The Fall - by Simon Mawer (Paperback)

About the Book

Against a shifting backdrop of spiky Alpine peaks and the bombed-out London of World War II, a tangled web of relationships and secrets unfolds as a man and two women play out a drama that will cast a shadow across the lives of a future generation.

Book Synopsis

Rob Ross is driving home when he hears that his childhood friend Jim Matthewson has fallen to his death in a climbing accident. Rob's decision to turn his car around and make the journey to comfort Jim's widow is the beginning of a journey into the past, back to Rob's youth before he made the pivotal choices that now come back to haunt him.

Simon Mawer skillfully unveils the delicate layers of history in the lives of a group of people connected over the years by camaraderie, love, competition, and lust. In the shadow of an old love triangle lies the story of another, and as we follow the characters from London during the Blitz to the mountain ranges of the Alps and back to present-day Wales, Mawer reveals how the agonies of the past impinge upon the present.

This is an intelligent, thought-provoking love story by a brilliant, masterful novelist.

Review Quotes

"Sons and mothers, husbands and wives, friends and lovers: in Mawer's masterful hands, none of these relationships are what they seem....A sinuously devastating tale of forbidden love and faithless betrayal. A haunting and mesmerizing novel from an expert storyteller."