Saturday, February 25, 2012

FREE FALL





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Free Fall, William Golding, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1959, 253 pp


I finished this book three weeks ago. I kept no notes as I read it and was enduring various major family and physical issues at the time. All I remember is that it moved me, it spoke to me. It was his most accessible book so far (I am reading Golding's books in the order that he wrote them.)

A man who was born in poverty to a mother supporting herself by prostitution, who found himself an orphan at five years old or so, who became a successful painter, looks back over his life. He wants to discover when he lost his freedom, his power of choice.

What was extremely interesting to me was that he survived all manner of horrific incidents but though in his adulthood he had managed to achieve the usual security one strives to accomplish, he had lost his personal freedom.

Well, if that isn't the story of life, I don't know what is. I have also discovered through my reading project that it was THE major concern of 1950s literature.


(Free Fall is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) To find it at your nearest indie store, click on the cover image above)

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