Walter Falls

By Steven Gillis

"I screw things up sometimes." These words introduce us to one of the most intriquing, puzzling, and ultimately endearing characters in contemporary fiction - Walter Brimm - the protagonist of WALTER... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972429565
• ISBN13: 9780972429566
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Brook st Pr
• Length: 227 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

On being the master of my fate, the captain of my soul

WALTER FALLS is one fine read! Steven Gillis makes his first novel a major entry into the echelon of new and very important writers. From the clever title to the closing sentence this most contemporary exposition of man's accepting responsibility for his actions, making choices, learning for mistakes and fighting for that final thread of recovering his soul Gillis has given us a character in Walter Brimm that is bound to become as indelible an icon as Daedalus, Caulfield, and Lomann.Walter Brimm is an ordinary man, a mid-thirties investment broker who manages to hit on peripheral information enough times to become part of an important powerful firm. He is deeply in love with his wife Gee, a university professor who has grown to the point in a stale marriage where she supplements her needs by writing for a literary magazine conceived and pitifully mismanaged by idealistic Tod. Walter senses Gee's involvement with Tod to be more than comraderie and therein lies the thorn in his side that ignites the inception of his fall. Normally a man of satisfactory ethics, his jealousy re his wife's increasing distance pushes him toward a 'contract with the devil' in the person of Jack Gorne. Gorne as his nemesis states "Right and wrong are just words. They're arbitrary abstractions at best. The only ligitimate definition for what's fitting is that which gets us what we want." And here begins Walter's covert 'friendly' professional guidance for Tod's monetary management of his magazine: through recommendations and wiles (superbly and scrupulously detailed by author Gillis in a way that even those uninitiated into the money market world can understand) Walter plots the financial destruction of Tod, a plan that will reveal to Gee the inadequacies of her 'hero' and force her return to Walter.Of course it backfires and Walter's "fall" is total: his descent into his Mephistophelean pit breaks him and he loses everything. Once release from the hospital for his mental breakdown, Walter aligns with Janus ( a physician dedicated to his patients in a free clinic) and Myrian (Janus' artist lover) and slowly rebuilds his life. Another encounter with evil in the person of Martin (a smarmy photographer and fraud investigator) drives Walter to the charging sword of making things 'right' this time, only to once again fall further - this time fully cognizant of his error and accepting responsibility for his motivations and actions. In an exquisite encounter with his 7 year old daughter who questions her father's actions, Walter expains his own life: "Sometimes men, and women, we - that is people - don't care as much about what happens to others and only react when something affects them directly" "..there are rules we have to follow. Laws of conduct. ...People get what they deserve." In the final confrontation of Walter's Faust with Jack Gorne's Mephistopheles, Jack scolds Walter "Don't be such an innocent. There isn't a man alive who doesn't act with self interest

A moving saga of the human condition

Walter Falls by Steven Gillis is an exceptionally well written novel of how greed and jealousy can lead even solid middle-class citizen to his downfall. Yet though the road to redemption is harsh and rocky, it can be traveled - if one has what it takes to make the trek. Walter Falls is highly recommended as a powerful and moving saga of the human condition.

Bright, cathartic new voice.....

Walter Falls is a compelling new novel by first time author Steven Gillis. It provides a rare new voice to the troubled soul within each of us. A great read!

Engrossing, hard to put down

I loved Steven Gillis's novel, Walter Falls! I was immediately drawn into the characters' lives, deceptions, dilemmas and machinations, and found myself questioning my own automatic moral judgments on who is good or evil and why. I found this book hard to put down and a real "page turner." And after finishing it, I found it hard to put the questions raised out of my mind. As with other great literary characters, one wonders, "What happened next? Where is Walter, or Gee, now?"

A wonderfully mesmerizing first novel

Like a relentless force, this debut novel from Steven Gillis compels the reader to become engrossed in the machinations of Walter Brim as he unwittingly, but autonomously, causes his life to rapidly unravel around him. Steeped in engrossing philosophical dilemmas, Gillis not only presents captivating prose that encircles Walter's ever-dissolving world but he eloquently weaves a story with such emotional force that the reader is consistently confronted with engrossing moral questions.From consuming devotion and inexorable jealousy to culpability to salvation - - Walter questions his own being in the same fashion that readers will be forced to confront their own.A wonderful first novel leaves readers waiting for subsequent works. Gillis is a fresh new voice that will be enthusiastically welcomed in the literary world.