The Fall
A father's memoir in 424 steps
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
THE FALL is a memoir like no other. Its 424 short passages match the number of steps taken by Diogo Mainardi's son Tito as he walks, with great difficulty, alongside his father through the streets of Venice, the city where a medical mishap during Tito's birth left him with Cerebral Palsy.
As they make their way toward the hospital where both their lives changed forever, Mainairdi begins to draw on his knowledge of art and history, seeking to better explain a tragedy that was entirely avoidable. From Marcel Proust to Neil Young, to Sigmund Freud to Humpty Dumpty, to Renaissance Venice and Auschwitz, he charts the trajectory of the Western world, with Tito at its center, showing how his fate has been shaped by the past.
Told with disarming simplicity; by turns angry, joyful, and always generous, wise and suprising, THE FALL is an anstonishing book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Tito falls. My wife falls. I fall. What unites us what will always unite us is the fall." Mainardi has written four novels, two essay collections, a screenplay featured at the Venice and New York Film Festivals, and is raising a son with cerebral palsy, Tito. The couple copes with Tito's fate by picking historical figures to blame: Hitler, John Ruskin, Napolean Bonaparte. He makes mystic arguments against the beautiful hospital Tito was born in, believing John Ruskin's proposal that "the architecture of a place" has the ability to "shape the destiny of its inhabitants." The memoir starts frustratingly slowly and is melodramatically repetitive (he uses derivates of cry five times on one page). But, once he begins to talk about his personal relationship with Tito in depth, it becomes clear that his parallels and praises, even the most extreme, are not delusional or indulgent, instead, a product of absolute love and playfulness. When looking back on statements such as, "Tito is my water lily. I am the Claude Monet of cerebral palsy," one is able to appreciate Mainardi's humor, which does not translate immediately. The memoir consists of 424 chapters, includes photographs, paintings, and extensive cultural research. Mainardi creates a particular journey into the universe of his mind, directed by his son.
