Susan Perabo

Harvard Book Store welcomes Pushcart Prize winner SUSAN PERABO, author of Who I Was Supposed to Be and Why They Run the Way They Do, for a reading from her latest novel, The Fall of Lisa Bellow.

About The Fall of Lisa Bellow

The breakout novel from the critically acclaimed author of the short story collections Who I Was Supposed to Be and Why They Run the Way They Do—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.

Praise

"A daring narrative strategy . . . You will hate to leave the inside of this woman's head when you finish the book. The texture of family life as it unravels, then begins to regenerate, is conveyed with unflinching clarity and redemptive good humor." —Kirkus, starred review)

"[A] sharp and suspenseful novel . . . 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. . . . Survivor’s guilt takes on a unique form here, as the novel plays with the reader’s understanding of what is actually going on in Meredith’s world." —Publishers Weekly

"Breathless . . . this exhilarating novel shatters your heart then pieces it back together chapter by chapter until the last devastating sentence. In masterful and hypnotic prose, Perabo tells an unforgettable story of resilience as a family struggles to reconnect after their perfect world is torn apart by violence and loss. Psychologically insightful and emotionally engrossing, this is a story that will transform you from the inside out." —Kim van Alkemade, New York Times–bestselling author of Orphan #8