Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
‘The Pier Falls’ is a very eclectic collection of nine tales that will appeal to a diverse range of readers!
You can notice the world of a difference in themes, settings and even timelines within the first two tales. While the opening story is a modern/contemporary record of a public tragedy, where dozens of people die, the second is set centuries ago, following a stranded young princess on an Island. Yeah, there’s pretty much nothing in common between the tales, except that they are set by the sea and don’t have ‘happy endings’.
Mark Haddon’s writing is sharp, engaging, and instantly pulls the readers into its story setting. Only two stories failed to keep me hooked, one about a crew on a space mission and another was about a doomed jungle expedition. The jungle themed tale titled “The Boys Who Left Home to a Learn Fear” reminded me of horror novel “The Ruins” by Scott Smith for a few seconds, but Haddon’s tale isn’t as terrifying or gripping.
The third short story titled ‘Bunny’ is about a morbidly obese man’s friendship with a young neighbor, and it made me wonder if the writer took any inspiration from ‘The Whale’, a 2012 play by Samuel D. Hunter about an obese man trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter. Both tales are about desperate overweight men who know they are simply eating their way to death, and they both long for a human connection in their lives. It’s interesting how ‘Bunny’ is about a man eating himself to death, while the second one is about a young woman starving to her end while she is stranded on an island.
If I had to pick a favorite, it would be Wodwo, the fourth story in the collection, which is quite whimsical and a retelling of an old tale. Set on Christmas Eve, Wodwo follows a stranger who disrupts a family gathering, leading to unexpected violence. It stands out as the most cinematic tale in the book, centered around an arrogant yet charismatic protagonist haunted by a surreal crime that irreversibly changes his life.
Just the varying range, themes, characters, and settings in ‘The Pier Falls’ is both random and amusingly entertaining. I wouldn’t go as far as to use the cliched phrase ‘there’s a little something for every kind of reader’, because that’s simply not the case, but it would appeal to contemporary fiction fans a lot more, especially those who like open-ended climaxes or tales that are bleak in nature. In-fact, that’s probably the most common thread in all of Haddon’s story in this novel, none of them have what one would label as a ‘happy ending’. Far from it.
Rating: 3.5 on 5.
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