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yasminnnali's review against another edition
5.0
his book is too much for words. Its about a couple who have issues of their own, rasing a child. Not from age one, but more from age 15. Mary and Ross the parents, are ambitious people, with love on and off. Nora and Christopher are their friends who help raise Natassia, but with secrets and issues of their own. And lastly the grandparents, who raised Natassia the most.
And then theirs the BF. Who caused the Natassia all the trouble.
In this book, I learned about people and the book, in every chapter, goes deep into each character and their lives. Secret after secret, and pasts revealed. I learned more about ballet, steps to recovery, being a mother, and therapists. I learned more about the fact that the past can never be predicted. I loved this book tremoundously, and a definite recommend!
I also absolutely enjoyed it since it was so captivating and something new and surprising happened on each page. Everyone had their own overlapping story creating suspense with every page. With all the lesson the characters faced, you learned a lesson as well. The characters were all given a good and bad side which to me gave me an option to like them or hate them. I would reread this book again soon and highly recommend!
And then theirs the BF. Who caused the Natassia all the trouble.
In this book, I learned about people and the book, in every chapter, goes deep into each character and their lives. Secret after secret, and pasts revealed. I learned more about ballet, steps to recovery, being a mother, and therapists. I learned more about the fact that the past can never be predicted. I loved this book tremoundously, and a definite recommend!
I also absolutely enjoyed it since it was so captivating and something new and surprising happened on each page. Everyone had their own overlapping story creating suspense with every page. With all the lesson the characters faced, you learned a lesson as well. The characters were all given a good and bad side which to me gave me an option to like them or hate them. I would reread this book again soon and highly recommend!
jodyjsperling's review
5.0
Falling in Love with Natassia posed a great challenge for me as a reader. Anna Monardo taught several classes I took during undergrad. I found her to be condescending, severe, and creatively abusive. To a class full of aspiring writers, she brought in a panel of past graduates from our program who had moved on to other jobs than writing to prepare the current students for real life after they realized they had failed at writing. To me, in private, she suggested perhaps I should quit writing since I clearly knew nothing about the use of punctuation, especially commas.
Seven years have passed since I attended Monardo’s class. I’ve found and bought Falling In Love with Natassia at a local book sale about a year ago. I’m uncertain why I decided to read it now, but when I sat a week ago to begin Monardo’s novel, I knew I had to give it a fair chance, to keep an open mind, to learn from it what it had to teach me. And the truth is, the book provided me a more enjoyable, more thought-provoking reading experience than many books I’ve read this year or in the past few years.
From the perspective of the journey the novel lays out, the characters undergo dynamic transformations. Monardo introduces each character at a moment when the character is unlovable, whether it’s Mary and her five abortions, Ross and his manipulative charm, Nora and her passive self-pity, Christopher molesting an infant, Lotte and David in their blasé, substitute parenting role, or Natassia in her lovesick, teenage angst. These characters step onstage in ways that repulse the reader.
Much of the novel wallows in bad behavior, and it says something about the book that Christopher, the baby molester, is for the majority of the narrative the one character with enough likable qualities to persuade the reader to follow his journey. But despite a setup in which there are few redeeming qualities to be found in the characters, Monardo spins a plot full of tension so precisely that it would be impossible to read without a sense of excitement and anticipation.
This cast of characters really got under my skin. I was often thinking thoughts such as, “Stop being an idiot, Natassia,” or “Don’t cheat on your husband, Nora,” and these were thoughts I cared about, because despite myself I cared about the characters. I was thinking, if this character commits one more detestable act, I won’t be able to care any more. Somehow, Monardo seems to have intuited the exact depth of depravity she could subject her characters to before the reader would give up in disgust, or perhaps Monardo taught me a valuable truth about humanity: no depth of depravity is irredeemable.
The latter half of Falling In Love with Natassia is awash in therapy, therapists, therapeutic sessions, AA meetings, and counseling. It is through these therapeutic environments and dialogues that Monardo achieves a great deal of character redemption. And the only glaring misstep in this journey of redemption is Mary’s sudden smoking cessation. Mary quitting tobacco is too easy, too obvious, too external for what is otherwise a story that concerns itself with emotional and spiritual renewal. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Monardo closed such a punishing book on such a hopeful note. The characters’ lives are far from happily-ever-after, but no character is left in a hopeless mire.
I confess, I wanted to dismiss Falling in Love with Natassia. It would have satisfied me to write the novel off as a failure, but while I never did fall in love with Natassia, I did fall in love with the book. The novel even provoked me to have a difficult and honest discussion with my wife, a discussion I might have avoided under other circumstances. Such is the magic of a well-written fiction that it reaches beyond the page and changes the person under its spell.
I’m tempted to think there is more to Anna Monardo than a simple design to discourage her writing students. It seems, now, plausible to me that she is simply flawed in the ways that her characters are flawed, that like her character Ross she can’t help sometimes but to speak abuse, that like her character Christopher she sometimes can’t see around herself and her own point-of-view, that like her character Nora she considers herself the only victim, that like her character Natassia she blames others for all her misery. And I suspect that these characters are something like me, too, because I doubt Anna Monardo knows how lasting her impact on me was, or that she’s quite as malicious as I like to think, yet I have held on to the wounds she inflicted for the better part of a decade, now, as if these wounds were dealt personally, specifically, intentionally at only me.
Seven years have passed since I attended Monardo’s class. I’ve found and bought Falling In Love with Natassia at a local book sale about a year ago. I’m uncertain why I decided to read it now, but when I sat a week ago to begin Monardo’s novel, I knew I had to give it a fair chance, to keep an open mind, to learn from it what it had to teach me. And the truth is, the book provided me a more enjoyable, more thought-provoking reading experience than many books I’ve read this year or in the past few years.
From the perspective of the journey the novel lays out, the characters undergo dynamic transformations. Monardo introduces each character at a moment when the character is unlovable, whether it’s Mary and her five abortions, Ross and his manipulative charm, Nora and her passive self-pity, Christopher molesting an infant, Lotte and David in their blasé, substitute parenting role, or Natassia in her lovesick, teenage angst. These characters step onstage in ways that repulse the reader.
Much of the novel wallows in bad behavior, and it says something about the book that Christopher, the baby molester, is for the majority of the narrative the one character with enough likable qualities to persuade the reader to follow his journey. But despite a setup in which there are few redeeming qualities to be found in the characters, Monardo spins a plot full of tension so precisely that it would be impossible to read without a sense of excitement and anticipation.
This cast of characters really got under my skin. I was often thinking thoughts such as, “Stop being an idiot, Natassia,” or “Don’t cheat on your husband, Nora,” and these were thoughts I cared about, because despite myself I cared about the characters. I was thinking, if this character commits one more detestable act, I won’t be able to care any more. Somehow, Monardo seems to have intuited the exact depth of depravity she could subject her characters to before the reader would give up in disgust, or perhaps Monardo taught me a valuable truth about humanity: no depth of depravity is irredeemable.
The latter half of Falling In Love with Natassia is awash in therapy, therapists, therapeutic sessions, AA meetings, and counseling. It is through these therapeutic environments and dialogues that Monardo achieves a great deal of character redemption. And the only glaring misstep in this journey of redemption is Mary’s sudden smoking cessation. Mary quitting tobacco is too easy, too obvious, too external for what is otherwise a story that concerns itself with emotional and spiritual renewal. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Monardo closed such a punishing book on such a hopeful note. The characters’ lives are far from happily-ever-after, but no character is left in a hopeless mire.
I confess, I wanted to dismiss Falling in Love with Natassia. It would have satisfied me to write the novel off as a failure, but while I never did fall in love with Natassia, I did fall in love with the book. The novel even provoked me to have a difficult and honest discussion with my wife, a discussion I might have avoided under other circumstances. Such is the magic of a well-written fiction that it reaches beyond the page and changes the person under its spell.
I’m tempted to think there is more to Anna Monardo than a simple design to discourage her writing students. It seems, now, plausible to me that she is simply flawed in the ways that her characters are flawed, that like her character Ross she can’t help sometimes but to speak abuse, that like her character Christopher she sometimes can’t see around herself and her own point-of-view, that like her character Nora she considers herself the only victim, that like her character Natassia she blames others for all her misery. And I suspect that these characters are something like me, too, because I doubt Anna Monardo knows how lasting her impact on me was, or that she’s quite as malicious as I like to think, yet I have held on to the wounds she inflicted for the better part of a decade, now, as if these wounds were dealt personally, specifically, intentionally at only me.
yasminnnali's review
5.0
his book is too much for words. Its about a couple who have issues of their own, rasing a child. Not from age one, but more from age 15. Mary and Ross the parents, are ambitious people, with love on and off. Nora and Christopher are their friends who help raise Natassia, but with secrets and issues of their own. And lastly the grandparents, who raised Natassia the most.
And then theirs the BF. Who caused the Natassia all the trouble.
In this book, I learned about people and the book, in every chapter, goes deep into each character and their lives. Secret after secret, and pasts revealed. I learned more about ballet, steps to recovery, being a mother, and therapists. I learned more about the fact that the past can never be predicted. I loved this book tremoundously, and a definite recommend!
I also absolutely enjoyed it since it was so captivating and something new and surprising happened on each page. Everyone had their own overlapping story creating suspense with every page. With all the lesson the characters faced, you learned a lesson as well. The characters were all given a good and bad side which to me gave me an option to like them or hate them. I would reread this book again soon and highly recommend!
And then theirs the BF. Who caused the Natassia all the trouble.
In this book, I learned about people and the book, in every chapter, goes deep into each character and their lives. Secret after secret, and pasts revealed. I learned more about ballet, steps to recovery, being a mother, and therapists. I learned more about the fact that the past can never be predicted. I loved this book tremoundously, and a definite recommend!
I also absolutely enjoyed it since it was so captivating and something new and surprising happened on each page. Everyone had their own overlapping story creating suspense with every page. With all the lesson the characters faced, you learned a lesson as well. The characters were all given a good and bad side which to me gave me an option to like them or hate them. I would reread this book again soon and highly recommend!
queenbeemimi's review
4.0
This is a tough read, emotionally, and the characters are I likable at times. But the journey of learning how to love someone on their own terms is admirable and important. A well-written and engaging piece of emotional torture.
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