Ready to Fall
Ready to Fall (2000)
A Novel
by Claire Cook
Where can a 40-ish woman turn when her marriage has gone stale and her kids treat her like an unpaid chauffeur? In Beth Riordan's case, it's to cyberspace. She takes a zany romp with love through wry, revelatory emails to Thomas, her handsome neighbor in a New England suburb, a travel writer in the middle of a divorce.
"Reading Claire Cook's novel is like eating some exotic dish about which you say, 'Wow, this is great! What's in it?' The ingredients here are: intelligence, humor, poignancy, revelation and, perhaps best of all, true originality. Ready to Fall seems to me to be ready to soar."
-Elizabeth Berg
Open House, Pull of the Moon
"In this stunning debut novel, Claire Cook creates a whole world through one character's one-way emails. As Beth Riordan keeps pounding her keyboard, her story accumulates layers -- seasoned always with humor and heart -- that build to a surprising ending that feels just right. Cook's voice is pitch perfect. Bells rang for me on each and every page."
-Mameve Medwed
The End of an Error, Host Family, Mail
"Claire Cook's wit and intelligence grace every page, and her narrator's adventures are at once thought-provoking and enormously entertaining. Fresh and full of pizazz, Cook's novel is simply irresistible."
-Helen Fremont
After Long Silence
"In Ready to Fall, Claire Cook ingeniously shows us that e-mail is the modern diary beamed into cyberspace. Refracted at dizzying speed and with wicked, zany humor, it's like stumbling on a stranger's journal -- you'll read it at a single sitting, start to finish. No guilt, only delight."
-Alexandra Johnson
The Hidden Writer
