Study Notes written by Bronwyn Owen
Falling from Grace by Jane Godwin
Summary
As a storm is slowly building off Point Nepean, two young girls playing a tracking game with their father are
distracted by a penguin in the water, and find themselves far from where they should be as the tide comes
in. Trying to get to higher ground, one of the girls, Grace, falls from a sandy cliff and cannot be found.
A young boy, Kip, who also happens along the beach around the same time, is caught up in efforts to find
the girls, after he comes across their backpack floating in the shallows. He is already looking for a boy who
he thinks may have disappeared earlier that day. Kip also meets Ted, a failed rock star and storm chaser,
on the beach on the same night.
Ted is a strange man, both childlike and wild at the same time, and Kip is drawn to him against his will,
attracted to his energy and love of music, while at the same time intimidated by his strangeness, his
drinking and his bizarre behaviour. When Kip escapes the custody of the police and dives into the sea after
seeing what he thinks is a child on a boogie board in the water, he is picked up by a boat out in the storm.
Through Kip’s persistence the boat goes further out and rescues a young boy found almost drowned. This
is the same boy that Kip was looking for, and saw earlier that day running to the beach. Kip is considered a
‘person of interest’ when the police become involved in the search for Grace, and his connection to Ted
comes out in the continuing investigation. Ted’s possible involvement in Grace’s disappearance makes his
friendship with Kip seem even more inappropriate, and Kip himself begins to suspect Ted of some
wrongdoing when he makes a link between a boogie board at Ted’s home and the same boogie board he
saw in the water on the fateful night.
Kip finds his fascination with Ted disconcerting and feels uncomfortable spending time with him, yet is
strangely drawn into his world. Ted seems to be having a ‘hiatus’ period at the beach house, and Kip
himself is having a period of time-out, on holidays from school and dealing with the aftermath of having
given up his swimming career.
When Grace is found, it is revealed that Ted had actually come across her before on the rocks, covering
her with his coat to protect her from the weather. He had planned to get help to have her rescued, but in his
inebriated fog he forgets where he found her, and is distracted by another storm that needed chasing. After
the rescue, Ted disappears, and it is then Kip learns that Ted is the father of David, the boy Kip rescued.
Grace is reunited with her family at the end of the story, and Grace, Kip and Annie develop a tentative
friendship, linked by the events at Point Nepean.
Understanding Characters
Kip
Kip is a fourteen-year-old boy, staying at the beach with his parents over the school holidays. Kip has been
a national backstroke champion and has recently made the decision to give up swimming, much to his
parents’ disapproval. He is finding the transition to secondary school a difficult one, and is sometimes the
butt of his friends’ jokes. Kip is an intelligent boy, but one who fails to speak up for himself, and because of
that he finds himself in difficult predicaments. Kip seems to bumble through a lot of situations where, if he
spoke up for himself, things would take a very different turn. Kit worries constantly about the state of the
world and his place in it, and seems to find his life ‘awkward’ at times. Yet through his experiences at the
beach, and with Ted, Grace and Annie, he finds himself leaving his childhood behind and turning towards
adulthood with a newfound sense of responsibility, or right and wrong.
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Annie
Annie seems a very likable, straightforward, confident young girl. Although eleven months younger than her
sister Grace, Annie is the more dominant of the two girls, and tends to take the lead in their sibling
relationship. She feels truly terrible at her sister’s disappearance and feels the pressure of blame from the
rest of her family.
“Nobody said so, but I knew myself that I had lost Grace. Because I never think. It was because of me that
Grace was gone.” (p.155) Annie feels an added sense of responsibility for Grace because Grace had been
so sick when she was just a baby. (p.144) Annie feels her sister’s fragility keenly, and this makes Grace’s
disappearance all the more painful for her. The dynamic between the two girls is affected because of
Grace’s childhood illness, as Annie takes the role of the strong, well sister, which forces Grace into the role
of the weaker sister. As it turns out, Grace has enormous strength to endure her time on the cliff.
Grace
Grace seems a much more sensitive child than Annie. We meet her only briefly at the beginning of the
story, and then in her brief chapters, until she is rescued at the end of the book. She has an ethereal quality
to her; a dreaminess that is emphasised by her disappearance, and the dream-like passages from her on
pages 117, 130 and156. Has she become a ghost, never to be heard from again? The name Grace comes
from the Latin for favour or blessing, referring to God’s Grace. In Greek mythology the three Graces were
goddesses of nature, and it is nature that takes Grace from Annie on the cliff, appearing to swallow her
under the sand and sea.
Ted
Ted is in his early middle-age, an ex-musician whose career seems to have stalled, and whose life in
general seems to have ground to a halt around him. He is a very charismatic man when the mood strikes
him, and he has a magnetism that seems to draw Kip to him immediately, although Kip can’t seem to
understand what makes it happen. Ted is witty, clever and knowledgeable in an all-round trivia kind of way.
He seems to be a talented musician and Kip is attracted to that side of him, while at the same time finding
him a tragic advertisement for adulthood. Ted drinks heavily, at least when we see him in the story, and he
has a manic, frenetic energy to him that people with addictive personalities often exude. He seems to feel
that life owes him more than he has been given, and he is bitter about his place in the world. He has a
childlike need for attention and company, and sometimes is quite desperate to avoid being alone.
David
Although we never actually meet David, he becomes an important character in the way the plot unfolds. It is
David who draws Kip down to the beach in the first place, and although Kip saves David’s life when he is
rescued from the water, the fact that Kip fled the police to dive into the water sets him up as being someone
who might do risky things, make bad choices. This helps to make him even more ‘interesting’ to the police
in the search for Grace. Ultimately it is revealed that David is Ted’s son, a fact that ties him even more
firmly to the events in the story.
Themes
Time
• The passing of time is explored on several different levels in the novel. In a literal sense, we witness the
time that passes from the moment Grace falls into the water, until she is found by Kip several days later.
Each day is marked by Annie, in the vigil she keeps for her missing sister,
as they creep towards, and beyond, the day the family is due to leave the Point.
• At the end of the novel, when Grace and Annie finally talk about what it
had been like during those agonising days, Grace tells Annie,
“Time went differently when I was there”, and Annie replies,
“Time went differently for me, for us, too”. (p.193)
• Kip starts and finishes the story, and he tells us that the first day of the story is the first day of his school
holidays. At the end of the book, he returns to school. It seems as though too much has happened for such
a small amount of time to have passed, but this is how holidays can often seem when you are young. The
author has chosen to keep the events of the book contained within a clear passage of time, marked by the
beginning and end of the school holidays, and this helps to highlight the significance of this time in Kip’s
life.
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Storms
•
Because the story is set in Winter, and at the Point where the Bay meets the
Ocean, storms feature heavily in the story, both as a backdrop to the events
that take place, but also as a part of the plot itself. It is a storm that leads to
Grace falling from the cliff face, and it is a result of the storm that a pilot boat is
out in the Heads, and David’s life is saved. It is the storm that keeps rescuers
from finding Grace, and the king tide that had swept Grace so high that she
was marooned on the rock ledge. Ted is mesmerised by the storms he
witnesses as a storm chaser, and he is drawn to them like a child is drawn to
something both exciting and dangerous. It is the distraction of another storm that stops Ted from
returning to where he found Grace. Ted himself epitomises exactly what it is about storms that
makes them so exciting: their beauty and their danger, their unpredictability and the uncontrollable
nature of a storm that makes it so alluring. Kip is drawn to Ted in the same way that Ted is drawn to
the storms he chases.
• Grace, Annie and Kip are also dealing with their own internal storms as they navigate their way through
adolescence. Just as a storm presents the threat of great destruction while at the same time potential
greatness and beauty (certainly as seen through Ted’s eyes), Grace, Annie and Kip have the potential for
greatness or destruction co-existing within themselves as adolescents. They sit on the crest of their adult
lives, balanced between the two.
Music
• Music also has a strong role to play, in the setting of the scene but also in the
development of the plot.
• Just as the Pied Piper used music to draw the children away, Ted uses his
music to keep Kip from withdrawing his company when he is obviously feeling
in need of companionship. It is also Ted’s knowledge of the popular music culture of Kip’s generation that
helps Kip to relate to him, not like another adult, but like a peer. Kip treats Ted like another teenager in
several instances, for example when he feels the need to warn Ted that the police might come and see him
(pp87/88). Kip also thinks he needs to warn Ted to “put those magazines away before the police got there”
like he would for another teenager.
• Ted uses his music several times to stop Kip from leaving, saying things like “like to have a go on the
Fender?”, knowing it will push Kip’s buttons. And when Kip sees Ted and his band on television, it revives
his interest in Ted all over again. “It was a pretty good song. They must have been a great band to see live.
Stupidly, it made me want to see Ted again. To have a proper go on his guitar.” (p.97)
• There are continual references to bands and music throughout the book, usually linking the scenes with
Kip and Ted. The music becomes the common link between two people who are very different in age and
life experience. When Kip describes the experience of jamming with Ted on page 102, he seems at his
happiest for the entire story. He uses words like “brilliant”,“fantastic” and says it was “almost like dreaming”
(p.103). In fact, he makes a direct comparison between this experience and when he was at the height of
his swimming. The moment is topped off by Ted telling him he has what it takes to be a musician. For a boy
who appears to have trouble with lack of confidence and self-esteem, this is a pivotal moment for him, all
driven by the connection he is making to the music.
Being lost – physically and emotionally
• Grace is lost, both physically beneath the water, but also lost beneath her sister Annie’s overpowering and
dominant personality.
• Kip’s parents are temporarily lost to him because they cannot allow him to make his own decisions about
choosing to give up swimming. His connection to them is damaged because of this, and it takes this holiday
period for him to ‘find’ that connection again.
• Kip also seems lost without the definition of swimmer which he has carried with him for so long. When Kip
tells his father that he wasn’t strong enough to get to David in the water, he sees in his father’s eyes a look
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that says he would have coped better had he not given up swimming. Perhaps Kip questions his own
decision, and therefore he has an expectation of his father’s reaction.
• Kip is also lost between the worlds or childhood and adulthood, in that no man’s- land of young adulthood.
He is still easily led by friends, and finds himself “getting involved in things I couldn’t help” (p.95), but he is
beginning to recognise that this is not the sort of person he wants to be. He is starting to think for himself in
a more mature way, as he makes the transition from
childhood to the next stage of his emotional development.
• Ted is probably the most emotionally lost of all the characters. He seems almost disengaged from society,
including both his wife and child, and at one point does not even acknowledge having a child, which seems
tragic given what we know about David searching for him at that very time. He has a strong victim
mentality, bitter and resentful of the society that had helped
make him a success in the first place. He belittles almost every group in society generally, and seems to
have a specific distaste for anyone who might think they are better than him. His list of people whom Kip
should be distrustful of include police, anyone in uniform, anyone who doesn’t like gardening, anyone who
listens to pop music, do-gooders, and others no doubt! Ted seems happy to put himself in the victim role, to
always be hard done by anyone else. Kip comes to recognise this trait in Ted, saying “It struck me that all
Ted’s relationships would end like this – so that he could feel sour and misunderstood. Let down. Lost.”
(p.168)
The Pied Piper motif
• Close reading may reveal a motif running through the story, linking Ted’s character to the Pied Piper in
the classic children’s story by Robert Browning. These references are very subtle, but it is interesting to
consider them, and what intention the author may have had in making this link. Consider, for example:
o Ted is originally asked to be involved in the fundraiser concert for the national park, but then he feels
they have reneged on their arrangement to pay him (although it is a fundraiser?), for which he feels that he
has been badly treated. This can be compared to the Pied Piper, and the price paid for ridding the town of
rats.
o Ted wears an old-fashioned red and yellow coat, that he leaves with Grace
when he finds her, just like that of the Pied Piper.
”His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red”
o When Kip sees Ted on the beach
, it comes immediately after hearing
“flute music, wafting in and out with the wind”
(p.32)
o No judgement is made by the author on Ted, so as readers we are
left to formulate our own opinions as to whether he is a good or bad man.
When he disappears with David, “it was as if they’d walked into the side of
the limestone cliff”. (p.178) In the story of the Pied Piper, no moral
judgement is made on the Piper for taking the children away, he merely
leads them away into the mountain-side. Did the Piper kidnap the children for some terrible purpose, or as
readers are we invited to think he really did lead them to “a joyous land”? The same can be asked of Ted.
Where does he take David? As his father we should assume he has only good intentions for his son, yet
there is an ominous (bad & creepy) feeling about the whole disappearance.
o Grace’s hallucination on page 156 about a man in a bright coat with children gathered around him,
leading children into the side of the dark mountain.
o The poem Fern Hill, by Dylan Thomas, which prefaces the story, refers to the Pied Piper as a
representation of time and how it moves inexorably on, changing life forever. Just as the joys of childhood
are taken from the people of Hamlin, so does childhood end abruptly for Grace, Annie and Kip during the
time that Grace is missing. For Grace, her childhood ends with the trauma that is inflicted upon her during
those terrifying days; for Annie, it is the pain and fear of losing her sister that puts an end to her innocent
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view of life; and for Kip, childhood is forever altered by the glimpse he has into the dark world that would
allow a man to leave a child to die on the rocks.
Adolescence
• Kip sums up his place amongst his friends at school very succinctly. “I know where I stand at school. I
stand on the edge of the cool people. Most of the time I’m one of them, but sometimes I’m the one they pick
on if there’s no one else around.” (p.108) Kip’s place in the social hierarchy at school might go some way to
explaining why he is so drawn in by Ted. Ted makes him feel
cool, and interesting, and tells him that he is a great musician, even while at the same time Kip is aware
that Ted is not necessarily a great judge of these things.
• Kip raises his feelings about girls, and the confusion he has with what girls actually mean when they say
and do certain things, several times in the novel. He feels that he no longer understands the messages
they give, and that “guys can hurt you, but those girls can hurt you so much more.” (p.109) Kip is just
entering the stage of his life where his relationships with females are becoming tied up in both physical and
emotional attraction, and he finds this a very confusing time.
“I wouldn’t even know what to do with a girl . . . I mean I like it, but at the same time I don’t.” (p.87)
Childhood and Adulthood
The author tells us at the beginning of the book that part of her inspiration for the story was to explore the
time when “each character is leaving childhood behind, negotiating his or her way out and beyond.” There
are several times in the story when the fact that Kip is just a child is referred to. In almost the same breath
Ted gives Kip an alcoholic drink then encourages him to call his parents to let them know where he is.
“Only fourteen! Jesus Christ, I could be your father.” (p.35) When Andrew is describing Kip to the police
over the phone on the night Grace goes missing he tells them Kip is “about seventeen” (p.60) and Kip tries
to correct him. But there are moments towards the end of the story when Kip comes to the realisation that
age in actual years is no reflection on maturity. It is at this point that he really begins to leave his childhood
behind, as the author has suggested. When Ted tearfully reveals to Kip that he has some knowledge of
where Grace might be, Kip sees him “look at me as if he were a child” – ironically he recognises in him the
same look that David (Ted’s son) had had when Kip passed him on the road, his face
“…all screwed up and desperate for some sort of help.” (p.170) Kip notes that Ted keeps calling him “man”
and Kip yells at him, “What sort of adult are you?” (p.171) At Ted’s parting jibe, “Grow up, man” Kip tells
him “No, you grow up.” (p.172) It is at this point that we feel as readers that Kip has passed Ted, and
perhaps this is first time that Kip gets a sense of the sadness of Ted’s existence. This is a particularly
poignant scene, and an important one in Kip’s emotional journey.
Significant Scenes
All of the following scenes, and many others, are pivotal to the progression of the plot and the development
of the characters and their stories.
• Kip’s first sighting of David
• Kip’s first sighting of Ted
• The conversation between Kip and Andrew on the beach, when Kip gives back the girls’ backpack
• Kip finding Grace’s torn and bloody jeans in the water
• Kip diving into the water
• The conversation between Kip and Annie at the Heads
• Ted revealing to Kip that he has seen Grace
• Kip finding Grace in the cave
• Kip meeting Ted’s wife
• Grace’s three chapters (pp.117, 130, 156)
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