One day the matriarch of a family of four living in a small town in Cuba starts falling. After weeks of testing and several more falls she is diagnosed with "medical temporal lobe epilepsy," or in layman's terms: seizures that affect the part of the brain that processes emotion, memory and mood. The treatment is medication that dulls all the above to prevent more seizures.

The Fallen is the story of this family in the months after the mother's diagnosis and the story of their joint downfall. It is told in alternating chapters between all family members giving the reader a 360 degree view into this family.

The father is a man very dedicated to Cuban communism and his revolutionary predecessors. On the other end, the son, serving mandatory military service, finds himself completely disillusioned about the system. The daughter manages a hotel restaurant doing whatever she can to help the family get by. And of course, the mother, a housewife, is battling epilepsy.

The writing is told with complete candor and honesty. It's gritty and dark in its realism but is also broken up by the occasional dreamlike sequence. I loved this juxtaposition, these scenes would give me chills. I also thought the way the author used the multiple perspectives was brilliant. I enjoyed getting to read more than one view of living in Cuba but what I thought was very smart was his use of filling in gaps in other family member's experiences. Where in one chapter one family member may be wondering about one thing, in subsequent chapters from other perspectives you get your otherwise unknowable answers. It made for such an engaging reading experience. The Fallen is smart, visceral and very compelling. I look forward to reading more by Carlos Manuel Álvarez.

Broken people trying to navigate an even more broken system. These characters are so well-developed and real, even at their most depraved. This slice of life into a Cuban family is disquieting and relentless. How does a family navigate life when the only thing holding them together, is in free fall?

Highly recommended. So much depth created from such short and punchy sentences. An author to continue watching.

Told from the points of view of four Cuban family members, this book gives some insight into the lives of everyday people under this crumbling social structure. Yet, much of it is metaphoric, not my favorite literary device. It is a fast read that paints a picture of a bleak, but enduring future.

"I'm alive and in my underwear and my skin is yellow."

A magnificent, disturbing novel, about a family that can no longer take care of itself, and that is trying to survive in a society that has left them with nothing to believe in. The inciting tragedy that the family must endure is the precipitous mental and physical decline of the matriarch, Mariana, whose story unfolds in these pages with heartbreaking detail. The narrative voice is staccato-perfect: a barrage of short declarative sentences gives the story a relentless forward motion, where from the first page I could feel the promise of tragedy and loss.

These characters are deeply human, even when they're at their worst, and this is great storytelling, about the most true things that fiction can reveal. A big yes.