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    The Falling Woman
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    The Falling Woman
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    The Falling Woman
    Ebook328 pages4 hours

    The Falling Woman

    By Pat Murphy

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Winner of the Nebula Award: An archaeologist with a strange power risks death to unlock the secret of the Mayans

    When night falls over the Yucatan, the archaeologists lay down their tools. But while her colleagues relax, Elizabeth Butler searches for shadows. A famous scientist with a reputation for eccentricity, she carries a strange secret. Where others see nothing but dirt and bones and fragments of pottery, Elizabeth sees shades of the men and women who walked this ground thousands of years before. She can speak to the past—and the past is beginning to speak back.

    As Elizabeth communes with ghosts, the daughter she abandoned flies to Mexico hoping for a reunion. She finds a mother embroiled in the supernatural, on a quest for the true reason for the Mayans’ disappearance. To dig up the truth, the archaeologist who talks to the dead must learn a far more difficult skill: speaking to her daughter.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 15, 2014
    ISBN9781480483149
    Unavailable
    The Falling Woman
    Author

    Pat Murphy

    Eugene R. "Pat" Murphy is the executive director of The Community Solution. He co-wrote and co-produced the award-winning documentary The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, has initiated four major Peak Oil conferences and has given numerous presentations and workshops on the subject. He has extensive construction experience and developed low energy buildings during the nation's first oil crisis.

    Read more from Pat Murphy

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    Reviews for The Falling Woman

    3.5/5

    110 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Elizabeth Butler is an archaeologist working a dig at a Mayan site in the Yucatan. In her mid-fifties now, she has a painful personal history of a failed marriage, a failed suicide attempt, and lost custody of and limited contact with her daughter, Diane.

      Diane Butler has lost her father, her boyfriend, and her job over the course of a couple of weeks, and for reasons she doesn't herself entirely understand, seeks out her famous and long-absent mother.

      Diane has been having disturbing dreams, in which she is falling from a great height into a dark void.

      Barbara has always seen shadows of the past, watched the long-dead inhabitants of the sites she studies going about their daily lives. It has given her a reputation for remarkably accurate and valuable hunches, but also a reputation for being very eccentric. Now one of the shadows, a priestess of the Mayan moon goddess from just before the disappearance of Maya civilization, has started speaking to her.

      I knew when I began reading that I was taking up a very well-regarded but older novel, not just set but written in the mid-eighties, a time with in some respects a very different sensibility. Especially given its then-contemporary setting, I had some reservations, thinking that it might come off as a period piece. It didn't.

      The writing drew me in and built a Yucatan that, whether real or not, felt real as I was reading it. The heat, the powerful sun, and the buried, ancient city all seemed palpable. The core of the novel, the relationship between Elizabeth and Diane, and the slowly revealed agenda of the Mayan priestess, is rich and intricate and beautifully developed.

      I really could not put this one down. Highly recommended.

      I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
    • 1/5
      I received a copy from Netgalley.

      I had a nice email from a lady in the digital marketing department for Open Road Media offering an invitation to review the title via Netgalley. The novel sounded interesting, and I usually like things with Mayan history. I find the Maya rather fascinating. And the way this novel was described in the email I got it really did sound like something I would enjoy.

      However, I just did not like this book much at all, and after 40% I'm just not interested in reading any more. I tried skimming through, but really just didn't find much to keep me reading.

      So I'm DNFing. I didn't like the characters much, the main character, an older lady archaeologist came across as obnoxious and some what full of herself. I liked her adult daughter Diane a little better. Elizabeth sees ghosts on her digs, which was mildly interesting. The dig site was a little more interesting and the people working there. But a lot of the Mayan information filtered through the novel feels more like I'm reading a text book or report rather than a novel. The plot was very very slow and not much seems to be happening other than people working at an archaeological site. Even with the appearance of Mayan ghosts/spirits I'm just frankly not that interested.

      Thank you to Netgalley and Open Road Media for your invitation, but this book was not my taste at all.
    • 4/5
      I received a copy of this book from NetGalley.I was drawn into this book from the start. It is an interesting tale involving Mayan history, mother/daughter relationships, making tough choices, acceptance, and discovery. The characters were developed around the events of the story, and they felt genuine. You are given enough insight to begin to understand what drives the relationships. I grant that not all choices in the book are practical or rational, but then, people are not always practical or rational. I found it to be an interesting study on courage and love.I give this book a B.
    • 4/5
      Liz is an archaeologist. Due to unusual circumstances, she left her daughter, Diane, and divorced her husband approximately fifteen years prior. Now Diane wants answers regarding the past and her own unusual circumstances. Who knows, maybe tracking her mother down on an archaeological dig may be good for both of them?A vividly descriptive narrative with mulit-laeveled mysteries winds throughout while characters search for meaning and for who they are individually and together.Characters are diverse, authentic, flawed, and intriguing.Overall, an intriguing read.
    • 3/5
      I'm not quite sure what to make of this book. On the one hand I loved reading about the archaeological dig that the characters were on. On the other hand I found that the characters fell flat and I had a hard time connecting with them.What this book really had going for it was a really interesting look at an archaeological dig and at Mayan culture. I really enjoyed reading the parts about the Mayans and all their different gods and what those gods represented. I also liked when Elizabeth would explain the Mayan calendar. Her explanations became a bit confusing at times (it is a bit complex) but it was interesting nonetheless.I really found it hard to connect with the characters in this book. At first I hated Elizabeth and felt that she was cold and heartless. Once I learned why she is so distant from her daughter Diane I began to feel a bit sorry for her. While I did feel sorry for her nothing about her really made me like her. Quite frankly she was crazy and I just couldn't believe that no one but Robert could have seen that and tried to get her some help. The character that I liked the most in this book was Barbara. She seemed to bring some normality to this book.This book kept building to an event in which you know some characters in this book are going to break. It really picked up in the second half and I while I initially enjoyed the conflict at the end I feel like it dragged on a bit longer than it should have. I was satisfied with the ending of this book and how the relationship between Elizabeth and Diane is shown in the end.Overall I enjoyed this book for the archaeological aspects, and the discussion on Mayan culture. I felt like the characters could have been developed more and that the conflict at the end could have been shortened a bit.Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the galley.
    • 4/5
      I go to Nebula Award winners to find the best – to find stories that will excite and enrapture me. I go to find timeless moments. I go to find ground-breaking experiments. I go to find the peak of science-fiction craft. The Falling Woman is a nice story. At times it entertains, at times it feels formulaic. What it never seems to be is worthy of a Nebula Award. When I think Nebula Award I think novels like Dune and The Einstein Intersection and The Left Hand of Darkness and The Forever War and…well, unforgettable. This is, as I already said, a nice story. But it is not the kind that will knock your socks off, break your doors down, throw you for a loop. I read it, enjoyed parts (the archaeology – hey, it was my major), got bored with parts (the personal relationships didn’t ring that true and I quit caring pretty quickly), and finished it – essentially unchanged. A nebula award winner should do more. So, I did a little research thinking that it just might have been a bad year for nebulas. Nope – doesn’t hold water – two other nominees seemed infinitely better to me – The Forge of God by Greg Bear and The Uplift War by David Brin. So, I guess the voters got it wrong, or there was a split decision, or there were hanging chads, or the stars just weren’t in alignment. But, bottom line, while this is a written well enough and makes for a pleasant enough read, it is not a Nebula Award winner. I guess it is unfair to hold that against the book, but an expectation is built, and, when something doesn’t live up to an expectation, then it is a disappointment.
    • 5/5
      I'd call this magical realism rather than straight fantasy, as it is based on actual historical fact. I can't understand why the tag cloud doesn't even have the word "Maya" in it, when it is all about Maya society.Anyway, this is a marvelous book, full of fascinating research. It involves a woman who keeps seeing an image of a sacrifice victim of the Maya days. Is it her in a previous life? Is she hallucinating? It's all very dreamlike and gorgeously told. I read it many years ago, and it has stuck with me after all this time.This was well worth a Nebula Award.