Catch me when I fall door Nicci French

Catch me when I fall
Nicci French

First publish:

2005

edition:

2007

Genre:

Psychological thriller.

I Background:

The action takes time in London, England, world. Mostly the office of Holly and Meg, the hospital and at Holly’s.
The action takes place at the present.

II Characters:

Main characters:
Holly Krauss: a successful woman who runs her own business whit her best friend Meg. By day she is a normal hard working woman, but by night she goes out late and makes stupid mistakes. To people who just met her she seems happy and a very nice person but the better they get to know her how miserable there life becomes. She gets depressed.
Meg: Holly’s best friend. She is a bit insecure but she is a big support for everybody (specially Holly when she gets depressed and makes bit mistakes). People describe her as a House and strong.

Minor characters:
Charlie: the husband of Holly. He used to be a nice, warm and talented person but when Holly gets depressed he can’t take it anymore. He keeps acting like he is the nice husband but he is just acting.
Naomi: She is Holly’s neighbour. She is always happy and shining. She always bakes stuff for Holly and Charlie and she is a poor nurse. She has an affair with Charlie. In the end she is married (getting married?) and wears expensive clothes.
Todd: He is only in the second part of the book. He is Megs boyfriend. He is a nice person and he is always there for Meg.
Trish and Lola: people at the office (colleges of Meg and Holly)
Stuart, Debora, Rees and Tony: Holly makes there life miserable when she gets depressed. They all hate her.

III The story:

Holly is a successful woman wish an extreme way of living. Stay up long, going out late and drink a lot. In the first chapter she sleeps with a man she doesn’t know (Rees) while she is married. Rees starts to stalk her and sends photos to her house and to Meg. Then she makes more mistakes: She fired a woman and destroys her life. Then she buys an ugly sculpture she can’t afford (what makes Charlie furious). Stuart, the man she has bought the sculpture from, gets mad at her and brakes into her house. He pushes her of the stairs and Holly has to go to the hospital.
She cause even more trouble by losing £11.000,- in a poker game. She can’t pay it and every week the dept raises with £1.000,-. Then she gets really depressed and at last she gets stuck in a mental hospital. She asks her psychiatrist if she can have more pills than usual. She writhes Meg a goodbye letter (what was never found after the attempted suicide) and she tries to kill herself.
Then the second part begins and Meg is telling the rest of the story. Holly had tried to call her when she almost died. Now she is at the mental hospital again, but she wants to live. Meg pays Hollys depths (now £16.000,-) and deals with her stalker. When Holly comes out of the hospital, Meg discovered that Charlie and Naomi (Charlies neighbour) are having an affair. Holly tells Meg that she is never going to commit suicide again.
Rees gives Meg pictures of Holly and she discovered that Charlie was there when Holly tried to kill herself and he didn’t do anything.
Meg drives with Todd to the vacation house of Charlie. They find Holly in a car trying to ‘commit suicide’ and they save her just on time. The police think it is suicide because there was a goodbye note in the car. But then Meg proves that the note is the one that she wrote the first suicide and Charlie admits everything.
In the last chapter Meg is getting married to Todd. You can read that Holly is getting better.

The problems in this story are:
Dept, stalking, marriage problems, depression, murderer (as a husband).
In the end almost all the problems are solved. Rees stops stalking Holly, Charlie is in prison and she almost isn’t depressed anymore. The only thing is that Holly still has a dept.
The climax was:
Never get depressed?
The end was:
Closed ending, (almost) all the things has been solved. But it wasn’t really a happily ever after.

Narration:
The story is told in the first person.
II Time:
The story takes about six months
Everything is told in chronological order, and there are no flashbacks or –forwards.

Structure:

There are 41 chapters, and every chapter is a little happening. Every chapter ends when the happening ends. There is much action and sensation in the story.. There aren’t many dialogues in the first part but in the second part there are more dialogues. The book is very describing.

Theme and Title:

The writer intends with this book to amuse people. I don’t think it is to teach people something. Just because it is a good story and nice to read when you want to relax.
Theme is manic-depressed
The title is ‘Catch me when i fall’. The writer choose it because Holly becomes manic-depressed (she falls) and it looks like there are a lot people who want to support her (catch her) but finally it’s only Meg who helps her.