The Free Fall

3.9/5 ( ratings)

A brilliant debut novel that perfectly captures a teenager s struggle to stay real.

"I suppose the whole thing began with me looking for the shine. That s what I used to call that trippy kind of grace some people just seem to be born with."
Jane Ratcliffe s debut novel perfectly captures the voice of a girl turning sixteen in a wealthy suburb of Detroit. By turns funny, perceptive, innocent and yearning for experience, Let is a character you immediately feel you know. Let s family lives by its own rules and routines which Henry, an irresistible nineteen-year-old with "cheekbones like a mad dog" totally disrupts. He leads Let on a wild ride of drugs and sex, and when Let meets Ryder, who is half wise beyond his years, and half lost boy warehoused at an exclusive private school, she is fully in the free fall. Older teenagers are eagerly responding to books that tell the truth about coming of age, which is not so much bleak as it is beautiful, terrifying and dream-like. In The Free Fall, Jane Ratcliffe announces herself as one of the new generation of fearless yet lyrical chroniclers of coming-of-age. Jane Ratcliffe writes about music for VH1, Interview, American Music Guide, HOUR Detroit, and the Detroit News and is currently pursuing an MFA at Columbia University. She is also collaborating on a screenplay with documentary filmmaker Sue Cohn. She is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist, takes in about every stray cat she passes and thinks life will end shortly if she doesn t get to travel. She lives in New York City.