And Then She Fell By Alicia Elliott

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And Then She Fell is “A mind-bending, razor-sharp look at motherhood and mental health that follows a young Indigenous woman who discovers the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences.”

A Most Anticipated Book Pick by Toronto Star, CBC, The Walrus, Good Morning America, Bustle, CrimeReads, Electric Literature, Debutiful, Ms. Magazine, The Nerd Daily, and Paste

“This first novel from Elliott is an evocative, cerebral study of womanhood, identity, and selfhood wrapped in Haudenosaunee legend. . . . Often funny, often chilling, And Then She Fell studies an Indigenous woman’s unraveling in a world that she’s ashamed to feel so disconnected from, and Elliott tells her story with assuredness and weight.” —Booklist

About The Book 📚

Title: And Then She Fell

Author: Alicia Elliott

Publication Date: September 26, 2023

Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada

Genre: Literary Horror, Indigenous, Canadian

Pages: 342

Content Warnings: mental illness, racism, drug abuse, suicidal thoughts, grief, alcohol, ableism, addiction, profanity, violence, sexual content

R Contains profanity, violence, drug use, or nudity.

About The Author

Alicia Elliott is a Mohawk woman and oldest daughter of five whose paternal family is from Six Nations of the Grand River territory
She lives in Brantford, Ontario with her husband, son and dog
She has written for The Globe and Mail, CBC, Hazlitt, and many others
She’s had numerous essays nominated for National Magazine Awards
Winning gold in 2017
honorable mentions in 2020
Her short fiction was selected for Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and The Journey Prize Stories 30
chosen by Tanya Talaga as 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award
Her first book, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground (an essay collection) won the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award

My Review

› While perusing Netgalley for a Canadian debut novel I was struck by the cover for And Then She Fell. I saw the vibrant blue face of a girl with beaded earrings trapped within the branches of a tree with pink cockroaches and just had to know more. Who is she? Why is she trapped? What’s with the cockroaches?

› In the book, Alicia Elliott includes a letter to the reader where she shares her inspiration for writing And Then She Fell. She said two moments that changed her life: becoming pregnant with her son at 17, and losing her mind at 33. She talks about her mother’s struggles with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and her own struggles with depression. Elliott said she had a psychotic episode while researching postpartum psychosis for the book and it took her months to recover. She ends the letter with “I hope you see yourself and your life with a little more compassion, and a lot more forgiveness. You deserve it.”

› And Then She Fell begins with a prologue titled “around the riverbend, mostly”. This is where we meet Alice, a stubborn thirteen-year-old living on a reservation in Ontario. Alice and her mother have been financially struggling since her father died in a car accident two years ago. One day at the race track Mason, the coolest boy at J.C. Hill Elementary, tells her they’re going to hang out and they make plans for him to come over to Alice’s Aunt Rachel’s house while she’s babysitting her cousin Dana.

› After putting Dana to bed Alice returns to the living room and hears someone talking to her telling her she’s about to make a big mistake. Who’s talking to her? Pocahontas. Through the TV. She says her name isn’t Pocahontas, it’s Matoaka. The Disney story isn’t quite accurate. Matoaka was around eleven when she met John Smith in 1607. Six years later, Samuel Argall kidnapped her and she soon met John Rolfe. She was baptized with the Christian name Rebecca and married John Rolfe. They moved to England and Matoaka became ill and died in 1617.

› Maoaka tells Alice that Mason will ruin her life. “He can’t help it. He’s your John.” She says Alice is meant for great things and must make smart decisions regarding men.

“Things were never the same after I’d talked to Pocahontas as a kid. It seemed as though that night had broken a seal, and suddenly all sorts of things were speaking to me that shouldn’t have been.”

› Chapter One begins with Alice living in Toronto with her husband Steve and baby Dawn. Isolated from her community and feeling like an outsider, Alice is heartbroken since her mother’s death from drug addiction and struggling to connect with Dawn. She wants to be a supportive wife and realize her father’s dream of writing a modern version of indigenous stories. She’s determined to keep her old demons buried, but they are whispering words of guilt telling her she could have saved her mother and it’s her fault Dawn cries all of the time. Alice is also trying to write a modern retelling of The Haudenosaunee Creation Story.

› Steve is a white professor studying Mohawk culture. He doesn’t ask how Alice’s day was. He doesn’t see that she’s struggling.

“We’ve been married nine months but it already feels like decades of unsaid words have settled between us.”

› And Then She Fell is a story within a paranoid fever dream as Alice falls down the rabbit hole, struggling with her demons and trying to write her story. The unpredictable ending left me sobbing.

“My dad once told me it’s best to think of each story as a journey. Each sentence, even each word, is a step toward your destination, and you have to be careful where you step as a storyteller because the people are stepping after you. You want to make sure they’re going where you want them to go, because you’re carving a path together.”

Well, Alicia Elliott, I will always follow your steps.

› Characters: 10
Alice is relatable and unreliable. Her goals and motivations are clear. She has flaws, external conflict, and internal conflict. The validation of male attention made me feel seen. The side characters are interesting. Steve and his coworkers gave me the ick. Alice and Papa Roach are my favourite characters.

› Atmosphere: 10
The descriptions, world-building, emotions, and mood are perfection.

› Writing Style: 10
I feel grateful that Elliott shared the Mohawk culture, philosophy, history, language and traditions with us.
Her writing is incredible. I took note of many quotes and wish I could share them all, but I’d basically be sharing the entire book. This one made me cry:
“He has intergenerational wealth; I have intergenerational trauma.”
Elliott effectively interweaves facts about racism against Indigenous peoples in Canada in a natural manner that doesn’t feel preachy.

› Plot: 10
I loved everything: the beginning, middle, and end. There isn’t a lot of fluff. The words are moving the plot forward. The character’s voices change how we think about things.

› Intrigue: 10
I didn’t want to put this book down and I didn’t want it to end. Since finishing And Then She Fell I find myself researching more about Haudenosaunee traditions.

› Logic: 10
You will be confused, but that’s on purpose.

› Enjoyment: 10
I felt happy, sad, angry, frustrated, hopeless, and inspired. I laughed, I cried. This story is unique and the message is explained well.

My Rating ★★★★★

› Final Thoughts
• I find reviews for five-star books are always the hardest to write. My writing abilities are nowhere near those of Alicia Elliott and I badly want to do this book justice. I expect And Then She Fell to be nominated for many book awards. And Then She Fell is an unforgettable, dark, emotional, smart, mysterious, surreal yet sometimes funny story-within-a-story about mental illness, grief, racism, tradition, motherhood, free will, trust and resilience that you MUST read to the very end.

It reminded me of Mona Awad and Iain Reid. In an interview, Elliott said “I’m obsessed with everything Mona Awad, Heather O’Neill and Eden Robinson write, so really anything by them. I also loved Bad Cree by Jessica Johns and VenCo by Cherie Dimaline, and am eagerly anticipating Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice”.

She’s working on a book about toxic female friendship that has witches, demons and the early internet and I can’t wait to read it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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