[title subtitle=”review: Marla Cantrell”][/title]
When All Fall Down opens, Allison Weiss is at the pediatrician’s office with her five-year-old daughter, Ellie, for a routine checkup. While waiting, Allison takes a magazine quiz on addiction. In the article that accompanies it, she learns prescription painkiller overdoses are the leading cause of accidental death in American women. She thinks about her own habits, the wine she drinks, the pain pills she takes to get her through the day. Her heart races. Surely she’s not an addict. She’s a successful blogger who lives in a McMansion with her husband, an award-winning journalist. She takes impeccable care of her daughter. She gets dinner on the table every night. She hosts fantastic parties. Still, as Allison answers the questions on the quiz, it becomes apparent she has a problem.
While the quiz bothers her, it does not stop her. Life is getting increasingly hard. Ellie is an extremely sensitive child who has outbursts regularly. Allison’s father has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and her mother, who’s been pampered her entire life, is little help. When Allison discovers her husband has been having lunch (and possibly more) with another woman, she sees her world unraveling.
What does she do? She ups her intake of pills, finding a website that will sell her Vicodin and OxyContin without a prescription. For a while, she holds it all together, but one by one, those closest to her start to notice something is terribly wrong.
Told with dark humor, honesty, and hope, this novel shows how easy it is to slip into a life you never imagined. It also shows the power of asking for help, and how important it is to admit you can’t do everything on your own.
Author Jennifer Weiner, a Princeton graduate, typically writes romantic comedies that sell well because they entertain so easily. Much has been said about this story and its departure from that formula. But it is in that departure that so much happens. Allison, who seems to have everything the rest of us aspire to, is taken down one step at a time. She starts to lie, hide money from her husband to buy drugs, and ignore the daughter she loves so much. She loses the trappings of her former life but gains insight that helps her create a different world, with different values.
And while it’s not a traditional love story, there is a great deal of love in it. Allison reconnects with her distant mother, sees how much her friends care for her, and finds hope in relationships with the women she meets who help her get back on her feet. By the time the story ends, you’ll be cheering for Allison, proud of the woman she’s become.
