Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: When the English Fall
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.belovedspear.org/
CITY: Annandale
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.belovedspear.org/p/blog-page.html * http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-english-fall-20170728-story.html * http://www.poolpres.com/H5_meet_pastor.php
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2017005440
Descriptive conventions:
rda
LC classification: PS3623.I556494
Personal name heading:
Williams, David (David Gerald), 1969-
Associated place: Washington Metropolitan Area
Birth date: 1969-01-19
Fuller form of name
David Gerald
Affiliation: Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
Profession or occupation:
Authors Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. -- Clergy
Found in: Williams, David. When the English fall, 2017: ECIP title
page (a novel by David Williams)
Email from publisher, December 12, 2016 (full name: David
Gerald Williams; DOB: 01/19/1969)
Algonquin Books WWW site, January 17, 2017: David Williams
(currently a pastor in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A),
serving a little church in a little town just outside of
Washington, DC; received his Master's of Divinity and
Doctor of Ministry degrees from Wesley Theological
Seminary)
OCLC, January 17, 2017 (heading: Williams, David; usage:
David Williams)
Associated language:
eng
================================================================================
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Library of Congress
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Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born January 19, 1969, in Washington, DC; married; children: two sons.
EDUCATION:Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC, Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Poolesville Presbyterian Church, pastor; Aspen Institute, managed a research grant–making program.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
David Williams, who earned his Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees at Wesley Theological Seminary, is a pastor in the Presbyterian Church, serving the Poolesville Presbyterian Church in Maryland. He has worked at Colonial Williamsburg and managed a research grant–making program at the Aspen Institute. He writes a blog at www.belovedspear.org.
In 2017, Williams published When the English Fall, a postapocalyptic tale that exposes man’s violent nature. The earth has suffered a catastrophic solar storm that wipes out electrical grids and causes the collapse of modern civilization. In a Pennsylvania Amish community, the people are prepared with stores of food and a simple life not dependent on modern technology. However, the English (non-Amish people) of the cities are suffering and begin to attack and kill the Amish, stealing what they need. Pledged to nonviolence and service to others, the Amish must question whether to take up arms to protect their families and their way of life. The story is told from the point of view of farmer Jacob in his diary, which is discovered long after the event. “Interacting with the story through journal entries also has its advantages. It creates suspense and forward momentum in the narrative. I was emotionally invested in Jacob and his family’s welfare,” said Swapna Krishna on the Los Angeles Times website.
In an interview with Elizabeth Palmer in Christian Century, Williams talked about the connections between apocalypse and Amish culture, “The intentionally alternate economy the Amish create is their effort to manifest that immediacy as a faith community. Or to put that another way, the Amish are already living after the apocalypse.” Williams also explained what he wanted readers to take away from the book: “I hope the book is a reminder of just how deep our Christian commitment to loving others must go if we are to consider ourselves authentic disciples of Jesus Christ.” Writing in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer noted how Williams presents a complex interlacing of Amish and non-Amish life, saying: “The unique spin draws readers into an alarmingly plausible story of contemporary civilization’s demise.”
According to Booklist contributor Joan Curbow, “This is an intriguing take on the dystopian novel,” told by a quiet, simple, pious man. This lyrical and weirdly believable story is “a standout among post-apocalyptic novels, as simply and perfectly crafted as an Amish quilt,” according to a Kirkus Reviews writer. Online at the New York Times, Abigail Deutschaug observed: “Williams has put an apt and original spin on the genre of ‘prepper’ fiction—novels about Americans preparing for just such disasters. Who is better situated to survive the disintegration of modern society, after all, than those who never entered it in the first place?”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 2017, Joan Curbow, review of When the English Fall, p. 56.
Christian Century, August 2, 2017, Elizabeth Palmer, author interview, p. 27.
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2017, review of When the English Fall.
Publishers Weekly, April 24, 2017, review of When the English Fall, p. 72.
ONLINE
Beloved Spear, http://www.belovedspear.org/ (January 1, 2018), author profile.
Los Angeles Times Online, http://www.latimes.com/ (July 28, 2017), Swapna Krishna, review of When the English Fall.
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (August 31, 2017), Abigail Deutschaug, review of When the English Fall.
Welcome to the Poolesville Presbyterian Church website! My name is David, and I'm absolutely delighted to be able to serve and work with this wonderful and intimate community of faith. Take a look around at the website...we've got a whole bunch going on! You've clicked on the Meet Our Pastor link, and so presumably want to know about me. People seem to like reading lists of things online these days, so here are seven semi-illuminating factoids about me:
1. I was born in early 1969, in Washington DC. As the story goes, my newlywed mom and dad were delivering food and supplies to a black church--they were called "black churches," back then--in DC during the riots following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. They encountered tear gas, and it was stressful and intense, and when they got back to their apartment, well, 9 months later I showed up. That's the story, anyway. I'm sticking to it.
2. In the Myers-Briggs personality typology, I'm an INFJ. I'm deeply introverted, largely intuitive, split almost evenly between rationality and emotion, and I like closure. Oh, and online Harry Potter sorting hat quizzes put me consistently into Ravenclaw.
3. I ride motorcycles. Just one at a time, typically. I ride in the rain and the cold. That means when it rains, I get wet. When it's cold, I feel cold. It's just how I prefer to get around. They are efficient and fun, in equal measure. Why we feel obligated to cart around several tons of excess metal everywhere we go is beyond me.
4. I do not eat meat. I have a whole bunch of complex theological reasons for it revolving around minimizing suffering and caring for creation with the diet of Eden, but honestly, I started being vegetarian because my girlfriend/fiance/wife didn't eat meat. Though I've not intentionally ingested flesh in nearly two decades, the smell of burgers on the grill still makes me salivate. We're omnivores by design, after all.
5. I grew up in the Presbyterian church, wandered off in my late teens and twenties, and came back because I just had to. I felt called to the ministry, and not in a subtle way. Meaning, it wasn't a "process," or an abstract desire to do something good. It was a call, ferocious and relentless, to do whatever I could to support those who follow Jesus. So. Here I am.
6. My faith-influences include many folks, but my first, earliest, and perhaps most influential teacher was C.S. Lewis. When I was a bookish little boy, meaning four or five, I read the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We were living in Kenya, and there was no television to speak of, so there was little else for a little boy to do. So I read, but I do not remember the act of reading. What I remember is being in Narnia. The crunch of snow underfoot, a circle of sad little stone creatures, blood on a stone table, and the warm touch of Aslan's fur. Books and words are, as Clive Staples taught me, very Deep Magic indeed.
7. I've been blessed with a congregation that supports creativity, and one of my joys in the years I've served here is that I've had time not just to study and get my doctorate, but also to write novels that explore questions of life and faith. Telling stories is, after all, the way Jesus taught all of us.
There's more to know, of course. If you're interested in learning more about the church, or would like to talk, feel free to be in touch with me at belovedspear (at) gmail (dot) com.
David Williams is a pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA). He's also driven forklifts, taught games of skill and chance in Colonial Williamsburg, and managed a major research grantmaking program at the Aspen Institute. He now serves a little church that is, like the TARDIS, much bigger on the inside. He likes his motorcycles dirty, his coffee strong, and his beers hoppy. He blogs at www.belovedspear.org and lives in Annandale, Virginia.
Hey there! I'm David.
Thanks for checking in, and for reading. I've been writing this little blog for about a decade, first on xanga, the now defunct social media platform, and then here on blogger. There are books, too, which you're welcome to peruse by clicking on the link.
Why so much writing? I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say, as Flannery O'Connor once put it.
You've clicked, and so presumably want to know about me, so here are seven semi-illuminating factoids:
I was born in early 1969, in Washington DC. As the story goes, my newlywed mom and dad were delivering food and supplies to a black church--they were called "black churches," back then--in DC during the riots following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. They encountered tear gas, and it was stressful and intense, and when they got back to their apartment, well, 9 months later I showed up. That's the story, anyway. I'm sticking to it.
In the Myers-Briggs personality typology, I'm an INFJ. I'm deeply introverted, largely intuitive, split almost evenly between rationality and emotion, and I like closure. What's my Enneagram type, you may ask? Pish posh. I don't buy into that strange witchery. It's just spit, incense, and monkey entrails, as far as I'm concerned. Oh, and online Harry Potter sorting hat quizzes put me consistently into Ravenclaw. This is still a more valid metric than the Enneagram. Ahem.
I ride motorcycles. Just one at a time, typically. I ride in the rain and the cold. That means when it rains, I get wet. When it's cold, I feel cold. It's just how I prefer to get around. They are efficient and fun, in equal measure. Why we feel obligated to cart around several tons of excess metal everywhere we go is beyond me.
I do not eat meat. I have a whole bunch of complex theological reasons for it revolving around minimizing suffering and caring for creation, but honestly, I started being vegetarian because my girlfriend/fiance/wife didn't eat meat. Though I've not intentionally ingested flesh in nearly two decades, the smell of burgers on the grill still makes me salivate. We're omnivores by design, after all.
I grew up in the Presbyterian church, wandered off in my late teens and twenties, and came back because I just had to. I felt called to the ministry, and not in a subtle way. Meaning, it wasn't a "process," or an abstract desire to do something good. I got whupped upside the head by dreams and visions and theophanies, to the point where I felt a little crazy. Which, honestly, I probably am. Oh well.
I am a Presbyterian pastor, married to a Jewish woman. Together we have raised two Jewish sons. This is apparently unusual, but to be honest, it's felt like the most natural thing in the world.
My faith-influences include many folks, but my first, earliest, and perhaps most influential teacher was C.S. Lewis. When I was a bookish little boy, meaning four or five, I read the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We were living in Kenya, and there was no television to speak of, so there was little else for a little boy to do. So I read, but I do not remember the act of reading. What I remember is being in Narnia. The crunch of snow underfoot, a circle of sad little stone creatures, blood on a stone table, and the warm touch of Aslan's fur. Books and words are, as Clive Staples taught me, very Deep Magic indeed.
There you go. It's a little all over the place, I'll admit, but then, so is life. So is this blog.
Feel free to poke around at your leisure. If anything moves or helps or challenges you, or you'd like to be in touch, just zap me an email at belovedspear at gmail dot com.
If you'd rather say hello in person, you can roll by Poolesville Presbyterian Church, where I tend to be most Sunday mornings, being that I'm the pastor and all.
When the English Fall
Joan Curbow
113.19-20 (June 2017): p56+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
When the English Fall. By David Williams. July 2017. 256p. Algonquin, $24.95 (9781616205225).
The title of Williams' first novel may conjure thoughts of England and WWII, but this book is about a different sort of invasion. In the Pennsylvania countryside, Sadie, a young Amish girl, suffers spells and visions that prefigure a solar storm. The storm interferes with electrical connections and effectively stalls society overnight. Planes fall out of the sky, and cities burn. The Amish, meanwhile, go about their normal fall routines, staying busy harvesting and preparing for winter. News of what is happening to the "English" reaches them, and they offer assistance, but it soon becomes clear that the need is too great. Desperate English begin ransacking farms and killing neighbors, leaving the Amish to consider their fate. Told via Sadie's father Jacob's diary, in the quiet, simple prose of a quiet, pious man, this is an intriguing take on the dystopian novel: an army memo on the book's first page makes clear that this and Jacob's other diaries, found long after the "event," are vital historical documents.--Joan Curbow
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Curbow, Joan. "When the English Fall." Booklist, June 2017, p. 56+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498582713/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f5184e19. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A498582713
Williams, David: WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL
(May 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Williams, David WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL Algonquin (Adult Fiction) $24.95 7, 11 ISBN: 978-1-61620-522-5
When the going gets tough, the Amish get going.Williams' (The Strawberry Church, 2016, etc.) novel is the lyrical and weirdly believable diary of an Amish farmer named Jacob, documenting the world as seen from his Pennsylvania farm after climate change hits hard and some sort of atmospheric event knocks out the power grid everywhere. The English of the title are what the Amish call everyone outside their order; during a bizarre solar storm, their planes fall from the sky. Then their refrigerators, computers, lights, generators, phones, and everything else stop working. The English are in big trouble. But who knows how to get by without electricity and gasoline? Who has cellars full of preserves and drying rooms full of jerky? The Amish, that's who. The families of Jacob's community willingly fill National Guard vehicles with food every week to share with their neighbors in Lancaster, but as people in the cities begin to starve, the situation turns chaotic and violent. Until this catastrophe kicked in, Jacob's main worry was his daughter Sadie, 14, who has a serious seizure disorder but is renowned for her predictions and clairvoyance. Those visions will come in handy now. He also has an interesting and touching relationship with an English guy named Mike, the distributor who sells his handmade chairs. Mike's original problems--custody battle, unhappy kids, pregnant girlfriend--are dwarfed by what he faces after the collapse, and Jacob's comment about him proves prophetic: "The sorrows are planted, and they grow strong in the earth of his life, and they rise up, and there is harvest." A standout among post-apocalyptic novels, as simply and perfectly crafted as an Amish quilt.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Williams, David: WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491934331/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6fb55297. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491934331
When the English Fall
264.17 (Apr. 24, 2017): p72.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
When the English Fall
David Williams. Algonquin, $24.95 (256p)
ISBN 978-1-61620-522-5
Williams's satisfying postapocalyptic novel shows the complex interlacing of Amish and "English" (non-Amish) life. Jacob, an Amish father, lives in a small Pennsylvania district with his wife and two teen children. His daughter, Sadie, has preternatural abilities to foresee the future, a curious note in an otherwise very realistic story. In a journal, Jacob recounts the immediate effects of a massive solar storm that wipes out all electronics. Over two and a half months, the community is called to provide for the cities that were less prepared for the loss of modern life, and increasingly desperate outsiders begin to threaten them, driven to violence by need. This new world tests the Amish injunction to peacefully sacrifice. The diary format means the scientific details of the storm's effects are vague and the most horrifying events are only rumored; this increases tension and keeps the narrative from becoming as dehumanizing or shockingly violent as other tales of the end of the world. The unique spin draws readers into an alarmingly plausible story of contemporary civilization's demise. Agent: Kathleen Davis Niendorff, Kathleen Davis Niendorff Literary. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"When the English Fall." Publishers Weekly, 24 Apr. 2017, p. 72. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491250822/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=99f5d19b. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491250822
Postapocalyptic now: pastor and novelist David Williams
Elizabeth Palmer
134.16 (Aug. 2, 2017): p27+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Christian Century Foundation
http://www.christiancentury.org
DAVID WILLIAMS is the author of When the English Fall, a novel that portrays the relationships between an Amish community and their neighbors after a solar storm destroys technology. Williams is pastor of Poolesville Presbyterian Church in Maryland. His blog Beloved Spear is part of the CCblogs network.
What are the connections between apocalypse and Amish culture?
An authentic Christian apocalyptic worldview isn't primarily about some great looming cataclysm. In the Greek, apocalypse means "unveiling," a casting aside of the accretions and shadows of culture as we encounter the deeper truths of God's intent for us. The Amish, I would suggest, are a community that take seriously the "now" of apocalyptically shaped identity--not as a far-off thing but as something that needs to express itself in the present. The intentionally alternate economy the Amish create is their effort to manifest that immediacy as a faith community. Or to put that another way, the Amish are already living after the apocalypse.
How much do you see technology as corrupting, a form of hubris, or a challenge to faith?
Much more than I did before this last election cycle, frankly. The ease with which social media have become places where truth and falsehood are on the same level freaks me out a little bit. I'm also troubled by how technology, which offers us a choking cornucopia of overabundance, has left so many people without a sense of purpose and belonging. The ever-evolving tools we create are powerful, and they're not inherently evil. But they seem to have gotten away from us.
The novel's plotline hinges on the non-Amish characters suffering deeply when technology is destroyed. Who or what is to blame for the violence that ensues? What is the role of sin in this narrative?
We human beings are to blame, particularly our assumption that the implements and structures of violence are any sort of protection. The reliance on power over others as a source of security stands at the heart of most human systems, which lean on the sword of the state or the roar of the mob to control. That hunger for "power over" is the heart of sin.
In portraying the Amish as the ones equipped--technically, morally, and theologically--to survive the apocalypse, the book could be viewed as an endorsement of a Benedict option. That is, it suggests that thick local communities of Christian practice are the ones that endure the dangers of modernity. Is that part of your interest here?
Yes, that is part of my interest. I did my doctoral work on the dynamics of healthy micro-communities, researching and writing about what makes for thriving monastic life, house churches, and intentionally small churches. I strongly feel that the Way of Jesus is most deeply manifest in the disciplines and folkways of human-scaled communities. You cannot be effectively Christian if you don't do intimacy well.
How do you avoid romanticizing Amish people as you write about them?
That can be a real challenge, particularly given the pastel-hued lens through which we mistakenly view much of Amish life. I tried to remember that they are human beings and not caricatures. Reading the stories of Amish people was vital as I worked to honor both their voices and the tensions within their communities. Reading ethnographies of these communities, particularly Donald Kraybill's excellent book The Riddle of Amish Culture, gave me context.
What do you most want readers to take away from this book?
It's intended to stir contemplation rather than to wallop readers with a single true meaning. I hope the book is a reminder of just how deep our Christian commitment to loving others must go if we are to consider ourselves authentic disciples of Jesus Christ.
How is the work of a pastor related to the work of a fiction writer?
Being a pastor involves storytelling, and not just when you're up there sermonizing on Sunday. You need to be able to articulate the story of your community, that sense of shared narrative purpose that creates and sustains a collective identity.
However, for many pastors, the two vocations can end up not playing well together. If a community expects its pastor to be a 24/7 CEO-Manager-Facilitator-Counselor-Accountant-Conflict Resolution Specialist-Theologian-Enforcer-Scapegoat-Janitor-Social Worker-Comedian-Professor, that soul is not going to have two functioning neurons left to rub together to be creative. I've been blessed with a little church that is immensely supportive of my writing. I think healthy tribe-sized churches--where lay leaders really lead--can be wonderful in giving their pastors room to create.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Palmer, Elizabeth. "Postapocalyptic now: pastor and novelist David Williams." The Christian Century, vol. 134, no. 16, 2017, p. 27+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500608296/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8f2bfc19. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500608296
The Amish after the end: religious community in a postapocalyptic novel
Valerie Weaver-Zercher
134.16 (Aug. 2, 2017): p26+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Christian Century Foundation
http://www.christiancentury.org
When the English Fall
By David Williams
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 256 pp., $24.95
AMID CLIMATE change, terrorism, a global refugee crisis, nuclear standoff, and democracies traveling vectors unknown, the appeal of postapocalyptic fiction is not hard to understand. "The world feels more precariously perched on the lip of the abyss than ever," novelist Jason Heller wrote recently, "and facing those fears through fiction helps us deal with it."
The characters on the edge of the abyss in David Williams's debut novel wear coverings and suspenders. Set among the Amish of Lancaster County, the book explores a near future so imaginable that even those who roll their eyes at doomsaying--not to mention Amish-themed fiction--may find themselves brooding and watchful after living in its pages. Cathartic or not, postapocalyptic fiction is our culture's handwriting on the wall. In this case, it's in the script of an Amish farmer.
The apocalypse in When the English Fall arrives as a solar storm that knocks out the power grid, communications systems, and all the networks upon which so much of modern life depends. Williams's plotline was inspired by a solar storm in 1859 known as the Carrington Event, the damage of which now seems positively quaint--it busted telegraph systems. Were such a storm to occur today, the scaffolds of advanced capitalism--including global communication, transportation networks, banking systems, and medical care--would fall like toothpicks. Along with them would fall the "English"--the Amish term for those who are not Amish. Buffered from harm by never having climbed very far up the scaffold of modernity, the Amish world would continue and become a safe place for the English to land.
The novel introduces Jacob and his family before the solar storm hits. The entries of Jacob's journal convey the steady rhythms of his carpentry and farm work, the prayers that mark his days, the disturbingly erratic weather, and his immense and often pained love for his children. Jacob and Hannah's prepubescent daughter, Sadie, has frightening seizures that wrack her body and that often leave her talking nonsense--except when her garbled thoughts form themselves into predictions of the future. As Sadie begins to fixate on talk of lights, darkness, and angel wings, she repeats the cryptic words, "the English fall!"
And on the night of the solar storm, the English do fall--out of a plane, when navigation instruments fail. "I could see both wings, bent back dark like a broken cross, and it was floating downward, downward, very slow," Jacob writes. "It was very wrong. I began to pray."
Jacob's simple yet elegant prayers thread through the novel, and they intensify as the effects of the solar storm become clear. The cataclysm unfolds quickly for the English, who are beholden to what philosopher Albert Borgmann calls the "device paradigm": the rule of technology that both promises liberation from toil and hides its processes from view. Only when a device is rendered useless do we notice--and need--the skills and practices it had erased.
The changes occur in slow motion for Amish families like Jacob's, whose agrarian skills, communal ties, and work ethic now offer a measure of protection. "Our community is, to me, what all the English had built was to him," writes Jacob of the non-Amish Mike, with whom he does business in his carpentry work. "But now, for him, all of that is gone."
But even the Amish are not immune from the dismantling of the social order. There are simply too many ligatures between their lives and those of the English around them. As all the goods that the English took for granted are disappearing, Mike and his thoroughly modern family show up on Jacob and Hannah's doorstep. The Amish family takes them in, schooling them in the ways of survival and community. "In this time, as everything we know falls apart, all we have to hold on to is our way," a church leader tells Jacob. "But what is our simple way, and all of our actions, if we cannot welcome the hungry? And be hospitable to the homeless stranger in our land? ... We have no choice, but to be as Christ taught."
Being Christlike becomes an increasingly fraught enterprise. As in many a postapocalyptic tale, militias form and vigilante justice prevails. Signage and slogans appear: "Come and bring your guns ... Rally to protect your families." When violence visits the Amish, including Jacob's family, they must decide whether a safety that is contingent upon their English friends' willingness to kill is perilous to their souls.
Williams's characters are faced with an intensified version of the dilemma that has shaped the Amish for centuries--how to be in the world but not of it. When the world crumbles, those who live at some remove are forced to name the ways they benefit from their residence in it. The apocalypse strips the English of their way of life, but it also robs the Amish protagonist of the comfort of his own "quiet in the land" narrative. Before the solar storm, Jacob writes, "Such a wild terrible mess, the world is now. I am glad that I am not in it." After the storm, he would be hard-pressed to make such a claim. The novel's ending offers one solution to the religious sectarian's dilemma--one that is bleak, foreboding, and marked by a smudge of hope.
Writing fiction set in another culture, especially from a first-person perspective, takes a measure of courage and perhaps even hubris. You can read all you want about a close-cinched religious or ethnic group, but authenticity and accuracy always, to a degree, remain mirages shimmering in the distance. Overall, Williams, a teaching elder in the Presbyterian church, inhabits his Amish character convincingly. While there is no singular Amish man's voice, I have conversed with and edited enough of them to say that Williams strikes the right pitch in Jacob's sensible prose, descriptions of the natural world, and sly wit.
There are glitches, though, not limited to misspelled family names and misplaced locations in Lancaster County. Jacob repeatedly speaks of "the Order," referring to his or another sect, in a manner foreign to Amish discourse. And his characterization of rumspringa, which means "running around," reflects English understandings of the practice more than Amish ones. Williams appears to assume that this era of an Amish teenager's life includes a heavy dose of worldly interactions. With the collapse of the English world, Jacob worries about his teenaged son--"How will he run around, if the English world is in tatters?"
In reality, according to Amish scholar Donald B. Kraybill, rumspringa is "best understood as the time when youth socialize with their peers." Often including volleyball games and hymn-sings with other Amish youth and slightly relaxed curfews, rumspringa isn't contingent on anything in the non-Amish world.
Additionally, Jacob's shame over capturing his interior life in his journal, which surfaces throughout his writing, is implausible. He writes that journaling--"this act I am doing right now in writing and remembering, worse yet in English"--was forbidden. Journaling is not off limits in any Amish community that I'm aware of, and when the Amish write, they write in English, not Pennsylvania Dutch, which is mostly an oral language.
Yet the larger successes of Williams's book--the construction of a plausible dystopia, gentle but not saintly characters, and a nuanced portrayal of faith--outweigh such errors. One of the most commendable aspects of the novel is his vision of religion in a postapocalyptic future, which diverges from the genre's frequent portrayal of faith as fanatical and brutish. In World Made by Hand, by James Howard Kunstler, set in a small town in New York after the depletion of the oil fields and catastrophic climate change, a creepy religious sect led by Brother Jobe takes over the abandoned high school. And what could be creepier than the theocratic religion of Margaret Atwood's Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale, where women are treated as breeding livestock and in which Handmaids must listen to a tape of mangled beatitudes ("Blessed are the silent") while eating lunch?
In sketching an alternate view of postapocalyptic religion, Williams offers a sturdy example of what Menno Simons called "true evangelical faith." Although the Amish in the novel are somewhat idealized (is anyone truly as good as Jacob and Hannah?), Williams makes a strong case that when things fall apart, authentic Christian faith will reveal itself as both impetus and sustenance to care for others. In that sense, Williams suggests that when apokalupsis comes it will be true to the Greek meaning of the word: a disclosing of ultimate reality, an unveiling of the true work of Christ.
Amish characters have long resided in the lucrative space of Christian romance fiction, so their appearance in a genre frequented by cyborgs and misanthropes may seem a bit surprising. Critic Laura Miller claims that postapocalyptic fiction "runs on a current of nostalgia for an earlier age." In a review of Jeff VanderMeer's novel Borne, Miller suggests that in portraying the collapse of civilization and what follows, novelists tap into readers' frontier longings--their hidden desire to "reinvent society from the ground up." For all the nightmare scenarios they paint, these novelists allow readers to imagine themselves as the heroic, brave pioneers in days of yore. Taking her argument a train stop or two farther than nostalgia, Miller adds that "the postapocalyptic imagination is shot through with unacknowledged wish fulfillment."
That a longing for an idealized past would fuel a genre about a dystopian future may also seem counterintuitive. Yet anyone familiar with the frequent tropes of postapocalyptic fiction--post-collapse communities marked by mutual aid and the resurrection of trades, crafts, and all manner of do-it-yourself-ness--will recognize the truth of Miller's claim.
I won't wager a guess as to whether the fall of turbo capitalism would be, for the author or his readers, something of a dream come true. But readers may recognize themselves in Jacob's journal entry about how English people used to walk around "not even seeing each other, eyes down into their rectangles of light." Given our current cultural anomie and fragmentation, readers might agree that a near future in which near-Amish life is mandated by circumstance could be worse.
The question, then, is not why the Amish have shown up in a postapocalyptic novel. The question is what took them so long.
Valerie Weaver-Zercher is an acquisitions editor for Herald Press trade books and author of Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Weaver-Zercher, Valerie. "The Amish after the end: religious community in a postapocalyptic novel." The Christian Century, vol. 134, no. 16, 2017, p. 26+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500608295/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f8ae9ff6. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500608295
'When the English Fall' envisions the Amish as society's post-apocalyptic saviors
Yvonne Zipp
(July 27, 2017): Arts and Entertainment:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Christian Science Publishing Society
http://www.csmonitor.com/About/The-Monitor-difference
Byline: Yvonne Zipp
It's the end of the world as we know it, and the Amish feel fine.
That's the premise of David Williams's elegiac dystopian novel, When the English Fall.
Told through journal entries found at an abandoned farmhouse, this version of world's end has no bad guy - no zombies, aliens, or plagues. There's no nuclear war or even a Rapture. Its arrival, at least as seen from the hills of Pennsylvania, is silent: A solar storm takes out the power grid, causing planes to fall from the sky and wiping out most transportation and communications systems.
So the end comes, not with a bang, but with dancing, colored lights and a night sky filled again with stars as the world's cities go dark. And everyone is left to struggle on the next day the best they can.
Jacob, a farmer philosopher and father of two, is a solemn bystander to chaos, as he quietly continues to go about days ordered by time-honored tradition: crafting furniture, planting beans, drying jerky, going to prayer meetings on neighboring farms.
Well, it's sort of the premise. Although their cellars are full of preserves put up for the winter, and their way of life is independent of things that required computers, electricity, or motors, Jacob and the other members of the Order are deeply concerned about suffering in Lancaster and cities too far away for them to have seen the red glow of what used to be civilization.
"For us, life is much the same," Jacob writes. "But we are not the only people."
That gentle concern imbues the contemplative novel. Jacob and their neighbors give their extra food to the National Guard to help distribute in Lancaster, and quietly pray as tales of lawlessness and looting get closer to their farms.
"Jesus taught us that we should never allow the world's hate to move our hands against others among God's children. I know these things as if they are written into me," Jacob writes, baffled by the thought of using a gun against a human - even in self-defense. "How could they see that person as a child of God, loved by God as they are loved? I could not imagine it. It is the strangest thing about the English, the thing that is beyond me."
Sworn never to lift a hand in violence, the Order finds the depth of its faith tested. Can goodness be defined only by what you don't do? What good is prayer without works, the Amish wonder.
"And in this time, as everything we know falls apart, all we have to hold on to is our way," Jacob's bishop - with whom he has a prickly relationship - says. "But what is our simple way, and all of our actions, if we cannot welcome the hungry? And be hospitable to the homeless stranger in our land?"
It's a tale that's quietly told, with a double handful of isolated characters who have little way of getting news beyond the borders of their well-tended acres. But Williams creates an impressive sense of dread that builds like the piles of garbage growing by the day on the city streets. "You'd think people would work together. You folks know how to do that, right?" an English farmer asks Jacob. "But ain't nothin' working."
Jacob's fears, he writes, aren't for himself, but instead for his wife, Hannah, and their two teenagers, Joseph and Sadie. (In the novel's one touch of magic realism, Sadie has unexplained visions of the coming apocalypse and its aftermath.)
He also is desperately worried about his friend, Mike, who distributes Jacob's handmade furniture and whose friendship is an ongoing sore spot between Jacob and the bishop. Mike's life is entirely different from the one Jacob has chosen, but he withholds judgment - even about things that befuddle him, like the radio programs Mike tunes into that work him up into a lather. "The radio person was angry about 'the global warming hoax,' and 'the economy,' and everything," Jacob writes before all the transmitters go silent. "I do not know why Mike listens to the radio if all he receives is anger, but he does."
He sees in his friend sorrows planted long ago that now are ready to harvest, which serves as an apt metaphor for novel.
"When the English Fall" is thoughtful and the events are believable - even if the members of the Order are a little too saintly to be so. (The hypocritical, unhappy, or judgmental members of the community remain firmly off-screen.) And Williams lets his characters avoid truly wrenching ethical dilemmas, which might have deepened the novel. But Jacob is written as a witness, not a man of action - and he is so likable Williams just about gets away with it.
"Prayers do not always give us the answers we assumed we would get," one character says. Sometimes, we don't get the apocalypse Hollywood expects either.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Zipp, Yvonne. "'When the English Fall' envisions the Amish as society's post-apocalyptic saviors." Christian Science Monitor, 27 July 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499396426/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ba32a0b8. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499396426
David Williams – When the English Fall [Feature Review]
September 1, 2017 — Leave a comment
What Does it Take
to Sustain Community?
A Feature Review of
When the English Fall: A Novel
David Williams
Hardback: Algonquin Books, 2017
Buy Now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Reviewed by Andrew Stout
There is nothing intuitive about the notion of a dystopian story delivered in the form of a meditative, epistolary novel. However, David Williams has taken this strange notion and executed it in a way that feels perfectly natural. There is something oddly fitting about observing a widespread cultural and technological collapse through the journal entries of an Amish farmer. From the outset, Williams strikes a balance between a sense of disease and tranquility. Or perhaps it would be better to say that he effectively holds in tension a foreboding atmosphere with a sense of quiet stability.
Jacob’s journal entries record a daily life filled with furniture making, preparation and preservation of food, all the basic chores of farm life, socializing after long days of work, and the rest of Sabbath worship. The stability of this difficult, but fulfilling life is threatened when a solar storm lights up the night, knocking planes out of the sky, decimating the electrical grid, and causing near complete technological failure. To Amish this is a spectacular display of heavenly lights. To the “English” (the Amish term used for those who live outside their Order) it is a crippling disaster. Daily life for Jacob, his family, and their community suffers only minimal disruption at first, but it quickly becomes clear that the fall of the English will encroach on the existence of their Order as well.
While the solar storm is the definitive turning point in the action of the plot, the sense of peace that characterizes the Order is vulnerable from the outset. Sadie, Jacob’s young daughter, is prone to seizures. These seizures are violent and require forceful restraint. The peace of the home is broken before the pressure from the outside world is an issue. More than that, her seizures and her odd personality causes unrest among their neighbors. Her dreams and utterances seem to be both prophetic and ominous. There seems to be an inverse relationship between Sadie’s physical condition and the outside world, her condition improving as the rest of the world collapses.
Williams thoughtfully develops a number of important themes over the course of the novel. One is the hard but comforting nature of providence. Early on, Jacob reflects, “all things are blessings, even the hard things” (6). Circumstances put this claim to the test, and Jacob accepts increasing trials with patience and trust.
Another important theme is the interdependence of human beings. Initially, we can see how the Amish community functions through reliance on one another. “It is a simple truth, that we all serve one another” (153). After the disaster, this simple truth is shown to be descriptive of the Amish and the outside world as well. The English begin to depend on the Amish for their stores of food, and the Amish realize that the protection of the outside world has largely enabled the peace they have enjoyed. Their separatist pride is broken down as they are forced to confront their mutual dependence on the English. Ultimately, the very existence of the Amish signals hope for a broken world. As Abram, a member of the Order reflects at one point, “If there is no place that has strength, then death comes quickly” (65). In the literal sense, Jacob is remembering his father’s body succumbing to cancer, but his statement also provokes this question: Is this Amish community “the place that has strength” for a world in crisis?
A final theme has to do with the nature of redemptive suffering. Jacob has cultivated a deep understanding of – or at least a profound trust in – divine providence, one that sustains him as he confronts hardship. But as the crisis intensifies, there comes a point when circumstances cannot simply be endured with patience. Instead, Jacob and his community must actively chose a more difficult path. The violence around them intensifies, and the community must decide if it is still possible for them to maintain their peaceful witness in such circumstances. Again, Sadie sounds prophetic as she meditates on the will of God in these troubling circumstances: “God’s will is too big for me to see. It hurts to see even part of it. Like a fire. But I think it will be better if we go, and face the harder journey. More like Him” (232).
Much of Stanley Hauerwas’s work in theological ethics has been shaped by the alternative societies formed by Anabaptist groups like the Amish. In that work, he has observed how difficult it is to envision a community truly defined by peace. Hauerwas has recently observed, “I intuited early on that the great problem is knowing how to characterize peace, because we just seem to know what violence is but we’re not sure what peace is.” Rather than theorizing about nonviolence, Hauerwas has tried “to help people see peace.”[1] Williams has done just that in When the English Fall. He has written a thoughtful, meditative novel that convincingly depicts the daily life of a community that is dedicated to simplicity, humility, and peace. The journal format lends itself effectively to achieving this tone. Williams juxtaposes this community with a violent and broken society, and it is the fallen world that comes away looking strange or foreign by comparison. By showing us what it looks like to orient one’s life toward peacemaking, Williams helps us to imagine what it might look like to see reconciliation and true community forged in a world marred by violence.
What is it that makes most dystopian literature work? What attracts us to stories about societal collapse and the struggle to survive? Often we are drawn by the shock value of imagining our everyday lives in ruins. Maybe we are inspired by the idea of the indomitable human spirit, heroic survival in the midst of destruction and chaos. We live with the fear that the smooth operations of our daily lives could unravel very quickly, and perhaps telling stories about survival when everything we’ve depended on has fallen away brings some kind of comfort.
When the English Fall doesn’t fit easily in the dystopian genre. It certainly bears many of the marks and deals with some of the same concerns as other dystopian literature. Williams categorizes his story as an “apocalyptic” novel. The genre of apocalypse is “about stripping away all of the fluff and pretense and getting down to what matters.”[2] The apocalypse in this story reveals the fragility, isolation, and fear that underlies so much of contemporary life. It makes clear that humility, sacrifice, and service are necessary to sustain community. By spurning the superficial interconnectedness of our technological society, the Amish serve as a witness to the deep, substantive connections that truly sustain communities – as well as to the Creator and Redeemer who binds all humanity together.
WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL by David Williams
September 5, 2017 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment
englishDavid Williams’ WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL is an apocalyptic story about an Amish community struggling to survive after a solar storm fries the world’s electronics. I liked it for its freshness and fair degree of realism, but with some big reservations.
Being a fan of apocalyptic fiction, I always thought the Amish would be ideal survivors after a world-changing disaster. They live largely without technology right down to getting around using horse and buggy. They’re farmers and live close to the land. WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL convinced me they’d have all the skills to survive but would be ultimately doomed to die.
First, the story. We’re introduced to Jacob and his wife Hannah, son Jacob, and daughter Sadie. They’re farmers and craftsmen living in an Amish community outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They call themselves “plain folk,” speak a mixture of English and Dutch, and call the rest of America “the English.” Epileptic seizures and strange visions plague Sadie, who keeps saying the angels will come and the English will fall. When a solar storm fries the world’s electronics, billions of people must now survive without electricity.
The Amish are well positioned both to help and survive, but too many people live in the cities, there’s too little food, and the recovery efforts are too slow. The military imposes martial law, but even the military starts to break down. It isn’t long before starving refugees begin to raid the farms looking for food.
Enter the strong Amish faith and pacifism. This faith permeates every paragraph and chapter of the book, which is presented as Jacob’s journal (and had me skimming at times due to repetition). While his Christian faith is a great source of relief and strength in times of trouble, it also demands pacifism even in the face of certain murder. The family faces difficulties but overall very little hardship. By the end of WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL, and that ending comes a little abruptly, only one bad thing has happened to them, from which they are promptly rescued by a non-Amish. But it’s obvious at the end they’re all going to die because they can’t defend themselves nor can they even allow others to defend them.
But enter religion again. From what I could tell from Jacob’s narrative, the Amish believe in divine providence, which includes God answering prayers by intervening in the physical world. This is reinforced by Sadie’s visions being not mental illness but possibly communication from God. (I found her a cloying character with little to do in the book other than be patronizingly mysterious and prophetic. In fact, all of Jacob’s family are poorly developed characters who come across as two-dimensional.) So as the reader, for you to believe the book has a happy ending, you have to accept that God is okay with billions dying but that he’s looking out for a select few. Well, most of these people, anyway, as many Amish in America are already killed by the end of the book.
So I ended the read feeling a bit torn about it. I liked it. Actually, I liked it a lot. It’s well written. The way surrounding cities react to the crisis sounded realistic and worked for me. Jacob is an interesting and sympathetic narrator. I particularly enjoyed the look inside a typical Amish community and how they lived, which is laid out in the novel’s slow-burn setup. I loved the connection between a solar storm/EMP-like event and how the Amish would be ideally positioned to survive it. But for me the book just couldn’t connect the dots and make it work toward an ultimately satisfying conclusion.
‘When the English Fall’ review: David Williams sets his clever post-apocalyptic novel among the Amish
David Williams, author of
David Williams, author of "When the English Fall." Photo Credit: Joseph LeBlanc
By Sam Thielman
Special to Newsday
Updated July 19, 2017 6:00 AM
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WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL, by David Williams. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 242 pp., $24.95.
David Williams’ clever first novel, “When the English Fall,” is a wholly unique entry in a genre desperate for fresh ideas. Yes, it’s another end-of-the-world story, a la Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven,” Chang-rae Lee’s “On Such a Full Sea” and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” Yes, it’s written in a sort of elegiac style that acts as a counterpoint to the various atrocities going on in the outside world. But wait — don’t leave yet.
Williams’ slim book is set not among vampires or twee actors or the slaves of capitalism but in Amish country, among farmers whose material concerns are studiously simple and unadorned and who are better equipped to weather the fall of civilization than most. The novel’s narrator is Jacob, a farmer whose family misfortunes appear to other Amish to be a punishment for his unrighteousness. For his nebulous transgressions, they believe he has been sentenced to one miscarriage and one child with epilepsy, though his daughter Sadie may be able to see the future during her seizures. “When the English Fall” begins with something called a Sun Storm — maybe a solar flare, maybe something else — that destroys all the electronics in town and, probably, the world. The Amish have lost a few generators and some solar arrays — among the very few electrical devices permitted — but they are mostly fine. The worry, instead, is that they will be overrun by needy English. (“English” is how the Amish refer to outsiders.)
Jacob confronts them when he decides to cut down some looters who have been hanged as punishment: “There was a shifting among the English men, and one stepped forward. ‘The bodies oughta stay up. Can’t have no thieves takin’ what little we got.’ He shifted the rifle in his arm, but he did not raise it. I felt my heart race, but I do not think I showed it.”
The Amish Guide to the Apocalypse
By ABIGAIL DEUTSCHAUG. 31, 2017
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When the English Fall
By David Williams
256 pp. Algonquin Books. $24.95
“When the English Fall” is an apocalyptic oddity of a book: a dystopian take on the utopian world of the Amish. The first-time novelist David Williams describes Pennsylvania “plain folk” grappling with catastrophe — the destruction of the global power grid in the wake of a solar storm — even as they continue on with more tranquil activities like gathering eggs and making jerky. All the while, they consider the nature of human interconnection, and how a community that holds itself apart from the rest of society can, and should, weather that society’s collapse.
Jacob, an Amish farmer and carpenter, serves as our tour guide to this disorienting psychological landscape. The novel takes the form of his diary, and his sentences proceed with Amish forbearance: His words are simple and, like a buggy-tugging horse, each pulls its weight. This stylistic staidness runs in satisfying counterpoint to the dramas unfolding in the outside world of the “English” — the Amish term for non-Amish people. Without electricity or fuel, transportation systems fail and the English lose access to food shipments. Looting, murder and mass starvation result.
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Through his focus on the Amish, Williams has put an apt and original spin on the genre of “prepper” fiction — novels about Americans preparing for just such disasters. Who is better situated to survive the disintegration of modern society, after all, than those who never entered it in the first place? The Amish indeed thrive in comparison to the English — yet their neighbors’ challenges test them, too. Jacob and his community willingly provide food to the starving, depleting their own stores. More troublingly, they meet brutality at the hands of English willing to kill for kale. And the protective instincts of well-meaning outsiders trigger an urgent, and distinctively Amish, crisis. Should a pacifist community accept help from friends offering to stave off violence with violence?
Living at a remove from the world, Jacob also lives at a remove from the central events that drive the novel’s progress. So, in a neat narrative trick, do we. Along with Jacob, we squint at the skies, wondering what those gorgeous lights could be — aurora or angels? — and cock our ears, worrying over where gunshots are coming from.
Interpretive puzzles mark the reading experience in unintended ways, too. The biblical Jacob wrestled with an angel; Williams’s Jacob seems to be wrestling with something, but it’s not always clear what. Why, for instance, at the end of the novel, does he suddenly start shunning his memories in favor of moving on from the past? What do his community’s quandaries — say, the debate over whether to stay in Pennsylvania or to migrate elsewhere — mean to him on a profounder level? Non-psychological confusions arise as well. What is the mysterious tune that Jacob’s soothsaying daughter keeps humming? Which leads to the most pressing question of all: Why does Jacob have a soothsaying daughter?
Yet one message of this imperfect and intriguing book registers with terrible clarity. “When the English Fall” is, slyly, a parable for climate change and for the horrifying threats it poses to the global order. Jacob — in his sedate, Almanac-like way — devotes a good deal of text to the weather. He notes the unusualness of intense November heat, or of battering rainstorms: observations that ring eerily familiar even for readers who are neither Amish farmers nor survivors of global power outages. Solar storm or no, we live at the mercy of our climate — a truth that is, like Amish-made jerky, well worth chewing on.
Abigail Deutsch’s reviews have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry and other publications.
A version of this review appears in print on September 3, 2017, on Page BR16 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Survival Tactics.
The Amish survive the apocalypse in 'When the English Fall'
David Williams
David Williams and his novel "When the English Fall". (Joseph LeBlanc/Algonquin Books)
Swapna Krishna
We’ve seen so many books about the fall of our civilization, dystopian novels that focus on the ramifications for small and large communities alike. But what would happen to a community that’s relatively self-sustaining, that already lives apart from the rest of the world? That’s the subject of David Williams’ debut novel, “When the English Fall.”
After a vicious solar storm knocks out most of Earth’s power grid permanently, civilization is left in ruins. Planes are literally falling out of the sky. All of a sudden, the mechanisms that made society function — perhaps not smoothly, but move forward nonetheless — don’t exist anymore. But this blackout doesn’t hugely affect one community in particular, one that has vast stores of food and works on farmland: the Amish.
“When the English Fall” is told from the point of view of Jacob, an Amish man living with his family in Pennsylvania. It’s clear from the beginning he’s a good man; he believes in the principles of his people even though he keeps a journal, which is a selfish, prideful indulgence. It’s the pages of this journal that make up the book, and through it we are treated to a narrow view of civilization’s collapse.
The Amish aren’t as removed from society as many might think. Jacob’s wife, Hannah, laments the loss of her washing machine. Others who rely on vehicles to take their goods to the market, or to paying customers, are left stranded. The Amish see the planes fall out of the sky and they’re connected with the local English communities — they are very aware of the catastrophe that has occurred. Jacob, in particular, keeps tabs on what’s going on in the outside world through Mike, an English friend.
For the most part, though, Amish society continues to function as it always has. That is, until the English (non-Amish) come. The National Guard calls on the Amish community, to take as much of their food supply as is possible to distribute in shelters. People know the Amish have food, and as generous as they are it also puts them in danger. There isn’t a clear villain in this novel, unless you count desperation.
How does a society like this function as everything around them descends into utter chaos?
Williams takes a hard look at the Amish society, this group of people who are generous and try to do good by their neighbors, perhaps to a fault. How does a society like this function as everything around them descends into utter chaos? When English neighbors are willing to murder over a potato or a loaf of bread, how does a community continue to stick by principles of nonviolence?
It’s a difficult question to be sure, and there are no easy answers. But in this beautifully written book, we are exposed to questions that we may never have even thought to ask.
The journal entry format is an interesting and effective choice; as readers we are at once incredibly close to the action and characters while simultaneously being held at arm’s length. I was inside Jacob’s head, witnessing his innermost thoughts and feelings, but also removed from anything outside of it. The only character in the book who is truly fleshed out is Jacob; the secondary characters are held at a distance from the reader. I would have loved to see what Jacob’s wife, Hannah, or his daughter, Sophie, thought of the main character’s decisions.
However, interacting with the story through journal entries also has its advantages. It creates suspense and forward momentum in the narrative. I was emotionally invested in Jacob and his family’s welfare. Additionally, it insulated me from the more difficult events in the novel, making them a little easier to read.
The glimpses into the Amish community are a welcome change from the typical speculative fiction narrative. Williams presents something fresh and new with this choice, and while I can’t speak to the accuracy of the community’s portrayal in this novel, it felt real and vivid. The author immersed me in a completely different way of life; it’s impossible to understand a people through just one book, but this is a solid introduction for sure.
It’s rare to find a debut novel as finely crafted as “When the English Fall.” This book drew me in with its first line — “I hold her, tight in my arms, and she screams,” and kept me riveted long after I’d finished it. The open ending leaves room for a sequel, and I’d be glad to spend more time with this community and discover what’s next for it. But whether it’s a direct follow-up to this book or a different story entirely, you can bet I’ll be reading whatever Williams chooses to do next.
Krishna writes for Paste Magazine and Syfy Wire and is half of the podcast “Desi Geek Girls.”
“When the English Fall”
David Williams
Algonquin Books: 256 pp., $24.95