Will is 11 and he has lived most of his life in his house, not being allowed out by his severely over-protective mother.  He wears a helmet in case of falling. But at the start of this novel, he tries leaving the house, and he doesn’t die. This makes him want to try it again, and find out about the people and the world outside. He meets other boys, not all of whom are kind to him. He shows a readiness to take risks and he ends up making friends.

His mother tries to keep him from harm because so many people in her family have died from misfortune, and so she wants to avoid all risk. She never leaves her house. She has created a strange world and a distinct language for her son, and so when he first meets other boys, he seems bizarre to them. Indeed, he seems bizarre to the reader too. Although the story is told in the third person, it is told from his point of view, and the early pages of the book are very confusing. But as we come to understand his odd use of words, and he starts to learn to communicate with the rest of the world, it becomes clearer.

Part of the difficulty is that the town in which Will lives is a Canadian port with some very eccentric characters, and there seems to genuinely unusual dangers that Will comes to face. The place is a real one: Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior, not far from the border with Minnesota. The novel tells of Will’s adventures in the town as he grows older and makes friends with Jonah, who teaches him how to skateboard. We also learn of his mother’s past; she was an artist of some note before she shut herself in her house.

Nevertheless, If I Fall, I Die remains somewhat obscure and hard-going all the way through. It never ceases to be strange and disorienting. This makes it distinctive, and that’s what helps the reader persist in the face of minimal resolution. The plot does come together in the end, but does not make a whole lot of sense.  This is not a book of great insight or depth; its strength lies in its creation of a phenomenology. It is unusual enough to stand out from the crowd of genre novels. Christie’s prose has enough drive to keep the reader going through to the end.

© 2015 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York