“How quickly our emails have come to seem like friendship distilled to its essence”

From Where I Fell is the ninth novel by Australian author, Susan Johnson. Recently divorced and now raising three boys on her own, fifty-one-year-old Pamela Robinson sends her ex-husband in Paris, Christophe Woods an email about their sons. Except, he’s not who receives it. Instead, from her cramped two-bedroom flat in Sydney’s inner-west, Pamela begins a dialogue with Chrisanthi Woods in Schenectady, NY.

The accidental connection between two very different women living very different lives soon becomes intentional as they share snapshots of their lives, present and, eventually, past, offer understanding, advice and moral support, philosophise and confess secrets, guilt and mistakes made. “…right now, emails to you are the only way I’m able to gather my thoughts, which burst from me, flying everywhere. Writing everything down is the only way I can catch them” On occasion, when the emails take a certain tone, they address each other as Plato and Socrates.

Pamela has to deal with two wrathful teens, and an eight-year-old who still wants to crawl into her bed at night. She admits “I’m in shock how fast a lifetime can be undone” and concedes that “In leaving my marriage I chose my happiness over theirs – in some unpardonable way I became the anti-mother.”

The challenge of maintaining authority over her towering man/boy who is exploiting his mother’s guilt, and keeping the peace between her two angry older boys is interspersed with the attentions of an attractive and erudite casual male acquaintance. Nocturnal enuresis, a kitten, domestic violence, therapy, and the practical help of good friends all form part of the narrative.

Chris, meanwhile, describes a life filled with an active but somewhat accident-prone husband, a difficult relationship with her often-toxic Greek mother, a dying friend, a constantly-sparring neighbour couple, and English lessons for Syrian refugee girls. A trembling dog, poisonous letters, a three-legged cat, bicycle lessons and a trip to Greece also feature.

The idea of constructing a complete novel of emails between two people remote from one another is certainly an unusual one, but in Johnson’s skilled literary hands, it succeeds. Their dialogue lasts over a year, and Johnson gives them wise words, insightful comments and impartial advice dispensed electronically, though not always well-received. “Isn’t it extraordinary that we can’t perceive the knots of our own lives but think we see – fully lit – the tangles of others?” Chrisanthi’s part has an Anne Tyler flavour, while Johnson easily evokes Pamela’s Australian setting.

Her descriptive prose often shines: Aware that in each situation we have the power to choose our response, for some situations Pamela asks “How can anyone pause for a quiet reflective moment to choose empathy or fury from an array of emotions laid out like so many different-coloured ties? I say smoke comes out of your ears quicker than you can pick a tie” and “How strange that our digital lives are so traceable, digital trails everywhere like snails leaving glistening tracks – floating out there in galaxies” are examples. A superb read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Allen & Unwin.