BOOK REVIEW 

“Fall on Me”

By Nigel Featherstone, Blemish Books.

Reviewed by Helen Musa

This novella by Canberra region writer  Nigel Featherstone was based on a 2010  artist’s residency at Kings Bridge Cottage in Launceston’s Cataract Gorge reserve, a location that becomes significant in the story.

It is a tightly-written book – perhaps too tightly, as the background stories of the main characters could have been developed further. “Fall On Me” takes its title from the REM album of the same name  (“Fall on me/It’s over it’s over me/It’s gonna fall) with which the central character, Launceston café owner Lou, is obsessed.

Single father Lou is portrayed as a sensitive nearly new-age private individual who, in between knocking up $7 pizza and pasta deals for his colourful array of customers, such as Ravi, Craig and Big Woz, relaxes with a copy of Patrick White’s “The Twyborn Affair.”

While the kaleidoscope of Launceston characters  and the beautifully drawn out-of-town locations are vividly rendered, this book is driven by its plot. When Lou’s super-bright high school age son Luke shows his father a radical art installation destined to shock the locals, family relationships are under siege and all the characters are required to “be brave.”

If the breaking point of “Fall on Me” is an unrevealed family secret, Featherstone reveals it too quickly, bringing his tale to a gentle, optimistic conclusion that left me wanting to know more.

Too many of the characters are either off-stage or out of town. Luke’s former guru Marlow, the dead wife/mother Katelyn, the grandparents who decamp to Noosa, Lou’s “deeply cultural” former schoolmate Fergal, even the significant housemate Anna – all of these beg for development.

In the end, it wasn’t dark secrets I wanted unveiled, but the inner workings of people’s hearts.

For purchase details visit  www.blemishbooks.com.au