Fall of Lisa Bellow (Perabo)

The Fall of Lisa Bellow 
Susan Perabo, 2017
Simon & Schuster
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476761466


Summary
When a middle school girl is abducted in broad daylight, a fellow student and witness to the crime copes with the tragedy in an unforgettable way.

What happens to the girl left behind?

A masked man with a gun enters a sandwich shop in broad daylight, and Meredith Oliver suddenly finds herself ordered to the filthy floor, where she cowers face to face with her nemesis, Lisa Bellow, the most popular girl in her eighth grade class.

The minutes tick inexorably by, and Meredith lurches between comforting the sobbing Lisa and imagining her own impending death. Then the man orders Lisa Bellow to stand and come with him, leaving Meredith the girl left behind.

After Lisa’s abduction, Meredith spends most days in her room. As the community stages vigils and searches, Claire, Meredith’s mother, is torn between relief that her daughter is alive, and helplessness over her inability to protect or even comfort her child. Her daughter is here, but not.

Like Everything I Never Told You and Room, The Fall of Lisa Bellow is edgy and original, a hair-raising exploration of the ripple effects of an unthinkable crime. It is a dark, beautifully rendered, and gripping novel about coping, about coming-of-age, and about forgiveness. It is also a beautiful illustration of how one family, broken by tragedy, finds healing. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 6, 1969
• Where—St. Louis, Missouri, USA
• Education—M.F.A., University of Arkansas
• Currently—lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania


Susan Perabo is an American author of novels and short stories. Her novels include The Fall of Lisa Bellow (2017) and The Broken Places (2001). She has published two collections of short stories, Why They Run the Way They Do (2016), and Who I Was Supposed to Be (1999).

Her fiction has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize Stories, and New Stories from the South, and has appeared in numerous magazines, including One Story, Glimmer Train, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, and The Sun.

Perabo holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and is Writer in Residence and Professor of English at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She is also on the faculty of the low-residency MFA Program at Queens University. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Despite the central crime element, Lisa Bellow is more character study than suspense novel. Unfortunately, the prose isn’t quite strong enough to make up for a languid plot. Nonetheless, Perabo makes some interesting observations about character and family life, and her book should have some emotional resonance with anyone who’s felt out of place or left behind.
Steph Cha - USA Today


Dark and suspenseful (Best Books To Read in 2017).
Glamour.com


Told through the incredibly honest eyes of an eighth grade girl and her despairing mother, this moving story touches on tragedy, loss, and what happens to those affected.
RealSimple.com


Absolutely masterful…this should be the book to launch Susan Perabo into the realm of Known Writers, those folks whose each new work marks the landscape in overt ways. All her powerful skills are on display here—the vivid, telling details, the strangely askance story actually being told, the murky irresolution that’s somehow gratifying despite not delivering on what most readers will likely expect…this is a dynamite, stunning book that’ll hang in you long after you finish it.
Brooklyn Rail


The novel’s tension arises as much from Perabo’s insight into a complex and changing family dynamic as from the horror of an unusual but believable situation. Perabo’s female characters are particularly strong…as the novel plays with the reader’s understanding of what is actually going on in Meredith’s world.
Publishers Weekly


The second novel from writer Susan Perabo is wrenching, a dark yet beautifully told story of family, fear and grief.
BookPage


Gripping…Perabo captures both the unease and bravado of adolescence alongside the worries of parenthood and is unafraid to explore the family members’ flaws as they attempt to emerge from chaos.
Booklist


(Starred review.) Claire Oliver…is as fine a fictional character as we have encountered in some time, dark, moody, passionate about her children, keenly self-aware, and very, very funny.… You will hate to leave the inside of this woman’s head when you finish the book.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Fall of Lisa Below…then take off on your own:

1. Discuss the residual trauma of Lisa Bellow's kidnapping on Meredith Oliver, especially as retreats into an imaginary world, plagued by nightmares she believes that Lisa might be having. How, ultimately, does Meredith's understanding of, or at least her view of, Lisa change by the end of the book?

2. What about the anxiety Lisa has been facing in school while attempting to navigate the teenage social hierarchy? Does the mean-girl atmosphere ring true? Does any of  it bring back memories of your own middle or high school experience? Might Lisa be excused (or not) for banking on her new-found notoriety in order to chuck her older friends and move up in the world?

3. What do you think of Claire Oliver? In what way is she ambivalent about motherhood? Claire is quite funny; in what way, or for what purposes, does she use her humor?

4. How would you describe the Olivers' marriage? Talk about the changes in family dynamics after the kidnapping and the array of stresses the family faces. In what way does each member manage to cope?

5. How does this novel frame survivor guilt? How do the characters, if they ever do, achieve resolution and acceptance?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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