Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57101 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Kirkus
'Exquisitely written...perfectly constructed...You'll scarcely be
able to draw a breath throughout its lucid, overpowering climactic pages.'

Publishers Weekly, March 22, 2007
'This novel is a return to DeLillo's best work. No other writer
could encompass 9/11 quite like DeLillo does here'

Irish Times, April 21, 2007
'a novel that, sentence by sentence, builds into a masterpiece.'

Customer Reviews

Terse, Quite Compelling Novel On 9/11 From Don DeLillo
For better or for worse, a literary cottage industry has arisen in the aftermath of 9/11. This still recent horrific event - which ought to endure within the American psyche for decades, if not centuries - has become either the subject of several critically acclaimed novels, or a firmly entrenched background to the tales being spun by such gifted writers from Jonathan Safran Foer to William Gibson. Now one of the truly great writers of American fiction, Don DeLillo, has chimed in with "Falling Man"; a novel that is remarkable not only for its relative brevity, but also for delving deeply into the psyche of New Yorkers who witnessed the World Trade Center terrorist attack and are still coping with their psychological trauma years later. Quoting from its dust-jacket blurb, "Falling Man" is indeed a work of fiction that is "cathartic, beautiful and heartbreaking". Without question, it also demonstrates that DeLillo is still a worthy literary artist at the height of his creative powers; a keen observer of human nature in the wake of unspeakable tragedy. His latest novel also proves that DeLillo is an elegant storyteller delving into the lives of ordinary people who remain mentally imprisoned by the searing images and painful memories of that fateful, tragic clear blue September morning not so long ago. Without question, for these very reasons, "Falling Man" is one of the most impressive novels published this year.

DeLillo deftly weaves the narratives of three members of a rather unremarkable New York City family, whose lives remain touched forever by what they witnessed on 9/11/01; a dysfunctional American family which was tearing itself apart at the seams long before that September morning. We meet Keith as he stumbles through the grayish ash blizzard of building debris and human remains, soon after the collapse of the first World Trade Center building to fall, his face splattered by glass fragments and blood, pressing northward on foot towards Canal Street. Years later his estranged wife Lianne remains in a psychotherapy support group, reliving the grim memories of that day, recalling Keith's unexpected arrival at the Upper East Side apartment of herself and their young son Justin, whose hobby is to stare out of apartment windows, searching the skies with a pair of binoculars for more airplanes crashing into tall buildings like the World Trade Center towers. But is it really a hobby, or rather a phobia, brought on by witnessing the terrorist attacks from the window of a young friend's apartment not far from the World Trade Center? DeLillo's literary ambitions are so vast, that he takes us to an Afghanistan Al-Qaeda training camp, and to Germany, allowing his audience to reside inside the mind of one of the 9/11 hijackers, right up to the final fateful moments of the terrorist's life. But this is an excursion that deflects from, not enhances, the powerful narratives he's created for his three main protagonists, and one that remains a rather facile effort in trying to explain the psychological motivation of one of the nineteen Al Qaeda hijackers. It is also an effort that makes this figure sympathetic to the reader, as if his blind adherence to Islamofascism is one worthy of pithy; an effort that others, most notably John Updike, have handled far better.

Falling under De Lillo's fateful spell
A masterful book, filled with show-stopping prose and insight. Disjointed, off-kilter dialogue and an overall tone of fractured unease (dis-ease?)- perfectly sculpting life "with the rug pulled from under you". Already beautifully summarised by Sam J Ruddock's review, so I have little to add to that, except my recommendation to buy it, so you can savour the melancholy delight of falling under De Lillo's fateful spell -and waft -like the shirt -where his intelligence blows you.

Falling Man
In 'Falling Man' DeLillo tries to tackle the Big Theme of the 21st century - namely September 11, 2001 - and how it has impacted on the collective psyche. However, there is less of the virtuoso omnipresence of Underworld, for example, but more examination of the attack at a local and intimate level. Terrorism is by no means a new theme for Delillo, who has explored the ways in which political violence shapes society in many of his books. Here he also focuses on another traditional preoccupation, the way that mass media saturates the visual symbolism of such events until its original meaning becomes disjointed.

As with other DeLillo novels, the characters' lives are rendered dispiritingly unsympathetic by his cynical attitude towards modern (i.e, consumer) society. The dehumanisation and creeping inertia of the protagonists, for example, makes a deadening reading experience. Communication in DeLillo's novels is often so stunted and inarticulate as to seem emotionally retarded. This is probably the point, but it can also have the affect of feeling contrived and overstylised. DeLillo tells one strand of narrative from the perspective of one of the plane hijackers, which doesn't add an enormous amount to our understanding of the attack but reads credibly enough.

DeLillo is one of the great writers of modern American fiction, and isolated passages leave you breathless with their observational insight, mood and originality. But sometimes you wish that DeLillo had more empathy for his characters, as they seem so vacuous as to make reading his novels a distinctly cold experience. Nevertheless, DeLillo's unusual perspective is arguably much more satisfying to read than some of the more prosaic interpretations of September 11th already written and no doubt yet to come.