On New Year’s Eve, four very different people journey to the top of a famous suicide jumping spot. Each of their lives is overshadowed by lost promise, emotional isolation and few coping skills. None of them have a path ahead that looks any good and they join together, not admitting that they are there to save each other and not fully aware that they are trying to save themselves.

The cover image sums the premise of the book up pefectly.  The shoes of a smart-ass teenager (Jess), a washed up young rock musician (JJ), a middle-aged mom (Maureen) that caretakes her vegetable son and a pathetic tabloid-smeared TV star (Martin) squared off with each other, not necessarily for a fight (although they do happen), but because they have too many issues within themselves to make a circle.  They don’t really like each other, but they are joined together by the roof and the fact that they have nothing better to do.  They spend the evening together, initially as an easy out from jumping, and create a pact to look in on each other, which turns into a gang of lost souls. Jess says,

“And that’s me: I suffer from a failure of imagination. I could do what I wanted, every day of my life, and what I want to do apparently, is to get walloped out of my head and pick fights.  Telling me I can do anything I want is like pulling the plug out of the bath and then telling the water it can go anywhere it wants. Try it, and see what happens.” (p209)

Because they have nothing to lose, Jess is able to persuade the group to try just about anything, from reading books by suicidal authors to staging an intervention for themselves.  Many times, they get into various situations that are punctuated by humorous conflicts. In one particularly wacky scene, Jess has told the media that they saw an angel on the roof as a way to make some money for the story.  JJ reacts,

“We’d grit our teeth, say we’d seen an angel, take the money, and try and forget it ever happened.  But then the next day you’re sitting in front of a journalist, and you’re all agreeing with a straight face that this fucking angel looked like Matt Damon, and loyalty seemed like the dumbest of all the virtues.  It wasn’t like you could just go through the motions, either, when you’re supposed to have seen an angel. You can’t just say, “Yeah, blah, angel, whatever.”  Seeing an angel is clearly a big deal, so you’ve got to act like it’s a big deal, with excitement and openmouthed awe, and it’s hard to do openmouthed awe through gritted teeth.” (p166)

I was frustrated with the distance that I felt from the characters due to the writing style.  Although the characters were each wonderfully written (I even liked Maureen and JJ, but Martin and Jess seem to be intentionally unlikable) and their tragic circumstances were clear and sad, I never came close to a tear.  The chapters were written from their perspective and I could see what they were going through, but I was kept from really feeling what they were going through.  Maybe this is reflective of the numbness that the characters may have had to their own situations.  Maybe the book tried to take on too much to carry the emotional stories of each of these characters.

What A Long Way Down is very successful at is being black comedy, which I think by nature is a bit distant.  It is quirky, irreverent thoughtful and clever.  This book is touching without being moving and funny without being sidesplitting.  It maintains a low energy and unresolved quality and this is actually, what makes it masterful.  Conflict and disrespect comes and goes with compassion and support, while self-destructive patterns are interwoven with startling and brilliantly written self-reflections.

Each of the characters makes an honest effort to reevaluate their situation, if not evolve.  These were the parts that captured something that I had felt, or at least could relate to.  After the intervention, JJ is sitting in a bar with his pre-roof friends and realizes that life is worth living, but that it is not easy.

“Once you start pretending that everything’s shitty and you can’t wait to get out of it, which is the story I’d been telling myself for a while, then it gets more painful, not less.  Telling yourself life is shit is like an anesthetic, and when you stop taking the Advil, then you really can tell how much it hurts, and where, and it’s not like that kind of pain does anyone a whole lot of good.” (p299)

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