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A review by apechild
Love Falls by Esther Freud
4.0
I did really enjoy this book, so it´s probably going to be one of hers that I hang on to. She´s great at writing about childhood. In this case it´s about a 17 year old girl. OK, older, but from what happens in the book, you can see that she´s still growing up and in distinctly naive and insecure in certain areas.
Lara, our main character, lives with her mum in London (standard hippy mum who brought up child as single parent in hippy places around the world - this is basically the same mother who seems to appear in all Freud´s books that I have read). Her father, who is a live-alone academic type, decides to go to Italy to stay with a dying friend, and he invites Lara along. This story is about their weeks in Italy.
Love Falls is a waterfall site that they visit a couple of times. But it´s probably also a reflection on the book, as she´s growing up during this period, and I think becoming disillushioned with the idea of romantic love - in that seeing that it doesn´t work like a fairy tale, people are complex and some have affairs, some simply can´t do long term relationships etc... SPOILERS... one thing that was a little frustrating was the rape and the lack of action or conclusion to it afterwards. Almost like it was one of those things you have to do growing up, and it´s not a big deal. She doesn´t put up much protest when it´s happening and is really quite inert - as I said, I think she´s still a naive child in a lot of ways - but nothing happens afterwards. The guy who did it is part of the insanely rich group that Lara and her father spend some time with. They use people like entertainment toys, and there isn´t much human compassion amoungst them. So this guy who rapes her is really is nasty piece of work, a predator taking advantage of this girl he knew was too lacking in confidence to stop him. And yet he shows no remorse afterwards and he doesn´t get his comupance, which is very annoying. So in a way, the book is left a bit randomly open ended.
Lara, our main character, lives with her mum in London (standard hippy mum who brought up child as single parent in hippy places around the world - this is basically the same mother who seems to appear in all Freud´s books that I have read). Her father, who is a live-alone academic type, decides to go to Italy to stay with a dying friend, and he invites Lara along. This story is about their weeks in Italy.
Love Falls is a waterfall site that they visit a couple of times. But it´s probably also a reflection on the book, as she´s growing up during this period, and I think becoming disillushioned with the idea of romantic love - in that seeing that it doesn´t work like a fairy tale, people are complex and some have affairs, some simply can´t do long term relationships etc... SPOILERS... one thing that was a little frustrating was the rape and the lack of action or conclusion to it afterwards. Almost like it was one of those things you have to do growing up, and it´s not a big deal. She doesn´t put up much protest when it´s happening and is really quite inert - as I said, I think she´s still a naive child in a lot of ways - but nothing happens afterwards. The guy who did it is part of the insanely rich group that Lara and her father spend some time with. They use people like entertainment toys, and there isn´t much human compassion amoungst them. So this guy who rapes her is really is nasty piece of work, a predator taking advantage of this girl he knew was too lacking in confidence to stop him. And yet he shows no remorse afterwards and he doesn´t get his comupance, which is very annoying. So in a way, the book is left a bit randomly open ended.