Since We Fell Review

Title: Since We Fell
Author: Dennis Lehane
Date Purchased: 7/2/2017
Price Paid: $5.29
Date Finished: 3/16/2021
Rating: 4/5

As I work through my backlog and come here to write about the books I’ve read, I find myself looking at books in a bit of a different way than I used to. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but more of a deeper analysis into what the book is making me feel…and why I’m feeling that way. In a lot of ways this is what I should have gained from being in a book club, and I did to an extent, but I feel like I’m digging a little further now that I have before.

I mention this because an interesting thing happened to me halfway through Since We Fell – I hit the end of a chapter, started the next one, and suddenly started thinking about the reason I was still reading the book. Now, I’ll level a pretty big footnote here: I had a sleepless night when I started this book and plowed through 60% of it in one day. So this thought probably came to me at 2:30 in the morning, and I can’t really claim to do my best work at that time.

Sleep deprived brain aside, it was an interesting question. I was enjoying the book, and kept reading and reading, but the early-to-mid chapters were not the type that would normally pull me in and keep me turning those pages. So what did, you ask? Well, it’s how Lehane started the book that kept me reading.

The prologue starts with this sentence: “On a Tuesday in May, in her thirty-fifth year, Rachel shot her husband dead.” Well now. You’ve piqued my interest. Continuing on, the prologue goes a bit into her mother, talks about what Rachel saw on her husband’s face after shooting him, and we see him drop into Boston Harbor. And as we start chapter one? We’re in Rachel’s childhood looking at the start of her life.

So we begin to work our way through Rachel’s life. From her search for her birth father to her challenges as a reporter in both print and television, a picture is painted for us of Rachel as a person. And for more than half the book, we learn more and more about Rachel and her struggles. Lehane does an excellent job of allowing the reader to get to know Rachel, see her battle with depression, and eventually start clawing her way out of it with the help of her (second) husband Brian.

Halfway through is about where I was when I started really thinking about the book and why I was still reading. Don’t get me wrong, the writing is excellent and the characters are engaging…but to this point the book was one about a woman dealing with her depression and fighting to regain some normalcy in her life. A good book, but not one I would want to read.

“Hey,” my brain thought, “doesn’t she shoot this guy?? When does that happen? How do we even get to that point?”

And that single thought is what kept me reading, and it created an interesting spin on everything about Rachel’s life. Many times we see her interact a character and there’s an unexplained awkwardness, or she starts thinking thoughts that would normal seem to come out of left field. Without the foreknowledge that she was going to shoot her husband, this would be easily explained by the anxiety and depression. Instead you’re left wondering if it was truly that, or if it was the start of an event that leads to her shooting her husband. It was a clever device for Lehane to use.

We eventually get to the shooting and see what led to her taking such drastic measures, and we’re only two-thirds of the way through the book. The final third is a suspenseful ride that fills in more of the blanks that we were left with and yet still develops more twists and turns. If that final chunk of the book was simply exposition on the events and motivations of the characters, it might have lost me. But the newly developing plot lines kept things chugging along.

I really enjoyed the way Lehane wrote Since We Fell. Often a book will have a major twist pop up two-thirds of the way through which will lead to the reader flipping back through the previous pages looking for clues that they might have missed. By coming right out and saying “she’s going to shoot him”, readers wind up reading everything with a more critical eye. This allows for meaningless interactions, Rachel’s anxiety-riddled interpretations and other red herrings to occupy the reader.

Will this book be for everyone? No. If there’s one thing Lehane refuses to shy away from, it’s depictions of violence. I have had to put his books down in the past because they are too raw, too visceral. This one skirts around that for the most part, but we’re still faced with some pretty graphically violent scenes. Beyond that, though? I enjoyed what I found here.

Final Thoughts: A clever narrative that let the reader try to feel clever while spinning an excellent mystery. Recommended.