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And Then She Fell
A mind-bending, razor-sharp look at motherhood and mental health that follows a young Indigenous woman who discovers the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences.
On the surface, Alice is exactly where she thinks she should be: She’s just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve—a white academic whose area of study is conveniently her own Mohawk culture—is nothing but supportive; and they’ve moved into a new home in a posh Toronto neighborhood. But Alice could not feel like more of an impostor. She isn’t connecting with her daughter, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from Steve and their ever-watchful neighbors, among whom she’s the sole Indigenous resident. Even when she does have a minute to herself, her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.
Then strange things start to happen. She finds herself losing bits of time and hearing voices she can’t explain, all while her neighbors’ passive-aggressive behavior begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn’s survival. She just has to finish it before it’s too late.
On the surface, Alice is exactly where she thinks she should be: She’s just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve—a white academic whose area of study is conveniently her own Mohawk culture—is nothing but supportive; and they’ve moved into a new home in a posh Toronto neighborhood. But Alice could not feel like more of an impostor. She isn’t connecting with her daughter, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from Steve and their ever-watchful neighbors, among whom she’s the sole Indigenous resident. Even when she does have a minute to herself, her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.
Then strange things start to happen. She finds herself losing bits of time and hearing voices she can’t explain, all while her neighbors’ passive-aggressive behavior begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn’s survival. She just has to finish it before it’s too late.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published September 26, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 630 reviews
May 10, 2024
My mind is whirling so fast trying to absorb everything thrown my way, including wrongful treatment, racism, genocide against indigenous people, postpartum depression, motherhood, self-worth, mental illness, drug addiction, and parallel universes.
This book is not just captivating women's fiction or thought-provoking multicultural interest/fiction; it goes beyond that by blending different genres, including mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, and magical realism.
I found myself invested in Alice's story as she is slowly drawn into her own kind of rabbit hole, blaming herself for not being a good mother, daughter, wife, writer, and neighbor, and embarrassing her own ancestors by leaving her old life behind and trying to adapt to privileged white people's lives. She also learns not to get offended by their comments about her race, language, and culture.
After getting pregnant with her baby girl, Alice marries the charming and aspiring professor Steve, who seems like the perfect husband and father to her baby girl, Dawn. He even tries to learn the Mohawk language to teach their daughter in the future, as a tribute to their culture.
However, long sleepless nights, her daughter's nonstop crying, and rejecting breastfeeding push Alice into spiraling, like when she was thirteen and spoke to Pocahontas, who told her the harsh truth behind her true life story, which is not a fairytale as romanticized in the Disney movie.
Alice finds herself talking with a shape that may represent the voice of her ancestors. She even starts counseling sessions with a talking cockroach that appears in their bathroom.
She finally realizes that her neighbors are watching her, and her own husband schemes a dangerous plan to take away their daughter! Can she save herself and her daughter from their intrusions?
The first half of the book is intriguing, informing us about the extra demanding responsibilities of motherhood, snippets of Alice's grief, and her own ill-fated relationship with her mother. The story about Sky Women embracing Mohawk Culture is beautiful, but the second half gets more escalated than you can ever imagine. Get ready to have your mind blown away!
Overall, the smart writing, representation of Mohawk culture, womanhood, motherhood, and mental illness make this book one of my favorite readings!
Many thanks to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP DUTTON for sharing this incredible book's digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.
This book is not just captivating women's fiction or thought-provoking multicultural interest/fiction; it goes beyond that by blending different genres, including mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, and magical realism.
I found myself invested in Alice's story as she is slowly drawn into her own kind of rabbit hole, blaming herself for not being a good mother, daughter, wife, writer, and neighbor, and embarrassing her own ancestors by leaving her old life behind and trying to adapt to privileged white people's lives. She also learns not to get offended by their comments about her race, language, and culture.
After getting pregnant with her baby girl, Alice marries the charming and aspiring professor Steve, who seems like the perfect husband and father to her baby girl, Dawn. He even tries to learn the Mohawk language to teach their daughter in the future, as a tribute to their culture.
However, long sleepless nights, her daughter's nonstop crying, and rejecting breastfeeding push Alice into spiraling, like when she was thirteen and spoke to Pocahontas, who told her the harsh truth behind her true life story, which is not a fairytale as romanticized in the Disney movie.
Alice finds herself talking with a shape that may represent the voice of her ancestors. She even starts counseling sessions with a talking cockroach that appears in their bathroom.
She finally realizes that her neighbors are watching her, and her own husband schemes a dangerous plan to take away their daughter! Can she save herself and her daughter from their intrusions?
The first half of the book is intriguing, informing us about the extra demanding responsibilities of motherhood, snippets of Alice's grief, and her own ill-fated relationship with her mother. The story about Sky Women embracing Mohawk Culture is beautiful, but the second half gets more escalated than you can ever imagine. Get ready to have your mind blown away!
Overall, the smart writing, representation of Mohawk culture, womanhood, motherhood, and mental illness make this book one of my favorite readings!
Many thanks to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP DUTTON for sharing this incredible book's digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.
November 5, 2023
This novel left me feeling that it was deeply important to Alicia Elliott to write in exactly the way she wrote it. The novel both gave witness to truths about living as an indigenous woman of Mohawk heritage, and simultaneously let me know these truths weren’t for me to fully understand. I’m like the white guest at the dinner table, in one scene, who wants to have everyone agree with his very white very linear and very conventional view of history, even as the scene itself is written to contradict his view, as the scene becomes ever more incoherent and monstrous and illogical as you read to the end of it.
The story braided around a core idea of a ‘self’ that was telling this story but who remained a mystery for me. I wasn’t upset by this. I thought it was a beautiful expression of an indigenous lovely self trying to navigate heritage and family and womanhood and motherhood while living in, and being influenced by, and being suffocated by a dominant, white, cold, male, genocidal culture, which made her every attempt to locate her true self a hideous trip through a funhouse full of mirrors that warped her sense of identity. It gave me thoughts.
The story braided around a core idea of a ‘self’ that was telling this story but who remained a mystery for me. I wasn’t upset by this. I thought it was a beautiful expression of an indigenous lovely self trying to navigate heritage and family and womanhood and motherhood while living in, and being influenced by, and being suffocated by a dominant, white, cold, male, genocidal culture, which made her every attempt to locate her true self a hideous trip through a funhouse full of mirrors that warped her sense of identity. It gave me thoughts.
April 5, 2024
You truly have to read this one right to the end. This book has elements of almost every genre or situation: time travel, magic, history, unforgivable bigotry, racial genocide, and political diatribes against the deliberate cultural destruction of an ancient way of life.
Thousands and thousands of children died. A way of life and a language almost became extinct. A magical belief system was legally declared a heresy and the indigenous peoples were forbidden by law to hold or practice their ceremonies - in public or private.
All of these many themes and more were woven into Alice's horrifying story. I was terrified for baby Dawn. I kept having to remind myself: This is just A NOVEL. It is FICTION! Do NOT call the cops or CAS! (No spoilers, but those descriptions of blood splatters, etc., in the baby's bedroom had my blood pressure soaring!)
Alicia Elliot writes so intelligently and convincingly. Alice (and yes, I did note the similarity between the author's and main character's names) is an indigenous Mohawk woman who married a white professor, moved away from her reservation and felt alienated and judged by the other college faculty wives, as well as the people in her affluent Toronto neighbourhood.
Alice appears at one point to be possessed by some ancient spirit, or you could be pardoned for being inclined to think that she was suffering from a mental illness/ postpartum depression at the very least. I suspected, after a while, that there was a mixture of BOTH happening here.
In her preface, the author confesses that her mother was bi-polar, and that she too suffered from periods of depression and, eventually, a mental illness (from which she most likely drew in order to write so powerfully about Alice's battles against paranoia and the fear that she was losing her mind to a demon spirit. Well done!)
Despite the timeline confusion (which, in the end, appears to have been done on purpose, so stick with it!), I rarely wanted to put this book down. I kept reading with fascinated horror all that Alice endured. I can't go into more details because you need to go into this blind in order to appreciate the last quarter of this novel. What a jaw-dropping "twist"... well, maybe a better word would be "reveal" - but it took my breath away when the penny finally dropped! Clever!! This is one story that does indeed live up to the blurb! All of my emotions were truly wrung and put out to dry!
I am glad that I took a chance on this NetGalley offering. I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about Indigenous sufferings at the hands of North America's colonizers as well as our present day government, but this book was an eye-opener. I highly recommend this well-written, heartfelt novel. There are descriptions of violence and events (both historical and current) that will be a trigger for some readers, so proceed with care, but I for one am glad I stuck with this right to the nail-biting end! My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. I am rating this 4.8 out of 5, rounded up to a well-deserved 5.
Thousands and thousands of children died. A way of life and a language almost became extinct. A magical belief system was legally declared a heresy and the indigenous peoples were forbidden by law to hold or practice their ceremonies - in public or private.
All of these many themes and more were woven into Alice's horrifying story. I was terrified for baby Dawn. I kept having to remind myself: This is just A NOVEL. It is FICTION! Do NOT call the cops or CAS! (No spoilers, but those descriptions of blood splatters, etc., in the baby's bedroom had my blood pressure soaring!)
Alicia Elliot writes so intelligently and convincingly. Alice (and yes, I did note the similarity between the author's and main character's names) is an indigenous Mohawk woman who married a white professor, moved away from her reservation and felt alienated and judged by the other college faculty wives, as well as the people in her affluent Toronto neighbourhood.
Alice appears at one point to be possessed by some ancient spirit, or you could be pardoned for being inclined to think that she was suffering from a mental illness/ postpartum depression at the very least. I suspected, after a while, that there was a mixture of BOTH happening here.
In her preface, the author confesses that her mother was bi-polar, and that she too suffered from periods of depression and, eventually, a mental illness (from which she most likely drew in order to write so powerfully about Alice's battles against paranoia and the fear that she was losing her mind to a demon spirit. Well done!)
Despite the timeline confusion (which, in the end, appears to have been done on purpose, so stick with it!), I rarely wanted to put this book down. I kept reading with fascinated horror all that Alice endured. I can't go into more details because you need to go into this blind in order to appreciate the last quarter of this novel. What a jaw-dropping "twist"... well, maybe a better word would be "reveal" - but it took my breath away when the penny finally dropped! Clever!! This is one story that does indeed live up to the blurb! All of my emotions were truly wrung and put out to dry!
I am glad that I took a chance on this NetGalley offering. I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about Indigenous sufferings at the hands of North America's colonizers as well as our present day government, but this book was an eye-opener. I highly recommend this well-written, heartfelt novel. There are descriptions of violence and events (both historical and current) that will be a trigger for some readers, so proceed with care, but I for one am glad I stuck with this right to the nail-biting end! My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. I am rating this 4.8 out of 5, rounded up to a well-deserved 5.
January 18, 2024
About halfway through this book, I really had to stop and re-read the synopsis because I was sure I was missing something - and that's why I'm writing the first part of this review now: When you read this book (and you should) make sure you read it with the mindset that it's not a traditional novel. It's written with the storytelling style of indigenous peoples of the Canadian/Toronto region - so the storyline isn't a linear, familiar style. Once I understood that - the rest of the book fell into place!!
The premise of the book is that a young indigenous woman falls in love with and marries a white man from Toronto. Even though he tries to connect with her through her heritage and as his area of study (as a professor/researcher), there's just something that starts to feel off in Alice's life after the birth of their daughter. What follows is a complete 'fall' into psychological fracturing explained from Alice's POV in combination with her indigenous history/stories/beliefs impacting her daily life. - Racism, sexism, cultural impacts of colonialism, motherhood, and relationships from a woman's point of view are the basis for this book and it's done so well!!
FAVORITE QUOTE:
'Who wants to admit that there was a moment when they saw disaster coming but chose to do nothing'.... I think there are so many more moments like this in our lives than we would ever want to admit.
The way this is written gave me a challenge because I wasn't used to it with my every style of reads, and I loved that, to be honest. Reading books that don't feel traditional is a big goal of mine this year!! I've moved away from many of the traditional style stories in the past few years as I've matured, and I'm enjoying the expansion of my literary palette!
***Starting off strong with my goal to read at least one book by an indigenous author each month!! I may also add a translated fiction goal for the year, but I'm starting with indigenous!
NOTES:
- Genre: Horror, Indigenous lit, etc
Find Me On Instagram 🦋 || More Bookish Thoughts & Reviews Here 🖤
The premise of the book is that a young indigenous woman falls in love with and marries a white man from Toronto. Even though he tries to connect with her through her heritage and as his area of study (as a professor/researcher), there's just something that starts to feel off in Alice's life after the birth of their daughter. What follows is a complete 'fall' into psychological fracturing explained from Alice's POV in combination with her indigenous history/stories/beliefs impacting her daily life. - Racism, sexism, cultural impacts of colonialism, motherhood, and relationships from a woman's point of view are the basis for this book and it's done so well!!
FAVORITE QUOTE:
'Who wants to admit that there was a moment when they saw disaster coming but chose to do nothing'.... I think there are so many more moments like this in our lives than we would ever want to admit.
The way this is written gave me a challenge because I wasn't used to it with my every style of reads, and I loved that, to be honest. Reading books that don't feel traditional is a big goal of mine this year!! I've moved away from many of the traditional style stories in the past few years as I've matured, and I'm enjoying the expansion of my literary palette!
***Starting off strong with my goal to read at least one book by an indigenous author each month!! I may also add a translated fiction goal for the year, but I'm starting with indigenous!
NOTES:
- Genre: Horror, Indigenous lit, etc
Find Me On Instagram 🦋 || More Bookish Thoughts & Reviews Here 🖤
November 14, 2023
The story centers around Alice, an indigenous woman, who recently got married to a white man named Steve and gave birth to a daughter named, Dawn. Alice has lived her entire life on the Mohawk reservation and since she married she now lives in an upscale neighborhood in Toronto. Alice wants to be a serious writer and her goal is to write a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.
Alice is struggling to adapt to not only her new neighborhood and motherhood but to also be a wife. She is also the only indigenous person in her neighborhood and is grieving the loss of her mother who passed away a year ago.
Alice soon finds herself losing track of time as well as hearing voices. Steve assures Alice that this is all in her head but Alice can’t help but feel that something is very wrong.
And Then She Fell is a darkly funny, suspenseful, genre-bending tale mixed with bits of magical realism. I loved learning more about the Mohawk Indians, their rituals, and their creation story. It's rare for me to find a main character that I can relate to but I instantly connected with Alice. There are so many issues that Alice faced that I also went through when I was in my 20s like struggling with my identity/heritage and feeling that I didn’t belong anywhere.
Along with postpartum depression, this book goes deep into native American sufferings at the hands of white colonizers and how a way of life became essentially extinct. The book also touches on the power we hold in storytelling. I believe this story will be an eye-opening read for many and I highly recommend it to everyone!
I listened to the audiobook version of And Then She Fell which was read by Cheri Maracle and Jenna Clause. If you do decide to read this one, I highly recommend this format!
And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott was published on October 3 by Dutton Books so it is available now! Many thanks to Penguin Random House Audio for the gifted copy!
Alice is struggling to adapt to not only her new neighborhood and motherhood but to also be a wife. She is also the only indigenous person in her neighborhood and is grieving the loss of her mother who passed away a year ago.
Alice soon finds herself losing track of time as well as hearing voices. Steve assures Alice that this is all in her head but Alice can’t help but feel that something is very wrong.
And Then She Fell is a darkly funny, suspenseful, genre-bending tale mixed with bits of magical realism. I loved learning more about the Mohawk Indians, their rituals, and their creation story. It's rare for me to find a main character that I can relate to but I instantly connected with Alice. There are so many issues that Alice faced that I also went through when I was in my 20s like struggling with my identity/heritage and feeling that I didn’t belong anywhere.
Along with postpartum depression, this book goes deep into native American sufferings at the hands of white colonizers and how a way of life became essentially extinct. The book also touches on the power we hold in storytelling. I believe this story will be an eye-opening read for many and I highly recommend it to everyone!
I listened to the audiobook version of And Then She Fell which was read by Cheri Maracle and Jenna Clause. If you do decide to read this one, I highly recommend this format!
And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott was published on October 3 by Dutton Books so it is available now! Many thanks to Penguin Random House Audio for the gifted copy!
January 2, 2024
4.5 Stars!!!!
I don't even know where to start..I'm emotionally exhausted.
This book isn't for everyone...but for those of us it is for....it is hitting on every level.
And Then She Fell is about Alice a young Canadian Mohawk Nation woman who marries a white professor and moves off her reservation( rez) and has a daughter. Her life should be perfect but Alice has experienced hallucinations since she was a teenager and in the aftermath of the birth of her daughter the hallucinations are getting stronger and she and her husband are questioning her sanity.
Is Alice mentally ill?
Is it postpartum?
Is she being intentionally driven insane?
Or is it something deeper?
This book unfolds in the usual Horror way for most of this book. It's a tense, paranoid and claustrophobic read. It explores grief, racism, gaslighting, genocide, and mental illness in women. I was on edge for the majority of this book....and then the twist hits......For a lot of people this twist with about 80 pages left will make you hate this book, you might even dnf. But for those of us who get it, it will make everything fit together. As soon as I got to the twist the title and cover art made perfect sense. I was finally able to breathe. This book went from being a 3.5 star read to a 4.5 star read but it's not for everyone. This book takes a genre detour and I really enjoyed it.
I haven't read many books by Indigenious authors. It's something that I'm going to right in 2024. I already have another Indigenous authors book ready for January and I have about 6 other that I want to get to. My great grandfather was from the Blackfoot Nation but I don't know anything about him( he died when my grandmother was very young) and he mostly lived life as a Black man. I don't consider myself Indigenous in anyway because I have no connection to it and it seems disrespectful to claim Blackfoot heritage but I do want to learn more about First Nations people. I'm happy that more and more Indigenous authors are getting chances to write stories and hopefully I will add more to my shelves.
No recommendation because I don't know who would enjoy this...but I really enjoyed guys!
I don't even know where to start..I'm emotionally exhausted.
This book isn't for everyone...but for those of us it is for....it is hitting on every level.
And Then She Fell is about Alice a young Canadian Mohawk Nation woman who marries a white professor and moves off her reservation( rez) and has a daughter. Her life should be perfect but Alice has experienced hallucinations since she was a teenager and in the aftermath of the birth of her daughter the hallucinations are getting stronger and she and her husband are questioning her sanity.
Is Alice mentally ill?
Is it postpartum?
Is she being intentionally driven insane?
Or is it something deeper?
This book unfolds in the usual Horror way for most of this book. It's a tense, paranoid and claustrophobic read. It explores grief, racism, gaslighting, genocide, and mental illness in women. I was on edge for the majority of this book....and then the twist hits......For a lot of people this twist with about 80 pages left will make you hate this book, you might even dnf. But for those of us who get it, it will make everything fit together. As soon as I got to the twist the title and cover art made perfect sense. I was finally able to breathe. This book went from being a 3.5 star read to a 4.5 star read but it's not for everyone. This book takes a genre detour and I really enjoyed it.
I haven't read many books by Indigenious authors. It's something that I'm going to right in 2024. I already have another Indigenous authors book ready for January and I have about 6 other that I want to get to. My great grandfather was from the Blackfoot Nation but I don't know anything about him( he died when my grandmother was very young) and he mostly lived life as a Black man. I don't consider myself Indigenous in anyway because I have no connection to it and it seems disrespectful to claim Blackfoot heritage but I do want to learn more about First Nations people. I'm happy that more and more Indigenous authors are getting chances to write stories and hopefully I will add more to my shelves.
No recommendation because I don't know who would enjoy this...but I really enjoyed guys!
July 2, 2024
This book grew increasingly strange with each passing chapter (in a good way). Talking cockroaches for the win. 🪳"Call me Pete."
Check out my Women's Prize Deep Dive on BookTube at Hello, Bookworm.📚🐛
"When this country wants us dead, every breath we take is a tiny revolution."
This debut novel tackles mental health, trauma, racism, and oppression in the story of Alice, an Indigenous woman living with her husband in a white Toronto neighborhood where she is struggling with postpartum psychosis.
Amid her mental struggles, Alice is attempting to write her own version of the Haudenosaunee creation story of Sky Woman, which is woven throughout the book. She also struggles to connect with her newborn daughter, and she makes keen observations about her husband (who is a privileged white man) in comparison to herself.
And Then She Fell is blurbed as being told in Alice's "darkly funny voice", but I found Alice's voice sad and wearisome because she is filled with so much disdain. In light of the many microaggressions Alice must deal with, her bitterness is completely understandable, but that does not make for a funny read.
Nonetheless, I found this book strange, surreal, surprising, and enjoyable. Check this one out if you're in the mood for a somber tale adorned with Indigenous lore that features a talking cockroach.
Check out my Women's Prize Deep Dive on BookTube at Hello, Bookworm.📚🐛
"When this country wants us dead, every breath we take is a tiny revolution."
This debut novel tackles mental health, trauma, racism, and oppression in the story of Alice, an Indigenous woman living with her husband in a white Toronto neighborhood where she is struggling with postpartum psychosis.
Amid her mental struggles, Alice is attempting to write her own version of the Haudenosaunee creation story of Sky Woman, which is woven throughout the book. She also struggles to connect with her newborn daughter, and she makes keen observations about her husband (who is a privileged white man) in comparison to herself.
And Then She Fell is blurbed as being told in Alice's "darkly funny voice", but I found Alice's voice sad and wearisome because she is filled with so much disdain. In light of the many microaggressions Alice must deal with, her bitterness is completely understandable, but that does not make for a funny read.
Nonetheless, I found this book strange, surreal, surprising, and enjoyable. Check this one out if you're in the mood for a somber tale adorned with Indigenous lore that features a talking cockroach.
October 20, 2023
Alice is an indigenous woman living in a posh Toronto neighborhood with her husband Steve, a white man, and she's recently given birth to a baby girl named Dawn. Alice isn't connecting with her daughter, feels out of place in the neighbourhood and is suspicious of everyone. Her goal is to write a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story. I looked it up and apparently Haudenosaunee means “people who build a house”. The name refers to a confederation or alliance among six Native American nations, more commonly known as the Iroquois Confederacy.
I had a tough time reading this book and was tempted to give up more than once. By the time I got past 50% I decided I might as well continue until the end but I skimmed a lot and only read it in short bursts. At around 80% I felt like I'd accidentally picked up the wrong book as the characters were totally different. I eventually figured out what was going on but it was very confusing especially when the narration switched from first person to second person to third person from paragraph to paragraph. I had no idea who was talking half the time. As you'll gather from reading the blurb and other reviews the story follows Alice's descent into madness and the supernatural and it just wasn't for me. I'm definitely the outlier here so I recommend you check out some of the other reviews if you're interested in reading this. I keep wondering what I missed when I see all the 5 star reviews.
Parts of the first half were reminiscent of The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar, overly descriptive of the after-effects of childbirth. Do women really want to see what their vagina looks like after giving birth. Shudder.
TW: Post-partum depression, mental illness, racism.
My thanks to Penguin Random House Canada via Netgalley for the opportunity to read an ARC of this novel. All opinions expressed are my own.
Published: September 26, 2023
I had a tough time reading this book and was tempted to give up more than once. By the time I got past 50% I decided I might as well continue until the end but I skimmed a lot and only read it in short bursts. At around 80% I felt like I'd accidentally picked up the wrong book as the characters were totally different. I eventually figured out what was going on but it was very confusing especially when the narration switched from first person to second person to third person from paragraph to paragraph. I had no idea who was talking half the time. As you'll gather from reading the blurb and other reviews the story follows Alice's descent into madness and the supernatural and it just wasn't for me. I'm definitely the outlier here so I recommend you check out some of the other reviews if you're interested in reading this. I keep wondering what I missed when I see all the 5 star reviews.
Parts of the first half were reminiscent of The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar, overly descriptive of the after-effects of childbirth. Do women really want to see what their vagina looks like after giving birth. Shudder.
TW: Post-partum depression, mental illness, racism.
My thanks to Penguin Random House Canada via Netgalley for the opportunity to read an ARC of this novel. All opinions expressed are my own.
Published: September 26, 2023
Read
March 16, 2024I definitely picked up “The Yellow Wallpaper” vibes from this story of an indigenous woman’s descent into madness after the birth of her daughter. The first half of this book is easier to read/understand than the last half. I was able to emotionally invest during the prologue and first few chapters. The mental health instability and self doubts as a new mother were so relatable.
I enjoyed the Sky Mother interludes.
I lost the thread when the story transitioned into something that felt a little more speculative—almost cosmic sci-fi? I honestly was lost.
But I enjoyed the challenge.
I enjoyed the Sky Mother interludes.
I lost the thread when the story transitioned into something that felt a little more speculative—almost cosmic sci-fi? I honestly was lost.
But I enjoyed the challenge.
April 28, 2023
alice sometimes feels as if she is outside her body. she’s also had a conversation with pocahontas, who jumped through her television screen. after having her daughter, alice feels the effects of postpartum depression and intergenerational native trauma. her goal is to write the story of creation the way her father told it to her when she was a child. after many rejections from creative writing programs and feeling like a “diversity pick,” alice begins to write the story she wants to tell. but where will it lead her?
the first half of this novel is very well written and explores ideas of motherhood, depression, substance abuse, native identity, the butchering of native languages, and the idea that white people write down native tales and sell it back to native people for profit. alice is a struggling mother, trying to build a bond with a baby that she feels doesn’t lover her back.
my issue is with the final quarter of the novel. it delves into madness, as promised, but in a way that felt too confusing to conceptualize. it felt as though everyone was talking to alice and nothing was going on other than dialogue. the ending left me with more questions that remained unanswered and i felt a bit lost. alice’s fate is up to the reader; you don’t get a nice big bow wrapping up the novel.
elliott does a great job changing her writing style and voice when she gives us bits and pieces of alice’s writing. i personally felt that alice was rather juvenile, and honestly not a very good writer. i felt myself annoyed with alice to the point that i couldn’t see how she had married her husband and had a child with him; he’s awful.
that being said, it’s a great tale of indigenous motherhood. alice is a multifaceted character and incredibly complicated in the best way.
thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review!
the first half of this novel is very well written and explores ideas of motherhood, depression, substance abuse, native identity, the butchering of native languages, and the idea that white people write down native tales and sell it back to native people for profit. alice is a struggling mother, trying to build a bond with a baby that she feels doesn’t lover her back.
my issue is with the final quarter of the novel. it delves into madness, as promised, but in a way that felt too confusing to conceptualize. it felt as though everyone was talking to alice and nothing was going on other than dialogue. the ending left me with more questions that remained unanswered and i felt a bit lost. alice’s fate is up to the reader; you don’t get a nice big bow wrapping up the novel.
elliott does a great job changing her writing style and voice when she gives us bits and pieces of alice’s writing. i personally felt that alice was rather juvenile, and honestly not a very good writer. i felt myself annoyed with alice to the point that i couldn’t see how she had married her husband and had a child with him; he’s awful.
that being said, it’s a great tale of indigenous motherhood. alice is a multifaceted character and incredibly complicated in the best way.
thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review!
March 21, 2024
4.5★s
And Then She Fell is the first novel by award-winning, best-selling Canadian Mohawk editor and author, Alicia Elliott. At twenty-six, Haudenosaunee woman Alice Dostator is married to Steve Macdonald, a white man, has a six-week-old daughter, Dawn, is living off reservation in the city of Toronto, and is still grieving the loss of her mother, when she once again begins hearing voices. It’s not the first time, but as a teen, she blocked them out with alcohol and pot.
Now, she’s having difficulty connecting with her baby, is getting very little sleep, and is expected to behave in a manner that makes her an asset to Steve’s attempt to get tenure in the anthropology department. She’s getting nowhere with her writing, a retelling of the Haudenosaunee Creation Story that she now regrets telling Steve about, regrets telling anyone about.
What she’s hearing, and seeing, has her worried: her mom said her grandma was crazy; but her Aunt Rachel assures her that Grandma was a medicine woman, spoke to spirits and saw the future. And this respected elder said that Alice has the gifts to see what others can’t. Her cousin Tanya talks about portals and gatekeepers, and the voices are telling her it’s important to complete her writing, although other voices aren’t so positive.
It's quickly clear from her auditory and visual hallucinations, her out-of-body experiences, her delusions, and her paranoia, that Alice is not a reliable narrator. She second-guesses her own thoughts and reactions, is increasingly unsure whom she can trust, and feels the need to keep her thoughts secret even from those closest to her. Or is what she’s seeing, hearing and feeling, real?
Elliott’s depiction of post-partum mental illness is highly credible and, informed as it is by her own experience, brims with authenticity. The novel explores white attitudes to Natives, the racism that is often unconscious or unintentional, motherhood, and Mohawk myth and legend. While more likely to resonate with Canadian readers, this is a cleverly written, interesting and thought-provoking read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Allen & Unwin.
And Then She Fell is the first novel by award-winning, best-selling Canadian Mohawk editor and author, Alicia Elliott. At twenty-six, Haudenosaunee woman Alice Dostator is married to Steve Macdonald, a white man, has a six-week-old daughter, Dawn, is living off reservation in the city of Toronto, and is still grieving the loss of her mother, when she once again begins hearing voices. It’s not the first time, but as a teen, she blocked them out with alcohol and pot.
Now, she’s having difficulty connecting with her baby, is getting very little sleep, and is expected to behave in a manner that makes her an asset to Steve’s attempt to get tenure in the anthropology department. She’s getting nowhere with her writing, a retelling of the Haudenosaunee Creation Story that she now regrets telling Steve about, regrets telling anyone about.
What she’s hearing, and seeing, has her worried: her mom said her grandma was crazy; but her Aunt Rachel assures her that Grandma was a medicine woman, spoke to spirits and saw the future. And this respected elder said that Alice has the gifts to see what others can’t. Her cousin Tanya talks about portals and gatekeepers, and the voices are telling her it’s important to complete her writing, although other voices aren’t so positive.
It's quickly clear from her auditory and visual hallucinations, her out-of-body experiences, her delusions, and her paranoia, that Alice is not a reliable narrator. She second-guesses her own thoughts and reactions, is increasingly unsure whom she can trust, and feels the need to keep her thoughts secret even from those closest to her. Or is what she’s seeing, hearing and feeling, real?
Elliott’s depiction of post-partum mental illness is highly credible and, informed as it is by her own experience, brims with authenticity. The novel explores white attitudes to Natives, the racism that is often unconscious or unintentional, motherhood, and Mohawk myth and legend. While more likely to resonate with Canadian readers, this is a cleverly written, interesting and thought-provoking read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Allen & Unwin.
October 25, 2023
A surreal, haunting debut on otherness, motherhood, and generational cycles. Mind-bending and original, And Then She Fell is a dizzying and vivid look at identity, what we piece together from our traditions, loved ones, and what we invent for ourselves. It is an examination of the power of storytelling, and how we decide how certain stories should be told, how language can both empower and ensnare us. This is a novel that tackles hard truths head on, looking at racism, misogyny, classism, and all the ways in which women, especially women of color and indigenous women, are told to “be good,” are expected to be the exception to the western image made of them, or to embody it perfectly. Honest and raw in its depiction of mental health and generational trauma, this is also an ode to the familial bonds, to traditions, to cultural pride and resistance to oppression. A dynamic, powerful debut that is as effective as it is ambitious, gorgeously written and long lasting in its unease.
December 23, 2023
See, this is the kind of book that stops me from enacting a DNF policy. I was thinking of just abandoning it, but I stuck with it and it ended up being such an emotionally interesting experience for me that literally had me crying by the end, that I am so glad I finished it!
I could say a lot of bullshit about structure and how his book feels disjointed in many ways and that would make me feel all good and smart and how I know what I'm talking about, but sometimes I need to be slapped over the head with a book that breaks the 'rules' and really works for me to remember that the rules for writing that we all critique by are part of a fucking writing establishment reifying a specific type of writing. *cough* The kind that white men do *cough*
So without this meandering prologue, let's actually talk about this book! It's about a Mohawk woman who married this white academic (studying/ pillaging her freaking culture) and who took her away from the reservation and isolated her from all the people who care about her. Alice is grieving for her mother and she has also just given birth and her stupid husband literally judges her when she gets help, because 'we have to show that we can do it ourselves' - extremely neoliberal nuclear family sort of faulty reasoning, but of course the couple lives in the house bought and decorated by your mother, Steve!
I think I had a difficult time reading this book (took me a while), because I was heavily empathizing with Alice and witnessing her spiral felt intensely scary and anxiety-inducing. I just wanted her to be okay. It felt so palpably painful to see her having intense mental health issues while she was afraid that they would lead to her losing her daughter and also she was refusing to ask for help or let anyone in. The book gets to a very tense and intense place. And then it switches over and over to something else, and those something elses are also super interesting and compelling.
There's a lot in this book thematically about choices and planting seeds for the future, what it means to change the world, gender power dynamics and preserving culture, while academics outside that culture try to coopt it. Elliott weaves this web that suffocates Alice more and more till she doesn't know who to trust. Her struggles ended up being profoundly affecting. And there's another web there, a web of choosing love and human connection and resistance to get you through the pain that inevitably comes over and over.
And I'd be remiss not to mention the humor, which came very surprising every time. Early in the book, a VHS of Pocahontas is on the TV and the cartoon character starts talking to her, which was unsettling and funny at the same time. Also, there's cockroaches, and whenever one appears, things get freaking hilarious.
Re: Pocahontas, there's a lot of talk of Matoaka, the real life girl whose horrifying story was sanitized by Disney in appalling ways, honestly, and I really appreciated learning more about her and reading this side of the story. I also really appreciated all of the Mohawk cultural elements that I got to experience in this book.
Really glad I stuck with it and that I questioned my uncomfortable feelings while reading. Part of them were coming from the artificial storytelling rules that I still critique by sometimes. Part of them were because I relate to a lot of what Alice was going through and it's scary for me to read that. Part of them came from wanting to avoid uncomfortable feelings. But sometimes it's great to question them when they happen.
I could say a lot of bullshit about structure and how his book feels disjointed in many ways and that would make me feel all good and smart and how I know what I'm talking about, but sometimes I need to be slapped over the head with a book that breaks the 'rules' and really works for me to remember that the rules for writing that we all critique by are part of a fucking writing establishment reifying a specific type of writing. *cough* The kind that white men do *cough*
So without this meandering prologue, let's actually talk about this book! It's about a Mohawk woman who married this white academic (studying/ pillaging her freaking culture) and who took her away from the reservation and isolated her from all the people who care about her. Alice is grieving for her mother and she has also just given birth and her stupid husband literally judges her when she gets help, because 'we have to show that we can do it ourselves' - extremely neoliberal nuclear family sort of faulty reasoning, but of course the couple lives in the house bought and decorated by your mother, Steve!
I think I had a difficult time reading this book (took me a while), because I was heavily empathizing with Alice and witnessing her spiral felt intensely scary and anxiety-inducing. I just wanted her to be okay. It felt so palpably painful to see her having intense mental health issues while she was afraid that they would lead to her losing her daughter and also she was refusing to ask for help or let anyone in. The book gets to a very tense and intense place. And then it switches over and over to something else, and those something elses are also super interesting and compelling.
There's a lot in this book thematically about choices and planting seeds for the future, what it means to change the world, gender power dynamics and preserving culture, while academics outside that culture try to coopt it. Elliott weaves this web that suffocates Alice more and more till she doesn't know who to trust. Her struggles ended up being profoundly affecting. And there's another web there, a web of choosing love and human connection and resistance to get you through the pain that inevitably comes over and over.
And I'd be remiss not to mention the humor, which came very surprising every time. Early in the book, a VHS of Pocahontas is on the TV and the cartoon character starts talking to her, which was unsettling and funny at the same time. Also, there's cockroaches, and whenever one appears, things get freaking hilarious.
Re: Pocahontas, there's a lot of talk of Matoaka, the real life girl whose horrifying story was sanitized by Disney in appalling ways, honestly, and I really appreciated learning more about her and reading this side of the story. I also really appreciated all of the Mohawk cultural elements that I got to experience in this book.
Really glad I stuck with it and that I questioned my uncomfortable feelings while reading. Part of them were coming from the artificial storytelling rules that I still critique by sometimes. Part of them were because I relate to a lot of what Alice was going through and it's scary for me to read that. Part of them came from wanting to avoid uncomfortable feelings. But sometimes it's great to question them when they happen.
August 15, 2023
Alice is a new mother, and she's doing her best. Only, she feels that her best is nowhere near good enough, and that her baby girl and husband both resent her presence in their lives. She's still trying to cope with the grief of losing her mother, and she hasn't been able to write anything to further her passion project, a new retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation myth. Alice, despairing, starts to hear voices she hasn't heard since she was a girl, and they're warning her to get out. Take Dawn and get out, before it's too late. But what can she do? Who is she without this life she's worked so hard to secure?
Read this if you:
🐢 have any interest in Indigenous communities and their stories
🪳 love psychological horror with a spark of cheekiness
🌈 desperately want to understand and combat systemic prejudice
Oh, this book. It's perfect. With tears streaming down my face, I flipped the last page of this story and turned to my bewildered husband to accusatorially ask him what it's like to be a straight white man with no mental health issues. Poor guy. Don't worry, he took it well, he's used to me. Alice is a character I won't soon forget, and her story is impactful on multiple levels. She's a Mohawk woman living in a white community, AND she's struggling with her mental health, so the hits just keep on coming for our girl.
I always stumble when reviewing books I love the most, because it's so difficult to put into words the myriad of emotions I felt while reading. And Then She Fell is, according to its genre classification, a horror novel — and it is, in the classical sense, but it's horrific in other ways too. There is a ton of rage in here about being a woman, being Indigenous, and being oppressed in one way or another. It is an absolutely perfect combination, and I loved it more than I can express.
The last few lines of this book absolutely broke me. I hope you will give this story a read, and I hope that you love it as much as I do. Thank you to Alicia Elliott, Dutton Books, and NetGalley for my advance digital copy.
Read this if you:
🐢 have any interest in Indigenous communities and their stories
🪳 love psychological horror with a spark of cheekiness
🌈 desperately want to understand and combat systemic prejudice
Oh, this book. It's perfect. With tears streaming down my face, I flipped the last page of this story and turned to my bewildered husband to accusatorially ask him what it's like to be a straight white man with no mental health issues. Poor guy. Don't worry, he took it well, he's used to me. Alice is a character I won't soon forget, and her story is impactful on multiple levels. She's a Mohawk woman living in a white community, AND she's struggling with her mental health, so the hits just keep on coming for our girl.
I always stumble when reviewing books I love the most, because it's so difficult to put into words the myriad of emotions I felt while reading. And Then She Fell is, according to its genre classification, a horror novel — and it is, in the classical sense, but it's horrific in other ways too. There is a ton of rage in here about being a woman, being Indigenous, and being oppressed in one way or another. It is an absolutely perfect combination, and I loved it more than I can express.
The last few lines of this book absolutely broke me. I hope you will give this story a read, and I hope that you love it as much as I do. Thank you to Alicia Elliott, Dutton Books, and NetGalley for my advance digital copy.
March 24, 2024
And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott was a whirlwind of a reading experience. Indigenous motherhood and familial bonds, grief, addiction, mental illness, racism, Mohawk storytelling and the way this knowledge is preyed upon by colonial institutions are some of the subjects focused on throughout the novel.
The first portion follows Alice as she grapples with the loss of her mother and feeling out of place after leaving her community and moving to a predominately white neighborhood with her husband Steve and their baby Dawn. We witness Alice falling into the depths of something immense while trying to write a retelling of a Haudenosaunee creation story.
The latter half of the novel takes us to a uniquely miraculous climax which brought me to tears. Elliott ties everything together in such a brilliant way and as an Indigenous reader I was left ruminating on how ceremony, love and unbreakable bonds carry us through seas of intergenerational trauma. With that love we are never lost.
IG: thunderbirdwomanreads
The first portion follows Alice as she grapples with the loss of her mother and feeling out of place after leaving her community and moving to a predominately white neighborhood with her husband Steve and their baby Dawn. We witness Alice falling into the depths of something immense while trying to write a retelling of a Haudenosaunee creation story.
The latter half of the novel takes us to a uniquely miraculous climax which brought me to tears. Elliott ties everything together in such a brilliant way and as an Indigenous reader I was left ruminating on how ceremony, love and unbreakable bonds carry us through seas of intergenerational trauma. With that love we are never lost.
IG: thunderbirdwomanreads
April 28, 2023
This is not an easy book to read. The first half is basically a descent into madness of a young Mohawk woman who has married a white man, moved off the rez and had a baby. Starting at age 14, Alice has hallucinations (Pocahontas speaks to her through the TV). After having her baby, the voices and hallucinations come fast and furious, leaving her questioning if she can trust others, especially those closest to her.
The second half of the book is primarily a conversation between Alice and her granddaughter in the space-time web. As a writer, Alice is struggling to write what she believes to be her calling, a retelling of the Creation Story. Her conversation with her granddaughter is a complex, in depth look at Native lore and legend.
I enjoyed this book, even as I struggled to understand what was happening. It’s an important addition to Native literature, especially that related to womanhood, grief and the passing down of stories key to the Native culture. An original read.
Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing me with this e-ARC in exchange for my opinions.
The second half of the book is primarily a conversation between Alice and her granddaughter in the space-time web. As a writer, Alice is struggling to write what she believes to be her calling, a retelling of the Creation Story. Her conversation with her granddaughter is a complex, in depth look at Native lore and legend.
I enjoyed this book, even as I struggled to understand what was happening. It’s an important addition to Native literature, especially that related to womanhood, grief and the passing down of stories key to the Native culture. An original read.
Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing me with this e-ARC in exchange for my opinions.
April 26, 2023
Alice is a Mohawk Indian living away from the rez in Canada. She has just given birth to a beautiful baby named Dawn. She feels isolated and is suffering from imposter syndrome, postpartum depression and the everyday microaggressions she faces in an unfamiliar city.
What seems too good to be true may very well be as Alice begins to notice strange happenings related to her husband and neighbors. As more is revealed, Alice falls into a rabbit hole of her own making, or is it? Native legend and lore, loneliness, and so much more is encompassed in this brilliant and original work, If you are interested in reading more indigenous authors, love domestic fiction with a hint of horror or just want to read something truly original and unforgettable, And Then She Fell is for you!
To#Penguin #AndThenSheFell #AliciaElliot
What seems too good to be true may very well be as Alice begins to notice strange happenings related to her husband and neighbors. As more is revealed, Alice falls into a rabbit hole of her own making, or is it? Native legend and lore, loneliness, and so much more is encompassed in this brilliant and original work, If you are interested in reading more indigenous authors, love domestic fiction with a hint of horror or just want to read something truly original and unforgettable, And Then She Fell is for you!
To#Penguin #AndThenSheFell #AliciaElliot
September 1, 2023
There is a lot of good subject matter in this book. It really looks at motherhood, racism, harassment, cultural exclusion and extinction from the viewpoint of a woman who thinks she has it all.
I was pretty interested until a little over halfway in, it just became so far into left field and hard to follow. I ended up skimming through the end because I was so disenchanted. Bummed, but it just wasn’t for me.
I was pretty interested until a little over halfway in, it just became so far into left field and hard to follow. I ended up skimming through the end because I was so disenchanted. Bummed, but it just wasn’t for me.
![Profile Image for laurel [the suspected bibliophile].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1645808644i/7494844._UX200_CR0,6,200,200_.jpg)
March 14, 2024
I say this with all love and affection, but this book sent me plummeting into the darkness.
And then it lifted me back out.
And then it lifted me back out.
October 3, 2023
An incredible debut novel that tackles tough topics from motherhood, intergenerational trauma, authorship, mental health, interracial relationships and so much more!
I was a huge fan of Alicia Elliott before and I'm even more so now. She is incredibly talented and an author that is one to watch. I expect that this book will be nominated for many awards.
Good on audio too, I loved everything about this book, ESPECIALLY the cover!! Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!!
I was a huge fan of Alicia Elliott before and I'm even more so now. She is incredibly talented and an author that is one to watch. I expect that this book will be nominated for many awards.
Good on audio too, I loved everything about this book, ESPECIALLY the cover!! Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!!
September 20, 2023
At first I was worried that this might just be a weird idea that the author wasn’t really executing properly, like maybe it sounded fun as a concept but was starting off a bit shaky on the page. (Specifically, during the early scene when Pocahontas is talking to Alice through the TV, the dialogue felt off in more ways than one.) However, the more I read the more I got into the story. Some readers may take it as a plot that can be determined one of two ways: "Is the protagonist mentally collapsing, or are her hallucinations real?" Personally, I thought it was a strong portrayal of a woman's descent into madness, and an upsetting case of mental illness and Postpartum Depression that was left untreated until it completely tore her mind apart. But again, it is somewhat open to interpretation. There are both strong, visceral horror elements in this and quirky, magical realism moments.
What works well throughout the story is how stressful and claustrophobic the narration is. Alice's thought process is increasingly paranoid and worrisome as her condition worsens. You take the frightening journey with her, and the sense of dread is palpable because you know that things are likely to end badly. I was 100% on Alice’s side and felt her frustration during all of it, but she also did a couple of things that had me shaking my head. She wasn't perfect, but it definitely added to the stress. (And holy shit, there's a scene involving a neighbor harassing her that's so realistic and maddening and I felt SO bad for her.)
This was feeling like a solid four star book until I got to the last 20% and the tone switched from horror to sci-fi/fantasy. It was jarring and the ending didn't really work for me personally. It felt like a completely different novel. I liked the experience up until that point. It was harrowing, upsetting and a stark portrayal of the world we live in. This story did make me feel for new mothers that are struggling with Postpartum, and not only that but Alice is also dealing with living in a racist neighborhood with a white husband that isn't exactly listening to her concerns. The action, while a tiny bit confusing at times, is a great example of building tension and allowing you to see the thought process of a person who thinks everyone in her life is against her. I think this author is talented and I would definitely read her again! 3.5 stars for this one.
Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an ARC!
TW: Postpartum Depression, Substance abuse, suicide, Racism, gaslighting, imagery of infant harm
What works well throughout the story is how stressful and claustrophobic the narration is. Alice's thought process is increasingly paranoid and worrisome as her condition worsens. You take the frightening journey with her, and the sense of dread is palpable because you know that things are likely to end badly. I was 100% on Alice’s side and felt her frustration during all of it, but she also did a couple of things that had me shaking my head. She wasn't perfect, but it definitely added to the stress. (And holy shit, there's a scene involving a neighbor harassing her that's so realistic and maddening and I felt SO bad for her.)
This was feeling like a solid four star book until I got to the last 20% and the tone switched from horror to sci-fi/fantasy. It was jarring and the ending didn't really work for me personally. It felt like a completely different novel. I liked the experience up until that point. It was harrowing, upsetting and a stark portrayal of the world we live in. This story did make me feel for new mothers that are struggling with Postpartum, and not only that but Alice is also dealing with living in a racist neighborhood with a white husband that isn't exactly listening to her concerns. The action, while a tiny bit confusing at times, is a great example of building tension and allowing you to see the thought process of a person who thinks everyone in her life is against her. I think this author is talented and I would definitely read her again! 3.5 stars for this one.
Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an ARC!
TW: Postpartum Depression, Substance abuse, suicide, Racism, gaslighting, imagery of infant harm
June 23, 2024
Damn, I don’t think I can write a review that’s going to do this book justice. It’s not just because I’m a white woman, and I’m going to miss a thousand little elements that Alicia Elliott has put in her for her fellow Indigenous readers. It’s not just because I read this weeks ago and am behind on writing reviews, so my memory has faded a bit. No, it’s mostly because And Then She Fell is just one of those novels, the ones where I feel like I, as a reader, have let it down. I’m awestruck by it, and I’m not sure I have the words. This is a must-read (with the caveat that it is very heavy and triggering, of course, especially for racialized readers), and it’s a sign, following on from her essay collection, that Elliott deserves a spot in the new canon of CanLit (with the caveat that I am not sure such a canon, with all of its nationalist undertones, is a desirable or useful thing any more).
Alice is a Haudenosaunee woman from Six Nations who has just had a baby, Dawn, and is nominally working on a novel that retells the Haudenosaunee creation story. Her husband, Steve, is tenure track at a university in Toronto. He and Alice have just moved into a beautiful house in a neighbourhood where no one looks like Alice. As she endures microaggressions and postpartum depression, Alice looks back on a series of strange incidents in her life. Was she just hearing voices? Was she hearing her ancestors or spirits? Is she paranoid, or is her next-door neighbour out to get her and have Children’s Aid Society take away her kid? At times a thriller, at times a deeply personal story of mental illness and trauma, And Then She Fell is always, always a story about how our choices in responding to the world shape us.
Elliott does interesting things with perspective. The prologue is told from a limited third-person point of view, carrying us through Alice’s early life on the reserve, her narrow avoidance of an encounter with a fuckboy named Mason, thanks to the strange incident where Pocahontas (from the Disney Pocahontas) speaks directly to her from the television. Then the novel shifts to first person. As Alice’s mental illness worsens, her narration becomes increasingly unreliable: did she really run into Mason? Did Steve really say those things, did he mean it the way Alice interprets it? There are enough jagged breaks in the narrative that Elliott has us questioning every event, every detail, wondering what is “real” and what isn’t. Then again, this book might very well be saying that “reality” is an overrated concept.
Women are, of course, less readily taken seriously than men in our society. This goes double for Indigenous women. And Then She Fell is a story about women, about Indigenous women, and the bonds between them. All the major characters in this story are women, from Alice herself to her aunties and cousins, daughter, descendant. The men, even Steve, are secondary. They exist on the periphery of these events and are not a part of the fabric of meaning-making of them. Similarly, Elliott draws a boundary between Alice’s femme relations and the white women she often finds herself surrounded by.
Elliott pulls no punches in describing the relentless thrum of racism running through Alice’s days. Less big events and more microaggressions, Alice details what it feels like to move through her neighbourhood as a visibly Indigenous woman. The judgment, the double standards, especially around how she looks, what she buys at a liquor store, how she parents her children. Elliott lays bare the myriad ways that Canada, despite its pledges of reconciliation, continues to police Indigenous women. Probably one of the most visceral experiences reading this book as a white woman is feeling how Alice has to have her shields up 24/7, especially now that she lives off reserve. There’s no escape.
One of the questions beating within the heart of this story is, to what extent does intergenerational trauma influence one’s mental health and stability? Mental illness affects people of all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Yet not everyone has the same family history of enduring centuries of colonialism. When your people have undergone gaslighting on a generational scale, that’s a whole different type of trauma. How much of Alice’s unravelling is genetic, environmental, intergenerational? Can we even parse it out in that way, and if we can, should we?
As Alice’s postpartum depression deepens and her and Steve start to drift further apart, I found myself wishing things would work out between them. I wanted this book to have a happy ending. I wanted there to be some kind of revelation at the climax that would help Alice turn it all around. While I won’t spoil the ending for you, I feel safe warning you that Elliott doesn’t let us off that easy. Which is for the best. This book has teeth, teeth which it has no problem sinking into you, dear reader, and which will not let you go.
To say that the final act of And Then She Fell has a twist is an understatement. The twist transcends genre. I think many people will compare it to something like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse for how Elliott describes things, which is apt. Nevertheless I was more reminded of Jo Walton’s My Real Children. In this final act, Elliott hammers home the theme lurking beneath this entire story: life isn’t about working towards some indefinite “happy” ending; life is everything we get, the good and the bad, and there is no way to pull it apart and optimize for the good.
In a way it reminds me of that famous speech at the end of “Vincent and the Doctor,” where the Doctor tells Amy that life is a series of good things and bad things, and you hope that the good outweighs the bad. Except Elliott takes this one step further, admonishes us that sometimes the good doesn’t outweigh the bad. Sometimes a life sucks, but it is and was, and if we could go back and change that, it wouldn’t be our life anymore. This might feel fatalist, but I think it might be more appropriate to call it circular. In the end, Alice’s story (by which I mean her life) overlaps with the creation story she is trying to work up the nerve to tell.
I really … I really appreciate this message. Again, that might feel weird given how addicted our culture is to the idea that “everything [should be] awesome.” This theme grounds me. I’m entering my mid-thirties, and I’m really starting to coming to terms with the fact that I am an adult and this is my life. I look back and wonder what I might have done differently, and I look forward and wonder what I might try to do in the future. And it’s so tempting to try to optimize my happiness. So I need art that grabs me by the collar and pulls me back and says, “No, Kara. You can’t do that.” Not shouldn’t. Can’t. Can’t be done.
This is the brilliance of Alicia Elliott’s first novel: the layers. It’s about mental illness, about racism, about connection and isolation. It’s about choices and what we leave for our descendants. It’s about who we are in relation to our wider society, and the responsibilities we have for telling stories with accuracy and grace. It’s about all of these things, speaks on all of these levels, and more spectacularly, it never stumbles, not once.
I never thought I would write this sentence, but my favourite part of this book was the cockroaches.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews.
Alice is a Haudenosaunee woman from Six Nations who has just had a baby, Dawn, and is nominally working on a novel that retells the Haudenosaunee creation story. Her husband, Steve, is tenure track at a university in Toronto. He and Alice have just moved into a beautiful house in a neighbourhood where no one looks like Alice. As she endures microaggressions and postpartum depression, Alice looks back on a series of strange incidents in her life. Was she just hearing voices? Was she hearing her ancestors or spirits? Is she paranoid, or is her next-door neighbour out to get her and have Children’s Aid Society take away her kid? At times a thriller, at times a deeply personal story of mental illness and trauma, And Then She Fell is always, always a story about how our choices in responding to the world shape us.
Elliott does interesting things with perspective. The prologue is told from a limited third-person point of view, carrying us through Alice’s early life on the reserve, her narrow avoidance of an encounter with a fuckboy named Mason, thanks to the strange incident where Pocahontas (from the Disney Pocahontas) speaks directly to her from the television. Then the novel shifts to first person. As Alice’s mental illness worsens, her narration becomes increasingly unreliable: did she really run into Mason? Did Steve really say those things, did he mean it the way Alice interprets it? There are enough jagged breaks in the narrative that Elliott has us questioning every event, every detail, wondering what is “real” and what isn’t. Then again, this book might very well be saying that “reality” is an overrated concept.
Women are, of course, less readily taken seriously than men in our society. This goes double for Indigenous women. And Then She Fell is a story about women, about Indigenous women, and the bonds between them. All the major characters in this story are women, from Alice herself to her aunties and cousins, daughter, descendant. The men, even Steve, are secondary. They exist on the periphery of these events and are not a part of the fabric of meaning-making of them. Similarly, Elliott draws a boundary between Alice’s femme relations and the white women she often finds herself surrounded by.
Elliott pulls no punches in describing the relentless thrum of racism running through Alice’s days. Less big events and more microaggressions, Alice details what it feels like to move through her neighbourhood as a visibly Indigenous woman. The judgment, the double standards, especially around how she looks, what she buys at a liquor store, how she parents her children. Elliott lays bare the myriad ways that Canada, despite its pledges of reconciliation, continues to police Indigenous women. Probably one of the most visceral experiences reading this book as a white woman is feeling how Alice has to have her shields up 24/7, especially now that she lives off reserve. There’s no escape.
One of the questions beating within the heart of this story is, to what extent does intergenerational trauma influence one’s mental health and stability? Mental illness affects people of all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Yet not everyone has the same family history of enduring centuries of colonialism. When your people have undergone gaslighting on a generational scale, that’s a whole different type of trauma. How much of Alice’s unravelling is genetic, environmental, intergenerational? Can we even parse it out in that way, and if we can, should we?
As Alice’s postpartum depression deepens and her and Steve start to drift further apart, I found myself wishing things would work out between them. I wanted this book to have a happy ending. I wanted there to be some kind of revelation at the climax that would help Alice turn it all around. While I won’t spoil the ending for you, I feel safe warning you that Elliott doesn’t let us off that easy. Which is for the best. This book has teeth, teeth which it has no problem sinking into you, dear reader, and which will not let you go.
To say that the final act of And Then She Fell has a twist is an understatement. The twist transcends genre. I think many people will compare it to something like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse for how Elliott describes things, which is apt. Nevertheless I was more reminded of Jo Walton’s My Real Children. In this final act, Elliott hammers home the theme lurking beneath this entire story: life isn’t about working towards some indefinite “happy” ending; life is everything we get, the good and the bad, and there is no way to pull it apart and optimize for the good.
In a way it reminds me of that famous speech at the end of “Vincent and the Doctor,” where the Doctor tells Amy that life is a series of good things and bad things, and you hope that the good outweighs the bad. Except Elliott takes this one step further, admonishes us that sometimes the good doesn’t outweigh the bad. Sometimes a life sucks, but it is and was, and if we could go back and change that, it wouldn’t be our life anymore. This might feel fatalist, but I think it might be more appropriate to call it circular. In the end, Alice’s story (by which I mean her life) overlaps with the creation story she is trying to work up the nerve to tell.
I really … I really appreciate this message. Again, that might feel weird given how addicted our culture is to the idea that “everything [should be] awesome.” This theme grounds me. I’m entering my mid-thirties, and I’m really starting to coming to terms with the fact that I am an adult and this is my life. I look back and wonder what I might have done differently, and I look forward and wonder what I might try to do in the future. And it’s so tempting to try to optimize my happiness. So I need art that grabs me by the collar and pulls me back and says, “No, Kara. You can’t do that.” Not shouldn’t. Can’t. Can’t be done.
This is the brilliance of Alicia Elliott’s first novel: the layers. It’s about mental illness, about racism, about connection and isolation. It’s about choices and what we leave for our descendants. It’s about who we are in relation to our wider society, and the responsibilities we have for telling stories with accuracy and grace. It’s about all of these things, speaks on all of these levels, and more spectacularly, it never stumbles, not once.
I never thought I would write this sentence, but my favourite part of this book was the cockroaches.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews.
September 26, 2023
The questions that animate And Then She Fell are genuinely compelling: How is the way we understand mental illness a product of our cultural beliefs? How does racism erode not only a person's sense of self but also their sanity? Alice, the narrator, has just given birth, and the novel details her experience of postpartum psychosis as translated through the cultural understanding of her Mohawk ancestry and exacerbated by the racism she experiences as an Indigenous woman in a predominantly white Toronto neighborhood. Her efforts to bond with her infant daughter are complicated by the ways she feels she failed her own mother and by her husband's insistence that she eschew her family's offers of assistance in order to become a self sufficient mother.
Elliott is working with fascinating material here, and I'll keep an eye out for her future work. That said, this novel didn't work for me structurally, and I found reading it slow going. At the beginning, the novel is claustrophobically internal, comprised almost entirely of Alice's thoughts about her current situation and the events of her past that led her there. Despite her worries that she's losing her mind, Alice's understanding of systemic racism and the drug epidemic is so thorough that it feels borderline didactic. As Alice's grip on reality begins to slip, her experience of racism sharpens into something darker, and she begins to believe that everyone she knows is entangled in a plot to separate her from her daughter. This section is compelling in its exploration of the uncertain territory between truth and paranoia: Alice IS experiencing racism, but she can't separate potential allies (her cousin and aunt) from adversaries (her husband, who doesn't believe her, his colleagues, etc.). Rather than tracing this spiral to its conclusion, though, the novel jumps to another perspective entirely, and we shift from psychological horror to something closer to science fiction. Other readers might be able to make this jump more seamlessly than me, but the lack of structural coherence detracted from my enjoyment of the novel.
Elliott is working with fascinating material here, and I'll keep an eye out for her future work. That said, this novel didn't work for me structurally, and I found reading it slow going. At the beginning, the novel is claustrophobically internal, comprised almost entirely of Alice's thoughts about her current situation and the events of her past that led her there. Despite her worries that she's losing her mind, Alice's understanding of systemic racism and the drug epidemic is so thorough that it feels borderline didactic. As Alice's grip on reality begins to slip, her experience of racism sharpens into something darker, and she begins to believe that everyone she knows is entangled in a plot to separate her from her daughter. This section is compelling in its exploration of the uncertain territory between truth and paranoia: Alice IS experiencing racism, but she can't separate potential allies (her cousin and aunt) from adversaries (her husband, who doesn't believe her, his colleagues, etc.). Rather than tracing this spiral to its conclusion, though, the novel jumps to another perspective entirely, and we shift from psychological horror to something closer to science fiction. Other readers might be able to make this jump more seamlessly than me, but the lack of structural coherence detracted from my enjoyment of the novel.
April 6, 2024
I liked this one. I think it got a little bogged down and repetitive in the middle. It definitely felt for awhile like it wasn’t going anywhere, and I had tor resist the urge to DNF, but the ending was worth pushing through for.
This is a story about a new mother and new wife, Alice, who is a Mohawk woman in Canada that grew up on a reservation. She recently married Steve, who is white, and also is grieving her mother, whose death she feels she is at least partially responsible for.
There’s just a lot going on in this book. It’s talking about mental health, post partum life, addiction, racism, sexism, the list goes on. There is quite a bit of magical realism employed in the telling of this story which I always enjoy and I thought the writing was fine.
The ending was beautiful and full of hope, even if a little ambiguous in its telling of the events that happen just before.
A worthy contender of the women’s prize for sure.
This is a story about a new mother and new wife, Alice, who is a Mohawk woman in Canada that grew up on a reservation. She recently married Steve, who is white, and also is grieving her mother, whose death she feels she is at least partially responsible for.
There’s just a lot going on in this book. It’s talking about mental health, post partum life, addiction, racism, sexism, the list goes on. There is quite a bit of magical realism employed in the telling of this story which I always enjoy and I thought the writing was fine.
The ending was beautiful and full of hope, even if a little ambiguous in its telling of the events that happen just before.
A worthy contender of the women’s prize for sure.
September 28, 2023
Alicia Elliot is just amazing. Not only was this a super entertaining story, but its parallel to the Haudenosaunee creation story of Sky Woman, which was told concurrently to Alice's, was so interesting and cleverly done. Based on the cover and description I thought it would be much more unhinged, and the contrast between the relatively subdued first 3/4 versus the totally surreal last 1/4 of the book was a little jarring. This is the only reason why this wasn't a five star read for me - I wish we spent more time with the 'shape' (that's all I'm gonna say to avoid spoilers!) because this section was mind-bending and so beautiful, but overall this was an insightful read that I'd highly recommend!
June 2, 2024
My feelings are really mixed on this one. I don't like scary movies and reading this rich, evocative, detailed spiral into postpartum psychosis was harrowing, and, if I'm honest, unpleasant in the ways that keep me away from those movies. I finished and feel haunted. That does not even touch the additional discrimination against indigenous women, the thin membrane between our linear world and the spirit and timeless world or the parallel stories toward the end.
It was just a lot to handle for me even while I recognized the quality of both writing and content. This might be case of the wrong book at the wrong time for me.
It was just a lot to handle for me even while I recognized the quality of both writing and content. This might be case of the wrong book at the wrong time for me.
September 24, 2023
DNF @ 50%. I let this percolate for a week and found I have no interest in going back to it. I'm not into books or characters where there are obvious mental health issues and they are brushed off. In this case, the main character being told she's just like her grandmother and not one person suggests maybe she should talk to a professional (she's talking to a fictional Pocohontas and that's "normal"??).
I wanted to love it and tried to push through, but I just can't do it
I wanted to love it and tried to push through, but I just can't do it
November 5, 2023
Wow, I can't believe I haven't heard more about this book. I picked it up on a whim when my Goodreads friend Lark gave it 5 stars. It's a fantastic story--so beautifully told, incorporating so many issues seamlessly. I hope more people read this.
May 13, 2024
I was really enjoying this but then it went the way of too much magic realism and lost some of its spark
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