Book Review: We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier

Cormier, Robert. We All Fall Down. New York: Laurel Leaf, 1991.

They entered the house at 9:02 P.M. and trashed their way through the Cape Cod cottage. At 9:46 P.M. Karen Jerome made the mistake of arriving home early. Thrown down the basement stairs, Karen slips into a coma. The trashers slip away.

But The Avenger has seen it all.

Jane Jerome and her family arrive home one night, only to discover their house has been vandalized and 14-year-old Karen Jerome thrown to the bottom of the stairs, in a coma. The vandals are no where to be seen. But one person, The Avenger, saw it all, and is determined to make the vandals pay. In struggling to recover from the invasion, Jane finds herself falling in love with Buddy Walker, who, unbeknownst to her, is one of th vandals.

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Robert Cormier at his best. Evil teenagers that are too smart for their own good, a psycho “Avenger,” and a boy that causes evil and regrets it falls in love with the victim of the evil…wow, it’s got everything to keep me going. I would get disappointed every time he would change POV because I wanted to know more of what was happening with that situation, but then I’d immediately get all excited again because I had wanted to know what happened in this situation. There were some moments when he would switch POV back and forth and it didn’t work too well. And I know when you read Cormier, you can expect a depressing and surprising ending, but in this case, I think he misled us. He built everything up for a happy ending, then doesn’t give it to us. I think I’m just going to pretend that I didn’t read the last chapter and imagine my own ending.