Falling into Place

Zhang, Amy. Falling into Place. 2014. 304p. ISBN 978-0-06-229504-0. Available at FIC ZHA on the library shelves.

Liz Emerson has it all. She’s part of the popular crowd at Meridian High, and with her friends Julia and Kendra they rule the cafeteria and the social life of the school. But Liz is unhappy. So much so that she believes the world will be a better place without her. She plans her own suicide and makes it look like an accident when she hurls her car over a bridge during an icy winter day, on the same day her father died falling from the roof ten years ago.

But Liz never really understood the Newtonian laws of physics, and as she lay shattered and broken among the wreck of her Mercedes, she can only contemplate that the sky has never been this blue. And all of this happens right at the beginning of the book. As she lays dying in her hospital bed, unconscious and unaware, her friends wish for her survival, and hope that Liz is fighting as hard as she can. But they don’t know that Liz gave up on herself a long time ago. As the narrator eloquently points out, some people die because the world didn’t deserve them. Liz, however, feels like she does not deserve the world.

Liz is mean. She destroys lives because she can. She doesn’t like who she became, and she’s not sure where she went wrong. But she did, and now she can’t get out of the persona she built herself. Through snapshots and moments told in relation to the wreck, the reader sees previous events and Liz’s evolution from nice girl to monster is outlined, from her own perspective as well as that of her friends and enemies.

This book offers a different perspective on suicide. Generally we see how bullying pushes the victim towards attempting suicide, as in Thirteen Reasons Why. Sometimes we read about the impact of what happens to a relative or a friend of the attempter, like Black Box or Zoe Letting Go. But rarely do we see the road that leads a bullier towards suicide. The hard themes of this book will drop a tear or two and make the reader ponder what Liz never understood: That for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Just because Liz was never called out for what she did does not mean that she did not ultimately suffer from it.

Fans of e. lockhart’s We Were Liars and Gayle Forman's If I Stay will enjoy this book, as any lovers of tragedies.