The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer – evaluation

‘Engaging in creating behaviour’ … writing is treatment for Filer’s narrator. Photograph: Renee Keith/Getty Images

“I have an illness, a condition with the form and sound of a snake. Whenever I understand some thing new, it learns it as well … My illness understands every little thing I know. This was a hard point to get my head around.” Matt Houses, a 19-year-previous schizophrenic struggling inside of the mental overall health program, is conducting his very own creating therapy, urgently bashing out his ideas on an old typewriter and interspersing them with letters, doodles and sketches. The Shock of the Fall, which has just won the Costa prize for very best very first novel, is superbly packaged, with drawings, varying typefaces and typographical tricks representing Matt’s swelling bundle of papers. It is a gripping, exhilarating go through.

Sectioned following failing to cope in the community, Matt is fully mindful of how intimidating he can seem to others, with his gawky height and army-camouflage gear, unusual behaviour and internal voices. “Matthew … suffers from command hallucinations, which he attributes to a dead sibling. Crazy shit, eh?” he writes, spoofing his own healthcare notes.

The dead sibling is Simon, his older brother with Downs syndrome, who died in the course of a family members camping holiday when they have been the two kids. Matt presents the reality – “the shock of the fall” is what killed Simon – right at the start, but it is not until finally in direction of the finish that we totally uncover the situations for which Matt feels unending guilt. The gadget of delayed revelation can seem to be artificial and annoying in clumsier hands, but here it is powerful. Matt’s voice – puzzled, resolute and frank – is dazzlingly rendered, and his descriptions of lifestyle on a safe ward are fascinating.

He draws interest to flaws in his narrative and at occasions addresses the reader directly: “I can only describe reality as I know it. I’m undertaking my greatest, and promise to keep attempting.” Endeavouring to be honest, he circles about unpleasant recollections, attempting to get a buy on them. All the while, he is aware the two of the limitations of memory and of memoir, and the professional suspicion surrounding all activities of the mentally ill. He mocks the excesses of psychiatric jargon: “Patient is engaging in creating behaviour.” “In between you and me, I might take a shit in a bit. Is that engaging in shitting behaviour?”

Caustic and humorous observations take the sting out of a grim prognosis. “This sickness has a perform ethic,” Matt notes when his obsessions get the greater of him. Daily life on the ward follows the exact same dull pattern, day after day. “Repetitive, are not I? I reside a Minimize &amp Paste kind of existence.” He is especially fed up with all the promotional ware lying about. “Final time I went into the workplace to borrow the Nursing Dictionary, I counted 3 mugs, a mouse mat, a bunch of pens, two Publish-It note booklets and the wall clock – all sporting the brands of distinct medicines. It truly is like being in prison and having to look at adverts for fucking locks.” Daily life on the ward is gruelling in its tedium, as a sample hour-by-hour manual demonstrates. The indignation of Filer, a registered mental wellness nurse, resounds behind Matt’s repeated complaint: “There is literally nothing to do.”

Memorable characters are woven via the narrative, this kind of as Matt’s kindly but shattered dad and mom and his redoubtable grandmother, Nanny Noo. Even a walk-on part is sharply delineated: irritating Aunt Jacqueline “dresses all in black and talks as well significantly about magic and spirits, and will by no means not smoke, even at children’s events”. Cannot you just see her?

Shackled to an unredeemable act, Matt grapples with his previous in passages that have a sort of simple poetry: “In life there are milestones … like the day we uttered our very first proper word and the day we took our initial measures. We created it through the evening with no a nappy. We learnt other folks have emotions, and the stabilisers came off our bikes.”

Despite the fact that events take on a nightmarish tinge when dead Simon starts to hide below his hospital bed, dropping the hallucinations signifies losing his brother all over once more. Matt is heroic in his fortitude and resilience. He has a cruel disease but, as Filer exhibits, it does not have to crush the human spirit.

The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer – evaluation