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Review
"Falling Man brings at least a measure of memory, tenderness and meaning to all that howling space." -- Frank Rich, "The New York Times" Book Review
Independent on Sunday
'There is consistently great writing in this book, including both expertly orchestrated set pieces and indelible details.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Most people will remember where they were when the news of 9/11 reached them, and for a lot of them, the image of the people jumping from the Towers encapsulate the terror and tragedy of the event.
DeLillo uses art to imitate life inside the novel - the Falling Man of the title is a performance artist that pops up all over New York in the months after 9/11 in an upside down guise that recalls the real victims.
However, the book doesn't concentrate on this man as the main character, it focuses on Keith and Florence - who were in the tower when it was struck but worked for different companies, and their futile attempt to make sense of things by forming a strained relationship. Also Lianne and Justin, Keith's long-suffering wife and son, and a host of secondary characters appear to be coping with the event in various ways.
Any book that tackles a world terrorist attack is a big project, and I think that it's still too fresh (especially to an American citizen) to try and lay out generalised coping strategies. It seems that DeLillo was trying to make the family in Falling Man the embodiment of the New Yorker in the same way that Steinbeck made the Joads the very essence of the Okie during the Depression - and it doesn't quite work.
DeLillo uses art to imitate life inside the novel - the Falling Man of the title is a performance artist that pops up all over New York in the months after 9/11 in an upside down guise that recalls the real victims.
However, the book doesn't concentrate on this man as the main character, it focuses on Keith and Florence - who were in the tower when it was struck but worked for different companies, and their futile attempt to make sense of things by forming a strained relationship. Also Lianne and Justin, Keith's long-suffering wife and son, and a host of secondary characters appear to be coping with the event in various ways.
Any book that tackles a world terrorist attack is a big project, and I think that it's still too fresh (especially to an American citizen) to try and lay out generalised coping strategies. It seems that DeLillo was trying to make the family in Falling Man the embodiment of the New Yorker in the same way that Steinbeck made the Joads the very essence of the Okie during the Depression - and it doesn't quite work.
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What is it about 9/11 that turns any book about it into an incoherent, smug, self-satisfied mess? Surely seven years after is enough time to make some kind of sense of what it was, what it meant, what it led to? This book has all the puffed-up intentions of placing the day into context, and making `profound' and `unsettling' observations that will have us all revising our views and stereotypes. What it delivers is lame; a feeble failure of a novel that angers with its' sheer incompetence.
Any book on any large event (see my review of Tin Roof Blowdown) struggles with a basic problem - the event is too colossal for individuals to really understand. Better, then, to tell it through several interesting individuals, rather than try to provide the whole sweep of it. Dellillo picks as his vehicles several of the most annoying, pretentious and dull characters you'll ever meet. Stupid monologue conversations that no human being would actually have; clever-clever references even from the ten-year-old kid; fractured ideas that have no currency in the real world. You simply cannot imagine these people ever drawing breath, in any context or at any time. Therefore, you couldn't care less what happened to them. All I wanted to do was jump in the book and punch them.
Allied to this is a foolhardy and frankly laughable attempt to `get inside the mind of the terrorist'. This is both too shallow and slight to actually be cohesive or relevant, but uses up too much of the book to make sense with the rest of the narrative. It is an unnecessary intrusion that advances nothing.
Why does no author actually have anything to say about 9/11? Is it lack of imagination? Lack of perspective? Lack of skill? Surely there's enough evidence of its' impact and reverberations for someone to say something that isn't either self-evident, or idiotically pretentious crap?
This book joins the legion of other books about 9/11 that purport to be terribly important, but are actually devoid of any insight whatsoever. Since it was trying to say something important about something important, its' failure is all the greater. It is a miserably tedious, empty, air-headed failure.
Any book on any large event (see my review of Tin Roof Blowdown) struggles with a basic problem - the event is too colossal for individuals to really understand. Better, then, to tell it through several interesting individuals, rather than try to provide the whole sweep of it. Dellillo picks as his vehicles several of the most annoying, pretentious and dull characters you'll ever meet. Stupid monologue conversations that no human being would actually have; clever-clever references even from the ten-year-old kid; fractured ideas that have no currency in the real world. You simply cannot imagine these people ever drawing breath, in any context or at any time. Therefore, you couldn't care less what happened to them. All I wanted to do was jump in the book and punch them.
Allied to this is a foolhardy and frankly laughable attempt to `get inside the mind of the terrorist'. This is both too shallow and slight to actually be cohesive or relevant, but uses up too much of the book to make sense with the rest of the narrative. It is an unnecessary intrusion that advances nothing.
Why does no author actually have anything to say about 9/11? Is it lack of imagination? Lack of perspective? Lack of skill? Surely there's enough evidence of its' impact and reverberations for someone to say something that isn't either self-evident, or idiotically pretentious crap?
This book joins the legion of other books about 9/11 that purport to be terribly important, but are actually devoid of any insight whatsoever. Since it was trying to say something important about something important, its' failure is all the greater. It is a miserably tedious, empty, air-headed failure.
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This novel is so badly written that at times it's laughable: 240 pages of vacuous pseudo-profundity resembling poetry written by a precocious teenager with no life experience. The characters are self-absorbed non-entities inhabiting clichés of lifestyle and character - eg: don't give a damn poker-player; twittering, anxious mother; shady art dealer astride the continents.
White Noise was great, thanks mainly to the humour, but this is another plotless exercise in self-reverence by this most overrated of novelists. The only thing more predictable than the book itself is the praise heaped on it by critics desperate to find something which only they can appreciate. To that end, what better than a novel that can turn the defining moment of our times into something so dull and uninteresting?
If you're looking for insight into 9/11, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a great novel, look elsewhere. In fact, whatever it is you're looking for, look elsewhere!
White Noise was great, thanks mainly to the humour, but this is another plotless exercise in self-reverence by this most overrated of novelists. The only thing more predictable than the book itself is the praise heaped on it by critics desperate to find something which only they can appreciate. To that end, what better than a novel that can turn the defining moment of our times into something so dull and uninteresting?
If you're looking for insight into 9/11, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a great novel, look elsewhere. In fact, whatever it is you're looking for, look elsewhere!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Haunting
I really can't decide where I stand on this book. I found it a difficult read because it has an aloof, disconnected and dreamy style about it. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Doctor Wylkynson
The aftermath of 9/11
I haven't read any of the many other books about 9/11, but thought I'd try this one, as it came highly recommended - though not necessarily by Amazon readers! Read more
Published 7 months ago by Archy
pretentious piece of work
You could write a long analysis of the aftermath of the 9/11 bombings. You could even write an autobiographical account,fictitious or otherwise. Read more
Published 18 months ago by arbiter
overwhelming feeling of confusion
This was my first book by DeLillo and my views about him as a writer are unclear at the moment. He obviously has a way with prose, and I was captivated by his descriptions of 9/11,... Read more
Published on 30 Jan 2010 by Flips
Some superb passages but not a favourite.
In places this book explores the terror and horror felt by the survivors of 9/11, their sense of shock and amazement at the events in which they had been entangled. Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2009 by DDH255
Great Thing
A disturbing history about the particular effects of a huge disaster in the small lives of some citizens.
Published on 26 Aug 2008 by Inmaculada Sanchez Mengual
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... Read more
Published on 10 Aug 2008 by John Kwok
Powerful 9/11 meditation
Cerebral rather than emotional, this very good novel explores the impact of 9/11 by focussing on one middle class family living in Manhatten. Read more
Published on 14 Jun 2008 by J. H. Bretts
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