The Shock of the Fall: WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2013

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Filer was a mental health nurse who has worked as a researcher in the academic unit of psychiatry at the University of Bristol, and on in-patient psychiatric wards. Anyone can have a fall, but older people are more vulnerable and likely to fall, especially if they have a long-term health condition.

Filer presents someone helpless in the face of his grief, a burden he can't share with his own sweet, damaged parents. "Mental illness turns people inwards," Matthew remarks. The novel was first published in the UK on 9 May 2013, by HarperCollins Publishers. It was originally published in the United States by St. Martin's Press under the title Where the Moon Isn't. [1]

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I had filled hundreds of bottles and jars with earth, connecting groups of them together with plastic tubing. The hydrogens were already up and running – they’re the easiest to build – a single proton and a single electron … The oxygens took more work, two electrons in the first shell, and six in the outer shell. Then I would pair them up, colliding a pair of electrons from each to make the covalent bonds. This often smashed the glass, so most of the ants had escaped. The carpet was crawling with them. Moreover, the experience that Nathan Filer has gained as a mental health nurse is apparent through his irreverent treatment of the subject matter. He does not idealise the staff or the patients, both of them have good days and bad days and this was remarkably refreshing. I could not deny that I did not gain something from the text, but it was also pleasant to find that an author did not shove his or her ideology down my throat to the extent that the book merely appeared distasteful. Even better was that Filer managed to inject sharp bursts of humour which cut through what could otherwise be an oppressive narrative to entertain and make the work somehow more real. What I mean is, was the point of the novel about a person coming to terms with a traumatic childhood experience or about someone dealing with mental illness, and if so, why have these two unconnected elements side by side - what’s the reader supposed to focus on? I guess given the way the novel ended, it was about Matt coming to terms with his brother’s death, but what that has to do with his schizophrenia is unclear. Did he even need to have schizophrenia? Maybe the hallucinatory sequences wouldn’t have had as much weight if he did, but what a contrived reason to have that illness if that was the point! If the tap choked and spluttered before the water came, he was saying I’m lonely. When I opened a bottle of Dr Pepper and the caramel bubbles fizzed over the rim, he was asking me to come out and play. He could speak through an itch, the certainty of a sneeze, the after-taste of tablets, or the way sugar fell from a spoon. These scenes are a small part of the novel, though. Matthew is a convincing and painfully haunted character.

The descriptions of family life before and after the tragedy are bittersweet and wonderfully etched, especially Matthew's relationship with his nan and his sole friend, Jacob. The tragedy, when it is fully revealed, is stark. Chilton, Martin (7 January 2014). "A haunting and powerful take on guilt, death and mental illness". The Telegraph . Retrieved 15 April 2019. One of my more unique reads this one, I was wary of the hype around it, but really enjoyed reading it. I love the way the book is written, for a debut novel it's quite exceptional, it's an emotion stirring book and thought provoking too. Filer was born in Bristol in 1980. He attended the Ridings High School, a large secondary school located in the village of Winterbourne in South Gloucestershire. [5] In 2002 he trained as a psychiatric nurse gaining a first class degree in Mental Health Nursing from the University of the West of England [6] and later worked in mental health research at the University of Bristol. [7]

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But older women are most at risk because osteoporosis is often associated with the hormonal changes that occur during the menopause. Preventing a fall It can develop in both men and women, particularly in people who smoke, drink excessive amounts of alcohol, take steroid medicine, or have a family history of hip fractures. a b Jones, Thomas (20 February 2014). "This is not a ghost story". London Review of Books. 36 (4): 33. I thought I would only write a three line bah-humbug review, but the sheer skill with which every single word was chosen has made the crabbiness I felt linger in my mind for… hours.

It's a story about a family coming to terms with grief and it is a character study of Matthew Holmes and one of the things about him is that he's got schizophrenia. But it's not a novel about schizophrenia and it's not a novel about the NHS," said the author. Wow, fire that blurb writer! For days you say?! Sheer skill? I suppose with not so much skill a book will only linger for minutes. So yeah, they still crank out this silly OTT hypegloop.)The book is supposedly revelations of how it really is to be schizophrenic and what life in a mental institution is really like and the author is a mental nurse so he knows. As the book has won many awards I was expecting the writing to be better than competent. Perhaps I was expecting too much having just read the searingly brilliant Man Booker prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings. a b c "UWE awards Honorary Degree to Nathan Filer". University of the West of England. 23 July 2015 . Retrieved 12 August 2015.