All Fall Down
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Product Description
When Isabel's Yorkshire village is devastated by the Black Death, it seems that the world is ending in horror and fear. But for the survivors of the terrible plague, a new and freer society will rise from the destruction of the feudal system that enslaved the family. A powerful historical novel from one of today's most exciting young writers.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Set in the middle of the fourteenth century, when the Black Death was sweeping through Britain. All Fall Down by Sally Nicholls tells the story of Isabel, her family and friends, and the village she lives in as the pestilence draws ever nearer.
Sally Nicholls has researched her subject very well and the wealth of period detail including contemporary language is excellent for a YA novel. The spirit of the medieval times is captured quite well and things are explained in fairly plain language so a young audience can get a history lesson at the same time as reading a good story. However, at times, I felt like I'd read it all before. The characters are somewhat lacking in interest and the story is perfectly fine but formulaic and most of the time not particularly gripping even though this time period is one of the most interesting in history I didn't always feel it and it sometimes felt more like an obvious textbook re-telling of well known events.
The main protagonist, Isabel, is a rather modern young lady who is unbelievably composed in the face of great trauma and worryingly self-contained, even when the pestilence strikes down her father and stepmother in rather grim fashion.
Maybe I'm being picky because this is a children's novel after all but I felt that the characters lacked depth and much of the horror was distanced from the reader by either happening `off-stage' or to people the reader didn't really know.
I was moved by the character of the young priest who selflessly tends to the sick and dying when the previous parish priest flees. He was a highlight for me and a brilliant touch.
Having said all that I would recommend this novel - not as a crossover novel because I think it's too simple for adults - but for 12 upwards All Fall Down does combine an interesting and important time period and a good story.
It's a shame Nicholls called it All Fall Down thereby perpetuating the myth that Ring o' Ring o' Roses relates to the Black Death but that is my last niggle!
Sally Nicholls has researched her subject very well and the wealth of period detail including contemporary language is excellent for a YA novel. The spirit of the medieval times is captured quite well and things are explained in fairly plain language so a young audience can get a history lesson at the same time as reading a good story. However, at times, I felt like I'd read it all before. The characters are somewhat lacking in interest and the story is perfectly fine but formulaic and most of the time not particularly gripping even though this time period is one of the most interesting in history I didn't always feel it and it sometimes felt more like an obvious textbook re-telling of well known events.
The main protagonist, Isabel, is a rather modern young lady who is unbelievably composed in the face of great trauma and worryingly self-contained, even when the pestilence strikes down her father and stepmother in rather grim fashion.
Maybe I'm being picky because this is a children's novel after all but I felt that the characters lacked depth and much of the horror was distanced from the reader by either happening `off-stage' or to people the reader didn't really know.
I was moved by the character of the young priest who selflessly tends to the sick and dying when the previous parish priest flees. He was a highlight for me and a brilliant touch.
Having said all that I would recommend this novel - not as a crossover novel because I think it's too simple for adults - but for 12 upwards All Fall Down does combine an interesting and important time period and a good story.
It's a shame Nicholls called it All Fall Down thereby perpetuating the myth that Ring o' Ring o' Roses relates to the Black Death but that is my last niggle!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Sally Nicholls has taken the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century and used it as the background to an apocalyptic novel of disaster and survival. The narrator is fourteen year old Isabel who lives with her father, her step-mother and her brothers and sister in a feudal village. When rumours of the plague or pestilence reach them, no-one is too worried - surely god will only strike the heathens or ungodly? Then the first deaths happen and soon life in the village is completely overturned.
This is a book that I would have loved as a teenager. Isabel is an attractive heroine, not least for the way in which she doesn't want to be brave or heroic. The historical background is conveyed well and while Nicholls is right to explain the feudal system and other social institutions, as an adult reader I found this a bit tedious.
So this is an interesting read and one which I would particularly recommend to 12+ year olds. And if it encourages more people to learn about medieval history and culture then it will have done a great job.
This is a book that I would have loved as a teenager. Isabel is an attractive heroine, not least for the way in which she doesn't want to be brave or heroic. The historical background is conveyed well and while Nicholls is right to explain the feudal system and other social institutions, as an adult reader I found this a bit tedious.
So this is an interesting read and one which I would particularly recommend to 12+ year olds. And if it encourages more people to learn about medieval history and culture then it will have done a great job.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
People often have entire lists of things they fear, but one of those fears usually stands out, stronger than all the others. For me, that's fear of germs and infectious diseases. Deciding to read All Fall Down was a way for me to face my worst fear, and although it took me a while to get through it, in the end, I'm very glad I did.
Between 1348 and 1350, the Black Death killed anywhere from one third to half of European population, after wiping out tens of millions of people in Asia. In the small village Ingleforn, Isabelle is living peacefully with her father, stepmother and her siblings when the rumors of plague start trickling in. In a matter of months, England is consumed by this horrible disease and no one seems to know what causes it or how to defend from it. Isabelle's brother Geoffrey is living in the monastery where he is most exposed and she worries about him daily, but there's nothing to be done to ensure his safety. It doesn't take long for the Black Death to find its way to Ingleforn, and as it spreads, death becomes everyday occurrence and all anyone can hope for is to get their last rites in time.
Sally Nicholls did an excellent job in creating the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, that, combined with ignorance, produced both anger and malice. Gossip is spread faster than the illness, and people are targeted by fortune tellers and salesmen, selling everything from incense to fake bones of saints that are supposed to protect from the disease. Prayer is the answer to everything and those who fall ill must have been cohorting with the devil. In this world, women are outraged when they get permission to hear confessions from the ill, because if women are allowed to do what priests can, the world is surely coming to an end.
"How do you keep yourself safe? That's the next question, the one everyone wants an answer to. Surely there are medicaments and spells, surely someone, somewhere has found a way? The preachers hiss. 'By loving God and begging His forgiveness. By turning from the devil and all his works.'"
This isn't a story of a noble young heroine who is fearless and brave in the face of this horrible disease. Isabelle is just as lost, scared and sometimes even selfish as anybody else would be under those circumstances. Sally Nicholls did not try to make a saint out of her, but a normal little girl, a middle child at that, in no way special or outstanding, at times terrified and at times completely numb.
Even though All Fall Down didn't teach me anything new since we'd covered this period extensively back in high school, I'm still more aware of it now, this darkest time in human history. It's much easier to understand tragedy through names and faces than through numbers, even if those names and faces are fictional. Millions of girls like Isabelle died and lost their families, but I'll always think of her and her generous stepmother when someone mentions the Black Death.
Between 1348 and 1350, the Black Death killed anywhere from one third to half of European population, after wiping out tens of millions of people in Asia. In the small village Ingleforn, Isabelle is living peacefully with her father, stepmother and her siblings when the rumors of plague start trickling in. In a matter of months, England is consumed by this horrible disease and no one seems to know what causes it or how to defend from it. Isabelle's brother Geoffrey is living in the monastery where he is most exposed and she worries about him daily, but there's nothing to be done to ensure his safety. It doesn't take long for the Black Death to find its way to Ingleforn, and as it spreads, death becomes everyday occurrence and all anyone can hope for is to get their last rites in time.
Sally Nicholls did an excellent job in creating the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, that, combined with ignorance, produced both anger and malice. Gossip is spread faster than the illness, and people are targeted by fortune tellers and salesmen, selling everything from incense to fake bones of saints that are supposed to protect from the disease. Prayer is the answer to everything and those who fall ill must have been cohorting with the devil. In this world, women are outraged when they get permission to hear confessions from the ill, because if women are allowed to do what priests can, the world is surely coming to an end.
"How do you keep yourself safe? That's the next question, the one everyone wants an answer to. Surely there are medicaments and spells, surely someone, somewhere has found a way? The preachers hiss. 'By loving God and begging His forgiveness. By turning from the devil and all his works.'"
This isn't a story of a noble young heroine who is fearless and brave in the face of this horrible disease. Isabelle is just as lost, scared and sometimes even selfish as anybody else would be under those circumstances. Sally Nicholls did not try to make a saint out of her, but a normal little girl, a middle child at that, in no way special or outstanding, at times terrified and at times completely numb.
Even though All Fall Down didn't teach me anything new since we'd covered this period extensively back in high school, I'm still more aware of it now, this darkest time in human history. It's much easier to understand tragedy through names and faces than through numbers, even if those names and faces are fictional. Millions of girls like Isabelle died and lost their families, but I'll always think of her and her generous stepmother when someone mentions the Black Death.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Gripping teen novel ina real apocalypse
This was a easy and gripping read. It is centred on a villien in a small village near York. She has never travelled further than the next village, although her step-mother once... Read more
Published 10 days ago by JoMaynard
Really excellent
This is the third YA novel by Sally Nicholls that I've read, and must say she grows in strength with every one. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Welsh Annie
A superb historical novel - you will be gripped
The historical novelist faces two challenges, and sometimes they are contradictory. First, she has to be able to create a world that is unlike our own, and then she has to people... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Sensible Cat
Unspectacular apocalypse
Like many of my school-fellows in the 1970s I used to look forward to history lessons: whether we were studying slavery, the factory acts, world wars, or witch hunts, our teacher... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Alun Williams
More horrifying than the best horror story writer could come up with
because of its veracity!
It is the middle of the 14th Century and the Black Death has crossed the sea from the Continent and made its way to England. Read more
It is the middle of the 14th Century and the Black Death has crossed the sea from the Continent and made its way to England. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Neferra
Powerfully compelling
This is the story of Isabel, a fourteen year old girl who lives through the black death of 1349. It is a first person account of how the plague visits first her village and then... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley
MOVING & INSPIRATIONAL
The end of the world? That is how it seems. No respecter of status, The Great Pestilence sweeps across Europe claiming most in its path - not just the humble, but clergy and... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mr. D. L. Rees
Storytelling at Its Best
Award winning author Sally Nicholls won me over with her wonderful debut novel, Ways To Live Forever, a poignant contemporary story which was published in 2008. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Lovely Treez
Best Black Death novel in my collection - dystopia, horror or...
I chose All Fall Down in the middle of a YA dystopian frenzy, somehow missing the fact it was set in 1349 and could instead sit alongside my collection of Black Death fiction and... Read more
Published 2 months ago by S. Holt
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