The Shock of the Fall: WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2013

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You may want to get a personal alarm system so that you can signal for help in the event of a fall.

The other vital element to this novel is that not only does Matthew blame himself, but he is also slowly descending into schizophrenia. We watch as his mental health suffers under the pressure of the self-inflicted guilt surrounding his brothers death. Seeing Matthew grow throughout the novel was touching. Filer, also a regular fixture on the stand up poetry circuit, said being a mental health nurse was fulfilling as well as frustrating. "It is not a terribly good time to get unwell at the moment or need NHS services for mental illness. There are a lot of cuts and beds closing. It is a difficult time to be a nurse, it's a very difficult time to be a patient," he said. Aside from Filer, the 2013 Costa winners were named as Kate Atkinson in the novel section, for Life After Life; Lucy Hughes-Hallett for her biography of the Italian fascist writer Gabriele D'Annunzio; Chris Riddell for his children's book Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse; and Michael Symmons Roberts for his collection of poetry Drysalter. Having said that, Filer admitted a responsibility not to propagate myths around schizophrenia, a condition that is still "misunderstood and misrepresented", he said. "If you ask the man in the street you will still get lots of people taking about split personality, which is completely bogus … and violence which of course can be associated with it but more often isn't."It’s a devastating but eye-opening reading experience as Matthew relates in this unadulterated voice how a person like him copes with his kind of illness. We don’t read a lot of these books and this is why books like this deserve to be read and appreciated. Matt’s other creations aren’t produced so easily. It takes him weeks to build an atomic model ant farm in his flat, sketched out for him by Simon ‘moving my hand, scratching my pen across the sketchpads and the bedroom wall. His interstellar dust. His atoms.’ Simon had always wanted an ant farm, but his parents never let him have one. So Matt makes one for him. ‘With the right ingredients, like the right sort of atoms and everything,’ he explains, ‘you can build’ memories, ‘stop them being memories, and make them real again’:

Anyone can have a fall, but older people are more vulnerable and likely to fall, especially if they have a long-term health condition. Hold on to the furniture with both hands to support yourself and, when you feel ready, slowly get up. Sit down and rest for a while before carrying on with your daily activities. From the start, Matthew’s placement in the mental institution and his slightly odd storytelling hint at the possibility that he’s not the most reliable of narrators. It is almost impossible to discern which parts of his story are true, and which are the product of a damaged mind. Matthew is only nineteen, extremely vulnerable, and his thoughts are all over the place, jumping through space and time from one short chapter to the next. But still, it’s his unforgettable voice that holds this narrative together firmly and effortlessly.The novel has earned high praise from comedian and former nurse Jo Brand, who said it was the best fiction about mental illness she had ever read. a b c "UWE awards Honorary Degree to Nathan Filer". University of the West of England. 23 July 2015 . Retrieved 12 August 2015. cardiac tamponade (blood or fluids fill the space between the sac that surrounds the heart and the heart muscle)

Most falls do not result in serious injury. But there's always a risk that a fall could lead to broken bones, and it can cause the person to lose confidence, become withdrawn, and feel as if they have lost their independence. What should I do if I fall? Nathan Filer's first book of non-fiction, The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia, was published by Faber and Faber in 2019. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Year [21] and the charity, Rethink Mental Illness, named it as one of their Mental Health Books of the Decade. [22] It was also longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. [23] Patients are referred to as "Service Users" and it's a place in which "the manics talk – but they talk crap" and where the over-riding sensation is of mind-numbing tedium. "There is literally nothing to do," says Matthew, who calls his own repetitive existence "a Cut & Paste kind of life". Nathan Filer is following in the footsteps of Mark Haddon’s genre-setting The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time. Both funny and painful… you’re going to love it’ DAILY MAILThere are books which, because of the sheer skill with which every word is chosen, linger in your mind for days. He also worked as a performance poet contributing regularly to festivals and spoken-word events across the UK, including Glastonbury, Latitude, Shambala, Port Eliot and the Cheltenham Literature Festival. His poetry has been broadcast on television and radio, including BBC Radio 4's Bespoken Word and Wondermentalist Cabaret. [8] In 2005 Filer's comedy short film Oedipus won the BBC Best New Filmmaker Award and numerous international prizes. [9] Osim toga, roman je prožet i odličnim humorom (poprilično crnim), čak i pored toga što se bavi ozbiljnim problemima - opakom bolešću uma, detetom sa daunovim sindromom,... Filer presents someone helpless in the face of his grief, a burden he can't share with his own sweet, damaged parents. "Mental illness turns people inwards," Matthew remarks.

It's essentially the story of a young man's descent into mental illness, from childhood events to trying to live as an independent adult and on to life in a mental health care facility.In the present, Matt is being treated at the Hope Road Day Centre mental hospital. He was committed there by his parents, Richard and Susan, after his grandmother found him attempting to make a giant ant farm in his flat, which a hallucination of Simon told him to do. Matt finds his experience at the ward repetitive, and often complains about the rigid schedule. One of Matt's therapists asks him to perform a genogram – which eventually makes him remember what happened to Simon by writing about the night he died. It is revealed that Simon's death was the result of a harmless prank gone wrong, where Simon accidentally fell off of a short cliff. Nathan Filer (7 February 2014). "My Hero: Malala Yousafzai". The Guardian . Retrieved 11 February 2015. Susan Holmes is the grieving mother of schizophrenic Matthew and deceased Simon. Shattered by the death of her son, she carries the grief with her throughout the novel. Life After Life tells the multiple stories of Ursula Todd, born in England during a snowstorm in 1910. It has won praise for its inventiveness, with the narrative starting over and again, in a Groundhog Day fashion, exploring the question of what happens when we get the chance – time after time – to do the right thing. The book, shortlisted for last year's women's prize for fiction, was described by Costa judges as "astonishing"." They added: "This book does everything you could ask for in a work of fiction and so much more."