We all fall down door Robert Cormier

Name of the book: We all fall down
Year of expenditure: 1994 / first publish: 1991
Author: Robert Cormier
Editor: Heinemann New Windmills
Number of pages: 193

Summary:
When Jane, Karen and their parents are not at home, four boys trash everything what’s in there house, because they are drunk . Karen arrives at home early. The four guys try to rape her, but she falls down the stairs and she gets in a coma for a couple of weeks. During those weeks the family repairs the house and tries to go on with their lives, but it's very hard because the shock of Karen’s accident was very big. Then Jane meets Buddy Walker. They fall in love with each other. For the first time since the devastating in her house, she is happy again. But after a while she gets the feeling something's wrong with Buddy. One night she sees him with a bottle of an alcoholic drink. Buddy admits that he has a drinking problem and he promises her that he'll try to stop. But Jane still feels like there's something wrong with Buddy: she can't talk about the devastation with him and he doesn't want to meet Jane’s parents. Karen is getting better. She wakes up from her coma, and she is getting all right. One day when Jane is walking on the street, a boy asks her to come with him. She follows him and goes into a shed. Then suddenly she is beaten down. When she wakes up, her hands and feet are tied to a chair. Mickey, the 41 years old psychopath, did all this. He thinks he's the Avenger, an 11 years old boy who avenges injustices. He says he's going to kill her, because she kissed Buddy Walker. Jane doesn't understand what is wrong with kissing Buddy, but then he tells her Buddy is one of the criminals who destroyed her house. She slightly knows it's true, because he acted pretty weird when she talked about the devastation. Somehow she manages to tell him he's not the Avenger, but just Mickey. Then he is so confused that he commits suicide. The police comes and frees Jane. She tells Buddy she never wants to see him again. And that’s the end.

Time and place of action:
It takes place at Jane’s home and in the hospital.

The tale takes place in the time of now.

Theme of the book:
The theme is crime and drama. In the book something happens to everybody, that makes them sad. The book is very realistic because the things that happen to everybody, those things can happen to us too.

The main characters:
-Jane: A 16 years old girl who is timid, smart and nice. In the book she became self-confident.
-Buddy Walker: A uncertain boy, who looks ‘tough’ at the outside. He can be sweet, but he is weak to. He has spite of the damaging of Jane’s house. In the book he lies very often, he drinks a lot and he feels himself more badly.
-Mickey/the Avenger: He is a very complicated person. In the beginning you think that he’s a boy who’s 11 years, but further in the book it proves that he’s a 41 years old psychopath who punishes everyone, who’s bad in his eyes.
I wil meet Buddy. Because he had make a very big mistake in his life, I want to know why he did this.

I don’t want to meet Mickey because he’s very scary and he is a psychopath.

Explain the title:
The title is ‘We all fall down’. That’s the title because the sister of Jane, Karen, falls down the stairs. Also because all the people in the story ‘fall down’, not literally, but there happen sad thing to them.
I think it’s a interesting title because it makes you curious.

My own opinion:
I think it was a nice book. It was easy to read, but not in a childish way. The story was also very clear, there was nothing I didn’t understand. The only thing I didn’t like, was the beginning, because the writer mentioned every detail so it was a bit too long. I would recommend this book to other people, because it’s an interesting story and it was fun to read.