“Everyone’s house is built of cobwebs and ghosts – as St Augustine says, the dead are invisible – they are not absent …”

 

This pile used to be trees, Geilston Bay. May 2021.

From Where I Fell by Susan Johnson

To this reader, the greatest challenge for the epistolary novel is to create engaging characters who engender enough sympathy (or at least interest in their lives) to hold a reader's interest. Unfortunately, From Where I Fell did not work for me. In the urbane Australian global citizen Pamela, I found a character far too cloying and needy to really connect with. Her accidental e-mail pen-pal Greek-American homebody Chrisanthi is a brash, fussy and outspoken counterpart. I found it more a case of tedious back and forth over tidbits of broken and dispirited lives in what may be an attempt to generate a kind of' opposites attract' spark. It picked up a little bit towards the end, and we move towards something like activation and reconciliation in the lives of both women. I commend Johnson for her bravery in pulling off that ending, but I must confess that I didn't enjoy the journey. ⭐ ⭐