The Shock of the Fall: WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2013

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Matt observes how the names of prominent drugs are stamped on merchandise throughout the hospital: on pens, papers, notepads, briefcases, coffee mugs, etc.

Fajler ima dara za pisanje i odlično je primenio malo drugačiji stil koji savršeno odgovara glavnom liku i njegovom problemu. You don't remember if you were beside the recycling bins, or further up the path near to the shower blocks, and whether actually the water tap is up there? I first started thinking of the main character when I was training as a nurse in 2003 so I've been mulling over it for years," he said. Additionally, the lack of ambiguity here makes the book "fundamentally out of sympathy with its narrator".I know very little about schizophrenia, so to read a book focusing on a character's suffering with this illness was enlightening and frightening all at once. The Shock of the Fall, which has just won the Costa prize for best first novel, is beautifully packaged, with drawings, varying typefaces and typographical tricks representing Matt's swelling bundle of papers. Perhaps I was expecting too much having just read the searingly brilliant Man Booker prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings.

It moves from his childhood with his parents including a mother who was also mentally unwell, to his time living by himself in his flat and finally to the time he spends in a mental hospital. This won several major literary awards, including the Costa Book of the Year [1] and the Betty Trask Prize. Sepsis, also known as blood poisoning, is a condition caused by infections that lead to bacteria entering your bloodstream.

But other than that, there’s no plot to follow, few other characters, and a narrator with very little personality or much to say. Unreliably narrated in the first person by 19-year-old protagonist Matt Homes, the story begins with a recollection from his boyhood. I love the way the book is written, for a debut novel it's quite exceptional, it's an emotion stirring book and thought provoking too.

Matt agrees, and slowly begins to remember what happened to Simon by writing about the night he died.

The details of Simon’s death, for which Matt blames himself, remain a mystery until the end of the novel. To lower your risk of blood loss from injuries, wear protective gear when taking part in contact sports, riding your bike, and using dangerous equipment. Moreover, the subtle references to past events, without explaining full details, created momentum in a plot which could simply have been a procession of unrelated ideas. He does not idealise the staff or the patients, both of them have good days and bad days and this was remarkably refreshing. The one with the small boy who was trying to lift a rock in his garden, and the boy’s dad was watching him heave and sweat and struggle, but get nowhere.

The novel was praised by The Guardian as "a gripping and exhilarating read", the narrator's voice being "dazzlingly rendered". He's no fool – and suspicious of people with scripted conversations – but, alas, he believes he can talk to his dead brother.If there’s one element that stays with you, it’s the clear picture of mental health treatment in England today, and how soul-draining it is for patients. He also worked as a performance poet contributing regularly to festivals and spoken-word events across the UK, including Glastonbury, Latitude, Shambala, Port Eliot and the Cheltenham Literature Festival. The flow of his words and the way they came off the page was fantastic and I became totally absorbed by his voice.