Author(s): Susan Johnson

General Fiction

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 'Two deep, bright, razor-sharp women at opposite ends of the earth tearing the band-aids off their souls, exposing truths and lies buried beneath marriage, motherhood and the sacrificial siege of mid-to-late-life maintenance. This is Susan Johnson at her most original, daring, bone-deep and deliciously raw. I fell, too, with aching heart and tickled rib, under the spell of this extraordinary book.' TRENT DALTON 'In a strikingly original reimagining of an epistolary novel, Susan Johnson creates two voices that echo and reverberate long after the final, heart-wrenching pages. Her best yet.' GERALDINE BROOKS An anguished email from Pamela Robinson in Australia to her ex-husband in Paris accidentally ends up in the inbox of New York State teacher Chrisanthi Woods. Chrisanthi is sympathetic to Pamela's struggles and the women begin to tell each other the stories and secrets of their lives. Pamela, responsible for raising her three sons, must re-invent the meaning of home following her divorce, and Chrisanthi, her dreams long dampened, must find home by leaving it. Temperamental opposites, their emails turn into an exhilarating and provocative exchange of love, loss and fresh beginnings, by turns amusing, frank and confronting. 'Witty, warm, heartbreaking and honest - an audacious masterpiece from one of Australia's best writers.' NIKKI GEMMELL 'Few novelists working today can match Susan Johnson's uncanny ability to map both the joys and horrors of the human heart and to wrestle the ebb and flow of life to the page. From Where I Fell teems with regret, eruptions of joy, the complexities of motherhood, the power of memory, the pain of divorce and dashed and gained dreams.' MATTHEW CONDON   

Matilda Bookshop Review

Tender and explosive by turns, this novel is an excavation of memory, life/death, parenting, and mid-life told via an unlikely (and accidental) friendship. A contemporary take on the epistolary (narrative through letters) this provocative story unfolds as an email exchange between two women living at opposite ends of the earth. Their anonymity allows for deep and complex truths to emerge between them about their desires, sorrows and faultlines. I found this an unexpectedly compelling read. Molly