The Necessary Grace to Fall: Stories

Gina Ochsner proves that writing truly is an art.In "The Necessary Grace to Fall," Ochsner deals with the complex theme of death in even more complicated story lines that actually force the reader to think.Ochsner writes beautifully, without veiling anything, to appeal to any person that has been touched by loss in one way or another. Her stories range from dealing with death, to the process of dying, and even experiencing life after death. Her ideas are creative and are fluidly and successfully portrayed.I strongly recommend this book if you love to read quality literature.

Gina Ochsner is a remarkably gifted writer who has produced a stunning first book, The Necessary Grace To Fall. These are beautifully crafted short stories, but their excellence comes primarily from Ochsner's abilities as a story-teller, skillfully juggling all of the tools of fiction to achieve the maximum impact, rather than from her ability to compose rich yet disciplined prose. She chooses her words well, but the style never gets in the way of the story and its unfolding. Her characters are complex and alive. Ochsner makes them open up on the page, and the reader comes to know them intimately as they explore their own thoughts and feelings. Ochsner's fiction employs unusual settings, which are, for the most part, remote and exotic. Many of her stories are set in the very cold regions of the earth where the elements are extremely harsh and the inhabitants' lives are ruled by the stark realities of severe weather. In addition, her landscapes often feature prominent reminders of the forces of history that shape the characters' fates: the ruins of bombed out buildings, the exposed corpses of ethnic cleansing victims, or the cultural echoes of The Holocaust. Carefully selected sensory details bring a vivid sense of reality to these settings. You feel like you're there, breathing the air, walking the ground. In many of her stories, the setting itself acts as a character, with a life of its own, and the human characters' interior lives are inextricably interwoven with the life of the place. The reader senses that these stories couldn't have happened anywhere else other than where Ochsner placed them. Death is a common theme in these stories, yet, they are not morbid, although at times they are gruesome. At the same time, there is much dark humor, or -- absent that -- a sense of acceptance. The stories do not have happy endings, but they aren't depressing, either. Above all, they make you think. In grim environments dominated by ice and snow, living unhappy lives where death is in the process of replacing life, and where love has been replaced by betrayal or loss, Ochsner's characters are nonetheless filled with an intense yearning that keeps them moving forward. One of the most remarkable aspects of this book is that, despite the dreadful nature of what is happening to these characters, there doesn't seem to be any bitterness in them. Rather, there is a dark wonder at the beauty of the world, even when it's at its worst. These are stories to read again and again. Very highly recommended.

Gina Ochsner has a wonderful literary voice. This book marks the beginning of great things to come.

The Necessary Grace to fall explores the tremulous boundaries between the living and the dead--that twilight territory in time and space, in the memory and the heart, where the living still shake hands with the dead. The themes of mercy, grace, hope and reneweal in graceless times slowly emerge as one story builds upon another. I highly recommend this book both for its literary imagination and technique. Quite possibly it will change your life.

Ms. Ochsner's uniquely elegant prose provides the most dour character with grace. Each of the book's eleven stories provides the reader with the same.