Free Fall

William Golding
3.67
1,427 ratings 150 reviews
"I was standing up, pressed back against the wall, trying not to breathe. I got there in the one movement my body made. My body had many hairs on legs and belly and chest and head, and each had its own life; each inherited a hundred thousand years of loathing and fear for things that scuttle or slide or crawl." from Free FallSammy Mountjoy, artist, rises from poverty and an obscure birth to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War II, he is taken as a prisoner-of-war, threatened with torture, then locked in a cell of total darkness to wait. He emerges from his cell like Lazarus from the tomb, seeing infinity in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour. Transfigured by his ordeal, he begins to realize what man can be and what he has gradually made of himself through his own choices. He determines to find the exact point at which the accumulated weight of those choices has deprived him of free will.
Genres: FictionClassicsLiteratureLiterary FictionNovelsNobel PrizeBritish LiteratureEnglish LiteratureContemporaryHistorical Fiction
264 Pages

Community Reviews:

5 star
353 (25%)
4 star
474 (33%)
3 star
417 (29%)
2 star
138 (10%)
1 star
45 (3%)

Readers also enjoyed

Other books by William Golding

Lists with this book

Lord of the Flies
The Spire
Rites of Passage
The Best of William Golding
18 books8 voters
Charlotte’s Web
The Fault in Our Stars
Memoirs of a Geisha
Authors with Colors in Their Name
423 books21 voters
Lord of the Flies
Rites of Passage
The Inheritors
Best of William Golding
14 books2 voters
The Hunger Games
Pride and Prejudice
To Kill a Mockingbird
Best Books Ever
74241 books275039 voters