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Ulysses Dietz's Reviews > The Deadliest Fall
The Deadliest Fall
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The Deadliest Fall
By Charlie Cochrane
Riptide Press, 2023
Five stars
What I love about Charlie Cochrane’s books is that they’re so very British. I mean, she is British, but part of her charm for this American reader is that she embraces the individuality of her small-town characters. In this book, that Britishness is emphatic, because it’s set in 1947, just two years after the end of World War II.
Leslie Cadmore, walking his naughty labrador Max in the park near his mother’s house, happens to run across two young women, one of whom is a childhood friend he hasn’t seen in years. His chance meeting of Marianne Sibley, who is then invited by his mother to tea, opens a veritable Pandora’s Box of memories, questions, and regrets.
At the center of this is Leslie’s five-year rift with Marianne’s twin brother Patrick, another childhood friend who had been his lover for years before a stupid argument broke them up. That argument was triggered by the sudden death of a mutual acquaintance of theirs, a death that was ruled an accident. Leslie is not so sure, and his tea with Marianne sets off a chain of little events that lead to conversations that lead to something bigger, deeper, and darker than any of them ever imagined.
The restrained, stiff-upper-lip quality of Cochrane’s writing for this book is spot-on. This is not the England of today, but a world hardly remembered now, as people were putting their lives back together after the war dislocation and destruction. The world was still full of Victorians and Edwardians, and their influence held sway in English life.
This is the tipping point between modern Great Britain and the old Great Britain, when everyone was polite and circumspect—and love between two men was still something that could send you to prison. Cochrane captures that nostalgic primness, in language and behavior, while also depicting the growing cracks in the social strictures of the past that would eventually shatter and fall away.
Leslie reconnects with Patrick in order to discuss difficult questions about the past, and finds in his old friend the same regrets that he himself feels. Together, they start a quiet dance of inquiry and honesty, asking questions and having conversations previously suppressed by circumstance.
It’s a beautiful story, beautifully rendered by an author who sees the past in living color.
By Charlie Cochrane
Riptide Press, 2023
Five stars
What I love about Charlie Cochrane’s books is that they’re so very British. I mean, she is British, but part of her charm for this American reader is that she embraces the individuality of her small-town characters. In this book, that Britishness is emphatic, because it’s set in 1947, just two years after the end of World War II.
Leslie Cadmore, walking his naughty labrador Max in the park near his mother’s house, happens to run across two young women, one of whom is a childhood friend he hasn’t seen in years. His chance meeting of Marianne Sibley, who is then invited by his mother to tea, opens a veritable Pandora’s Box of memories, questions, and regrets.
At the center of this is Leslie’s five-year rift with Marianne’s twin brother Patrick, another childhood friend who had been his lover for years before a stupid argument broke them up. That argument was triggered by the sudden death of a mutual acquaintance of theirs, a death that was ruled an accident. Leslie is not so sure, and his tea with Marianne sets off a chain of little events that lead to conversations that lead to something bigger, deeper, and darker than any of them ever imagined.
The restrained, stiff-upper-lip quality of Cochrane’s writing for this book is spot-on. This is not the England of today, but a world hardly remembered now, as people were putting their lives back together after the war dislocation and destruction. The world was still full of Victorians and Edwardians, and their influence held sway in English life.
This is the tipping point between modern Great Britain and the old Great Britain, when everyone was polite and circumspect—and love between two men was still something that could send you to prison. Cochrane captures that nostalgic primness, in language and behavior, while also depicting the growing cracks in the social strictures of the past that would eventually shatter and fall away.
Leslie reconnects with Patrick in order to discuss difficult questions about the past, and finds in his old friend the same regrets that he himself feels. Together, they start a quiet dance of inquiry and honesty, asking questions and having conversations previously suppressed by circumstance.
It’s a beautiful story, beautifully rendered by an author who sees the past in living color.
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Reading Progress
September 24, 2024
– Shelved
September 25, 2024
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Started Reading
