main character just kind of made me frustrated, She works an RA, but doesn't like or job or seem to take it at all seriously. She's decided to be pre-med, but it doesn't really seem like she has any real passion or even interest in it. She just seems to be kind of coasting along, which turns into coasting downhill. I never felt like her relationship with her boyfriend was something she really took seriously, so was not suprised when she opted to drunlenly test it. I wanted to shake her and tell her to snap out of it. A large part of the book is what's going on with her parents, her mother in partcular, and the end of their marriage. I felt like why her mother ended it could have been explored a bit more. The situation her mother does end up in made me kind of depressed, which was hard to read.

Overall I don't regret reading this and felt it was well written and ended on a realistic, but hopeful note. However, I have to admit it's not one that I think will really stick with me and passed it along right after finishing it.