Fall From Earth: A Review
Fall From Earth
Matthew Johnson
Bundoran Press (236 pp, $19.95, 2010)
It’s been suggested that Canadian fiction often features a collective protagonist rather than a single dominant personality: a group of interlocking characters who drive the narrative forward. I don’t know how accurate that is; but it’s interesting to consider in the context of Ottawa writer Matthew Johnson’s 2010 novel, Fall From Earth. In addition to following a group of characters, it’s also a story of colonisation in the face of an unfriendly natural environment, and of the interaction of different cultures; both typically Canadian themes. Is this significant?
Fall From Earth tells the story of a group of convicts sentenced by a far-future imperial state, the Borderless Empire, to colonise a new planet. They’ve committed all manner of crimes: murder, heresy … and rebellion. We follow them as they land on the planet, and find that all is not as they had been led to expect. Complications arise and are dealt with, only for more complications to arrive; mysteries are piled upon mysteries; and the sense of scale grows as the novel goes along.
It’s a very strong book. The writing’s exceptionally tight, with no wasted words. The story’s told in short, well-chosen scenes; point-of-view shifts easily and naturally from character to character. The various conundra the colonists find on the planet develop, show strange ramifications, and then begin to resolve themselves. By the end of the book, it’s all been neatly explained, and the plot’s neatly worked through to a satisfactory ending.
Triptych
Westlake Soul is twenty-three, a good-natured surfing champion with a loving family, loving girlfriend, and loving dog. Then a terrible fall leaves him in a vegetative state, unresponsive to the outside world — but, locked in his own mind, he’s a superintelligent superhero, astrally projecting to the moon and battling the mysterious villain named Doctor Quietus. Westlake can’t affect the outside world; can’t even twitch a finger, can only sit and be cared for by his mother and father and little sister, and the nurses they hire. But he can see what goes on around him, and react, if only internally.
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Last weekend I went to Toronto to attend the 
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Literary traditions are useful things. They’re constructions of literary critics, sure, but useful constructions. A well-articulated tradition can show how different writers deal with the same idea or theme, demonstrating different approaches to a given problem or artistic ideal. It can show affinities between writers, sometimes bringing out resemblences between different figures in such a way as to cast new light on everyone involved. At the grandest level, the whole history of writing in a given language or from a given nation can be seen to be part of a tradition, showing the evolution of a language or the concerns of a people.
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