The Free Fall

Violet Hitchcock is a sixteen year old girl searching for what she calls "the shine". It's a rare and ethereal quality, an essence of grace. And she tends to chase after people who have it, and discard people who don't. For her 16th birthday, Violet is given a new Honda, a beautiful car that she cherishes. However, she also rapidly matures and rebels against her incredibly rich, incredibly dysfunctional parents by descending into drugs and booze. Although she watched her older brother tank his life in the same manner, she's ultimately repeating his pattern in the face of her manic mother and detail obsessed father, neither of whom have the brains or decency to place the necessary limits on her, for fear of her turning as sour as her brother. So Violet focuses on Henry, a leather-clad older boy, also from super- rich parents, in whom she thinks she detects the shine. Despite warnings from her friend when her life starts to deteriorate as she drinks, snorts, and sexes even more. And while scratching and dinging her new car, she soon finds herself torn between the sexy Henry and a new friend, the laid-back, wizened Rider. Ratcliffe never backs off in The Free Fall. Not only does she loving craft a rich and thoughtful literary novel that's exceptionally well written. She's also honest in her portrayal of teenagers, including drugs, sex, liquor, and heaps of self- involvement. It's with this honest and vivid description that she can create this fast-paced and moving story, a modern coming-of-age with serious repercussions. Though some of the material may shock and scare some parents, I'd think that teenage girls in particular will not only be riveted by Ratcliffe's graceful prose, but may value the most from having read and learning from Violet.

Maybe I haven't read a coming of age story in a long, long time but there are so few that stand out in my mind. Even fewer that I would call current and hand over to my niece or daughter with confidence. Although Jane Ratcliffe's first novel is less than delicate at times, it is in just those times that it shines. The brutle honesty with which Ratcliffe allows this story to unfold is both timeless and timely. We follow anxiously (even though the story is told in flash back) as Let's (our protagonist) journey darkens taking each step with her as she spirals further from her goal, the elusive search for the "shine" as she calls it...Happiness and security. Let's life darkens and dulls and becomes heartbreakingly hopeless the way life does...slowly, subtly, until one can't remember the light. A family that from all outward appearances seemed fine, troubled, as most families are, but not without it's bright spots, gradually turns rancid with lies and hostility. Niether parent is capable of connecting with their two children and ultimately seems to silently agree to ignore them...even as they clamour for attention. Let's drinking, drugs and casual sex all take root innocently as if she only stumbled upon them, not sought them out as she clearly begins to. Like most bad habits they begin as a test, then a possible cure, a cure indeed, and then the line blurs between choice and control and there is no choice anymore. No right or wrong. And we are right there beside her, without the answers. When the book begins we, as readers, know that Let has found herself in a hospital bed, but even as she recounts the details of her fall we would never guess that this child of hope and innocence would ever find herself with bottles of southern comfort hidden under her bed as she drank wine at her parents kitchen table with her boyfriend and brother...no sign of her parents...It is a precautionary tale that does not reek of a lecture. It is rather one that unfolds as life does, slowly and with lessons that are true and hard to recover from.

First time writer Jane Radcliffe makes a hell of an impact with her poetically written, strangely beautiful and painfully honest account of a young girl's harsh coming of age in an affluent Detroit suburb in 1994. You know from the title that the protagonist, Violet "Let" Hitchcock, a troubled teenage girl, will somehow and somewhere hit the bottom, but you just don't know how hard.Let has just turned sixteen and has a new car which she christens The Flame. Almost immediately, she becomes enamoured of Henry Edwards, a sophisticated and seductive nineteen year old, who calls her "baby girl" and hands her the keys to a tumultuous ride into a dangerous, dark world of casual sex, drugs and alcohol. Along her dangerous way, Let meets the oddly alluring Ryder Hadley, a worldly and wise sixteen year old who isn't without his own share of problems. Against this dramatic backdrop, Let watches her parents' marriage breaking up and nearly trapping her beneath its broken timbers.One of the strongest points of The Free Fall is its lack of sensationalizing the heavy subject matter. It is told in flashback, intercut with poetic musings on life. Radcliffe wisely steers clear of rolling in the gutter by writing too many graphic and potentially objectionable scenes, or on the other side, coating everything with glitter and making it a confusing, shimmery mess (think the God-awful The Fool Reversed.) That talent is most clear during the scenes involving drugs or sex - written in a lyrical but mysteriously coherent way that leaves you with no doubt of what is going on, but avoiding heavy handedness or ugly details. The plot sounds so incredibly banal and done-before: a rich girl has a destructive affair with a dangerous older man, develops drug habits, watches her parents' marriage dissolve, and meets an intelligent boy her age, but Radcliffe deftly captures the spirit of the novel: an adventurous free spirit infected with the breathless insanity of obsessive, teenage love.However, Let is anything but a typical teenage girl having problems with sex and drugs. She is neither an innocent angel nor a jailbait tart, but a refreshingly ambitious, reflective and intelligent center for the novel. Radcliffe neither attempts nor makes excuses or explanations for her reckless behavior. All the characters are unusual, real and complex, especially Let's mother, who swings from ultra friendly and loving to psychotic and obsessive.Don't look for any happy endings here. The ending is an unexpected tragedy that can keep up with the saddest of them ("Beauty Queen", "The Killer Angels"). You feel for Let throughout her turbulent, exhilarating and ultimately heartbreaking ride through rebellion - except you can get off in the end with the bittersweet and haunting beauty of The Free Fall lingering in your mind long after the book's 342 pages are up.