Defenestrate by Renee Branum is a novel about a family curse and the consequences of this heritage of falling.

Definitely not the book for me.
I really struggled with the story as it felt plotless and meandering. It was honestly such a slog to get through.
Sadly, I took very little away from this one, so I can't recommend it.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I chose this book because I had come across the title and its peculiar meaning a couple of times in the last few months. I am not one to ignore such occurrences, and I decided to give it a shot.
The plot is not the kind that I usually enjoy, but the writing is dark and deep. The latter is not a combination I highly recommend, but it was easy to read even with the darker overtones.
The author created a very vivid character in our main narrator. Marta is a twin, something that colours and influences a lot in her life. She thinks things through a little too much. She also finds their family history of 'falling' very influential, and it casts a pall over her every waking action, and sometimes her subconsciousness as well.
There are many parts that makeup Marta's whole. Each piece is revealed in a back and forth passage of time. I will not be going into the details because the revelations and the way it is laid out will probably be the main reason people will pick this book up in the first place.
No one is happy, truly satisfied during the entirety of the book; I almost would not have liked it if not for the introduction of something I will call twists for the lack of a better word. There are two. One might count as the main basis of the entire story, but I was drawn more to the other. The brother and his part changed how I looked at the entire book. It rarely happens when I have made up my mind about any particular story and am biding my time to the end that something changes my feelings. It is an otherwise short chapter that injects a new direction to the content (and I am still not talking of the actual 'truth' that should have borne this weight, but I kind of saw that coming).
I would recommend it to anyone who does not mind travelling through the darker despair filled journey through a character's mind and the kind of book that does not necessarily have a conclusion.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

The word defenestrate makes me pause when I come across it, always mildly disbelieving, mildly fascinated that there is a specific word for throwing someone or something out of a window. So, of course I wanted to read a novel called Defenestrate – it’s partly set in Prague, the Defenestration of which (in 1618) I read about some time ago. This also fascinated me, throwing people out of windows as an act of protest.

The defenestration central to Renee Branum’s novel also takes place in Prague, where the narrator’s great-grandfather pushes a stonemason in love with his daughter out of a church window and then takes his family to America. A hundred or so years later, the narrator Marta grows up with this family legacy. She yearns for heights, practices pratfalls with her twin brother Nick while their deeply religious mother is forever praying for protection against falling. The family lore contains many a fall, accidental or deliberate including the latest – Nick’s fall from a balcony while attempting to feed a bird. During Nick’s recuperation in hospital, Marta cannot stop worrying that his fall was deliberate. Her thoughts move back and forth in time, from their childhood to Nick’s coming out to their parents and their mother kicking him out. Their relocation to Prague in their twenties and Marta’s lonely present, telling stories of falls and falling to strangers in bars.

Interspersed with Marta’s past and present are stories about the twins’ idol, Buster Keaton, the silent films they watched as children, stories from Keaton’s childhood and career and the famous house falling on him. These are linked with Nick’s growing realisation of his own sexuality and his first relationship, his separateness from Marta. Bohumil Hrabal, Italian cartoon La Linea, the photograph of Evelyn McHale called ‘the most beautiful suicide’ also appear as stories, associations, connections with falls and falling.

I particularly liked the clever and inventive structure of the novel, the connections Marta forms in her mind slowly leading the reader to realise that there are no meaningful connections in her life aside from her relationship with Nick. As her worry with Nick’s state of mind deepens, you realise that perhaps she is the one needing help.

Defenestrate is a compelling read, at times darkly funny despite dealing with issues of mental health, alcoholism, depression and homophobia. It’s also about dealing with complex family histories and family bonds, growing up and becoming. It’s a very good read.

My thanks to Random House, Vintage and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Defenestrate.

Marta and Nick were fearful of a warning from their mother that they lived with a curse in which people in their family tended to be gravely injured or killed by falls. It all began when a great-great-grandfather pushed a stonemason out a window in Prague, an act known as defenestration, which forced him to flee to the American Midwest and seems to have led to an uncanny string of falls in the family. Both siblings have a fascination of heights and falling; using the antics of Buster Keaton as a reference in their ‘falling’ training. After a falling out with his mother, Nick moves to Prague with his sister, Marta in order to try to make sense of their history and find out more about the curse.
A good read, with some interesting historical facts and an interesting ending.

Ive never really thought about how many ways there are to fall before I read this book. It was such an interesting and thought provoking read. It is well written with good narrative, well developed characters and a good storyline. I couldnt put it down and I found it chilling and stunning at the same time.

An inventive, original and unusual novel about all the different ways there are of falling. Twins Marta and Nick feel that they are doomed by an old family legend when an ancestor was pushed to his death out of a window in 1895 in Prague, that city famous for its defenestration of 1618. Obsessed with this fear they become equally obsessed with the films of Buster Keaton and his legendary falls. With asides relating to many other real-life falls, such as that from planes, the first person narrative follows Nick and Marta as they visit Prague when their mother’s rejection of Nick’s homosexuality makes living at home untenable. It’s a serious novel which deals with serious issues, from mental health to alcoholism, from religion to family bonds. It’s ambitious in its scope, with many narrative threads, all of which are expertly handled and cleverly woven together. A great piece of writing and a haunting tale.

The story is told in first person by an American Marta. She and her twin brother Nick have grown up with the family story of their (maternal) great great grandfather Jiří. He was an architect in late 19th Century Prague who pushed a stonemason to death (for an affair with Jiří’s young daughter) – leading he and his family to feel to the American Midwest and leaving some form of not quite curse but more an obsession towards falling (and tendency to resulting tragedy) to his future descendants.

For Marta and Nick as they grew up it seemed that this more manifested itself as a Buster Keaton-inspired shared love for pratfalls, although Marta herself seems drawn to heights.

As the story in front of us unfolds we see it is being narrated by Marta in the US, with Nick in hospital after a bad but supposedly accidental fall from his apartment window (the explanation for this is so like the death of Nick’s favourite author - Bohumil Hrabal - that she suspects it was deliberate). In hospital he wants to talk about their time together in Prague – where they went for a period after a family row and immediate tragedy caused a seemingly mutually irrevocable breach with their deeply Christian mother. While there, Nick’s behaviour became increasingly reckless but Marta too had her issues and on their return to the US (but not to the family home) it is increasingly unclear who has the real problem.

A really quite impressive debut novel which simultaneously manages to be:

Quirky and inventive: In concept (with a family seemingly drawn inexorably to falling via an ancestral legend); in references (how many books have as their two main inspirations Buster Keaton and Bohumil Hrabal); and in style (a series of short vignettes alongside a story which plays out in across three linear narratives in three locations – two in the US, one in Prague)

Intellectually stimulating: by throwing off a myriad of connections riffing around the idea of falling. As well as the repeated and lengthy references to Buster Keaton (his films, his technique for falling, and most of all the various family stories that surround his birth, infancy and childhood and which were an essential part of his persona) and to the the writing, life (and especially the death) of Hrabal, we have a series of other links. Of course the title refers to the Prague defenestration of 1618 (which lead directly to the Thurty Years War), and here are just a few of the other stories featured in the vignettes (sometimes just once, but often referred to repeatedly): the famous “most beautiful suicide” picture by Robert Wiles of Evelyn Frances McHale; Saint John of Nepomuk (and his statue on the Charles Bridge); the Italian 1970s cartoon “Mr Linea”; Paul’s overlong sermon in Acts and the fall, death and restoration to life of Eutychus; Juliane Kopecky and her fall from an airliner over Peru; the mountaineering accident of Simon Yates and Joe Simpson. And these links are not just described in enough detail to peak the unfamiliar reader’s interest enough for a quick You Tube, Google or Wikipedia search, but are often used to draw out wider truths and to link back to the main story. And even on top of that are copious references to bible stories and to pop music and other song lyrics.

Hard hitting: Dealing with difficult subjects like mental illness and alcoholism

Complex in its dynamics: One thing I admired in what was relatively short and packed novel was how the dynamics between the three family members shifts and evolves over time and is left at the end, not resolved but at least with the possibility of telling a new family story.

Really insightful into the human condition: Particularly families and the stories they tell themselves and how those stories both render apart and sustain families.

And on top of that it is even an excellent examination of (fraternal) twin relationships

Highly recommended - one book you will definitely not want to throw out of a window