This is one of those books whose star rating on Goodreads I swithered over. I went for 3, but it could be 4, or perhaps a 3.5. It was one of those books that some days I picked up and absolutely adored, other days I couldn’t get in to it, distracted by other tales clattering around in my head.
However, having now written my review, I realize I actually really did love this book and 3 is definitely too low!
This is an epic tale that not only takes in some extraordinarily well wrought characters but also swathes of world history.
Tooley has spent the last few years running a failing bookshop in an obscure corner of Wales. She tries to avoid as much human interaction as possible, settling instead for her books and her assistant Fogg, who let’s be honest, brings enough entertainment for anyone (and who I wish featured more). This reluctance to bond is explained by her past, the one thing she is trying to avoid:
“Friends required a life story. Your past mattered only if others sought to know it – it was they who demanded that one possessed a history. Alone, you could do without.”
But Tooley must face this past, summoned to the States by an ex-boyfriend in order to visit her ailing father, she wonders who this father could be. En route, and during this visit she must face the extraordinary people of her past and try to piece together the mysterious events of the present.
There is a lot to take in with this book and it does demand your full attention. There is a lot of time jumping and some of the historical aspects are written in a lot of detail. I did spend a little of my more grumpy moments going “do I really need to hear every moment of every wing flap that ever happened?” But I ate a biscuit and got over it, because history, and our perceived place in it, are the foundations of this book, so I advise you to stick with it and get absorbed.
For all the long-winded, scene setting passages, the characters are startling (perhaps because Rachman spent such time drawing out their pasts) and as the players in Tooley’s life dance in and out of time, you will question again and again what the truth really is.
What unravels is a deliciously woven story, the ending of which had me welling up and fanning my warmed heart against explosion. This story will make you think about what makes you up as a person, how much does the past play in who we are, how much molding do we allow other people, and what is left of us when the illusions of those who shaped us shatter?
The Rise and Fall is also a testament to bookshops, by the end you will be rooting for Tooley’s business and bookselling as a whole. So much of what makes up these characters (and probably most of you reading this) are the books they read, so if you really want to read this book (and you should), go and buy the physical copy from a bookshop (she says, having got an e-version for free).
I do, however, stand by my own feelings that have developed this past year over the ownership of books, and how most of what we hang on to could and should be passed on as much as possible to fresh, eager hands, but this is too beautiful a quote not to mention:
“People kept their books, she thought, not because they were likely to read them again, but because these objects contained the past—the texture of being oneself at a particular place, at a particular time, each volume a piece of one’s intellect, whether the work itself had been loved or despised or had induced a snooze on page forty”
This image also jars brilliantly with the technology laden, and apparently book-free, family Tooley stays with in America. There is a wonderful moment where Tooley discusses this with another character and Rachman bashes the nail on the head with the painful truth of what we are all becoming:
“No robots marched in to enslave humanity. What happened was far more ingenious…People just handed over their brains”
I read that in a coffee shop yesterday afternoon and looking up to take it in, I was met by the sight of a room full of people 90% of which had their head’s slumped down in their laps, brains hooked up to their phones. It was all I could do not to get up and run away screaming, but I was meeting someone, so only polite too stay.
This is a warm, epic, questioning book that also had very, very funny moments. I highly recommend it for those ironic feelings of detachment that are beginning to fester in our highly connected world. I’m off to change that pesky Goodreads rating now.
Book info:
- ISBN: 9781444752342
- Hodder & Stoughton, May 29th 2014
- Sent review copy through Netgalley
