Books I've Loved: When the World Tips Over

 

I've been a massive fan of Jandy Nelson's writing since I read The Sky Is Everywhere many years ago so when I found this one, I jumped at the chance to read it.  And it did not disappoint!  What a beautiful, beautiful book!  I found myself simultaneously wanting to keep reading forward to find out what happened next and wanting to re-read every chapter as I finished it because the writing was so gorgeous and delicious.  Definitely one I will return to again.

The book is about three siblings, 12-year-old Dizzy and her two older brothers, Miles and Wynton.  All three have been damaged by their father leaving before Dizzy was born in their own unique ways.  And the fact their mother still cooks for him every night doesn't help them feel the loss any less keenly.

When a stranger shows up in town with her rainbow hair, she touches each sibling's life in her own way, but leaves again as quickly as she arrived, who she might be remaining a mystery that must be solved if this family is every going to be able to pull themselves together again.

And it's a complicated family.  The book delves into the history, going back to Europe and old-country curses and rivalries that have echoed through generations.  Part magic-realism. part road trip, part mystery, this book unfolds numerous different stories according to its own logic, piecing together a family saga on its way.

And I loved it.  The writing is magical with descriptions so evocative you can almost taste them and phrases so delicious you want to savour them over and over.  But unlike some books with delightful writing, the story here, and the characters, are as compelling as the language.  

Very, very recommended.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the sense right out of your head.

Years ago, the Fall kids’ father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces. Now Dizzy Fall, age twelve, bakes cakes, sees spirits, and wishes she were a heroine of a romance novel. Miles Fall, seventeen, brainiac, athlete, and dog-whisperer, is a raving beauty, but also lost, and desperate to meet the kind of guy he dreams of. And Wynton Fall, nineteen, who raises the temperature of a room just by entering it, is a virtuoso violinist set on a crash course for fame . . . or self-destruction.

Then an enigmatic rainbow-haired girl shows up, tipping the Falls’ world over. She might be an angel. Or a saint. Or an ordinary girl. Somehow, she is vital to each of them. But before anyone can figure out who she is, catastrophe strikes, leaving the Falls more broken than ever. And more desperate to be whole.

With road trips, rivalries, family curses, love stories within love stories within love stories, and sorrows and joys passed from generation to generation, this is the intricate, luminous tale of a family’s complicated past and present. And only in telling their stories can they hope to rewrite their futures.