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Liked It1 of 1 members found this review helpful “I disagree with several reviews I've seen that say readers were disappointed with this book because it isn't really about 9/11. It's ALL about 9/11. |
Didn’t Like It2 of 2 members found this review helpful “A bland and uninspired book about one of the most world-changing events in recent history, by one of my most favorite writers. DeLillo, if anyone, should be able to pull off a book about the attacks on the twin towers, and their effects on people. He's tackled large-scale historical fiction...” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“Disturbing, captivating, culturally relevant.”
Joe B wrote this review 4 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
““The Falling Man” is a post-9/11 novel by Don Delillo, the accomplished American novelist. The Falling Man, originally, is the title of the famous photograph taken by Richard Drew at 9:41 on Sep 11, 2001. The picture, over the years, has become the emblem of the horrors of 9/11 and consequently has inspired several artists.
Amir wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Don Delillo’s novel, “The Falling Man” does not directly deal with its title. In fact the novel is the story of a number of people, including one of the terrorists, two of the survivors who used to work in the Towers, one survivor’s wife, and a performance artist who plays the Falling Man in different spots in New York in order to shock people.
The focus of “The Falling Man”, however, is on two major characters: Keith, a survivor, and his wife Lianne. Keith is a pathetic and alienated man who escapes the falling Towers and seeing his apartment destroyed, he goes back to his estranged wife, Lianne. Keith’s life, following the attacks, is never like the life before. He leaves his job and starts touring different casinos, playing cards and gambling, putting his life in risk, while having an affair with another survivor, a woman called Florence. Keith, thus, is the real falling man of the novel. Lianne on the other hand, is trying to gradually adapt to the life without the Towers and all, trying to get used to the new life the way it was “before the planes appeared that day, silver crossing blue.”
Searching for a good post-9/11 novel, I found “The Falling Man” as the best yet-to-be written. However after reading it and surfing about other works written on the subject, I found out that the perfect 9/11 work has not been produced yet. As New York Times review points out, Don Delillo’s “The Falling Man” does not deeply depict one true victim, one which a real survivor reading the novel can identify with. Keith is a falling man indeed, but just an ordinary loser we see every day. The character of Keith does not show the immense alienation; one which a devastating tragedy like 9/11 can produce.”
“Tried too hard to be profound. The dialogue makes up 90% of the book, but adds nothing the novel.”
waylon_massie wrote this review Thursday, October 22 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Man is caught in time by his experience during 9/11 & must work through all the pain and confusion to move on ”
Jane H wrote this review Friday, October 9 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“It took me a long time to read Falling Man, even though the writing was interesting enough. I read it in bits and pieces over a period of months, then having finished it yesterday, read the entire book again from the beginning. The story is so episodic that it is very easy to put down, but to get all the threads linking the episodes together it almost requires a second reading.
Peach wrote this review Friday, September 4 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Delillo’s 9/11 story sketches a number of different falling men, including a performance artist who mimics people throwing themselves from the twin towers in desperation, a survivor of the attacks named Keith whose personal life is in shambles, one of the hijackers, and a group of Alzheimer’s patients with whom Keith’s wife Lianne is involved.
I’ve found Delillo’s books so unsatisfying in general I’m not sure what I am missing. Perhaps I haven’t found the Delillo that will really make me a fan of his writing, for although I love his prose I often feel like he sacrifices his characters and story in the name of driving a point home. The style reminds me of Martin in “Falling Man"— he’s an art dealer but his political commentary is foisted upon his listener and no one but his lover (Lianne’s mother) seems to really fight back.”
“Read this for a class and loved it. Classic DeLillo. ”
Stefanie M wrote this review Friday, July 10 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Very average for Delillo, but I did enjoy some of his other books.”
Ron W wrote this review Tuesday, June 16 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“This book saddened me, for all its potential it missed the mark by a mile. There were two crucial problems with this book, for me. One, the characters were not well drawn in my opinion. They all seemed alike, and one dimensional, and almost worse, the author did make me in any way care about the characters or what happened to them. Secondly, the dialogue was some of the most awkward, unnatural dialogue I have come across in a book. There was no flow to the words, and they often bordered on ridiculous. I don't know how many times I thought, "Who talks like that!?" It was painful to say the least. I only finished the book, because I'm obsessive about things like that. I can't start a book, and then just not finish it, no matter how poorly it's written.”
Susanna-Cole K wrote this review Saturday, January 31 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No1 of 1 members found this review helpful“I disagree with several reviews I've seen that say readers were disappointed with this book because it isn't really about 9/11. It's ALL about 9/11.
ghost of a rose wrote this review Monday, January 19 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
The thing is, is isn't about the actual events of that day but rather, the way that the people of New York were affected by them, the aftermath. Knowing how much I was affected by it in Arizona, I couldn't imagine what it must have been like for New Yorkers. This book made it real for me.
The whole book has a sense of stunned disbelief, a feeling of unreality and lethargy that permeates everything the characters feel and do, and all of their relationships. 9/11 affects every single aspect of their lives in - sometimes bizarre - ways that we'd never expect, even the children.
As a psychiatrist who lived across from the towers and witnessed all of the events that day said:
"My internal world was dominated by a dense and silent pall, as if an entire mode of existence were in an airless vacuum. Music . . . had been muted. Paradoxically, life in the auditory sphere was in other respects heightened immeasurably, but calibrated, so it seemed, to a narrow spectrum of sounds: my ears now were attuned more to the roar of fighter jets and the wail of sirens, to my patients, to my wife's breathing at night."
That quote actually came from another book (Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks), but I included it here because it describes the atmosphere of Falling Man so well. It isn't an action-packed-plot type of book, so it isn't for everybody. No doubt that's what inspired the negative reviews. But this is the kind of book I prefer instead, an in-depth psychological study. And as such, it is very successful.
The whole idea of the Falling Man performance artist and what became of him was an appropriate and creative metaphor for 9/11.
Memory is another primary theme of the book, especially the memories of 9/11, but that is also tied in with a secondary memory theme of Alzheimer's patients.
The only thing I didn't like about this book was that the author went on way too long about one character's obsession with playing in professional poker tournaments following 9/11. It did occur as a direct result of 9/11, and DeLillo does a good job of showing us how that developed. It's just that he needn't have spent so many pages on the tournaments themselves. Those parts of the book were boring.
There is one intense section which is an embedded vignette of 9/11 from the point of view of one of the terrorists.
And if most of the book is insightful but slow-paced, the pace changes dramatically at the end. After having been teased with hints and brief flashbacks, the reader is finally given a full, and terrifyingly vivid, account of the main character's harrowing escape from the Towers. Our attention to all the earlier subtle details is rewarded when everything suddenly falls into place once the full story is revealed. It's an incredible and unexpected climax considering the tone of the rest of the book.
(246 pages)
Quotes from Falling Man:
"There's a certain man, an archetype, he's a model of dependability for his male friends, all the things a friend should be, an ally and confidant, lends money, gives advice, loyal and so on, but sheer hell on women. Living breathing hell. The closer a woman gets, the clearer it becomes to him that she is not one of his male friends. And the more awful it gets for her."
"He was the kind of man who is not old yet by strict count but who carries something heavier than hard years."
"He told her that he was going away for a time, absolutely to return. Soon she would begin to exist as an unreliable memory, then finally not at all."
"Just us, the three of us, long-term, under the same roof, not every day of the year or every month but with the idea that we're permanent. Times like these, the family is necessary. Don't you think? Be together, stay together? This is how we live through the things that scare us half to death."
"All of life's lost time is over now.
This is your wish, to die with your brothers."
"The second plane coming out of that ice blue sky, this was the footage that entered the body, that seemed to run beneath her skin, the fleeting sprint that carried lives and histories, theirs and hers, everyone's, into some other distance, out beyond the towers."
"It still looks like an accident, the first one. Even from this distance, way outside the thing, how many days later, I'm standing here thinking it's an accident."
"Because it has to be."
"It has to be," he said.
"The way the camera sort of shows surprise."
"But only the first one."
"Only the first," she said.
"The second plane, by the time the second plane appears," he said, "we're all a little older and wiser."”
