- Paperback: 246 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Export (Jun 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0739490451
- ISBN-13: 978-1416557210
- ASIN: 1416557210
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 835,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
could encompass 9/11 quite like DeLillo does here'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Most reviews of this novel I have seen are quite negative, many reviewers repeating the maxim that it's too early for any writer to truly deal with 9/11. I think in years to come, people will realise how perfect this novel is. We start and end with the main character on the actaul day, fighting to survive, and in between, we see him and his wife, son and others struggling to make sense of this event and the world they live in. Everything is fragmentary and there is a sense of numbness that I think Delillo creates wonderfully. It is a novel that leaves its mark on you (I am still hanuted by many of the images Delillo creates) and, alongside United 93, we have been given a text that helps the us to begin to unravel this bizarre world we are all living in because of this world-shaking event. Buy it, read it and be moved by the masterly writing of a true American genius!
26 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
`Falling Man' opens amidst the chaos of 9/11 as Keith Neudecker stumbles dumbstruck away from the Twin Towers. He is in a daze, can barely comprehend that anything is out of the usual. He makes his way to his ex-wife's house, to a life he knew before any of this happened. The novel follows Keith and the people around him as they struggle to understand an event that is beyond anyone's power of comprehension.
Keith's wife, Lianne, is reeling from the death of her father almost twenty years before. Now she runs writing sessions for those with dementia and worries that her own mind is fading. Their child, Justin, searches the sky with binoculars for Bill Lawton (Bin Laden) who speaks in a monosyllabic language and is certain to return. Lianne's mother and her art dealing lover Martin argue over the nature of God and jihad. Keith himself can only begin to remember that crazy morning by meeting with a woman who was there as well.
All the while a street performer named Falling Man is performing stunts across New York, leaping from heights and hanging frozen in the air, daring people to remember.
This is the world Don Delillo presents, a world which started long before 9/11 but whose consciousness was created in that fateful morning. If anyone should write a book about this subject then this is the man. With `White Noise' he expertly tackled the Cold War fear of nuclear fallout and death and now here he is tackling the modern paranoia: terrorism. He is a master of plotting the psyche of terror and this is every bit as good as `White Noise'. Falling Man is exactly what you wish for in a book, intelligent, witty and intensely poignant. Take this dialogue, could anyone else delineate that disbelief better?
"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."
`Falling Man' is caught in the crossfire between remembering and forgetting, it is a hazy, snapshot view of the lives that 9/11 shaped. It is written in a distorted, confused manner, with shifts in character and plot and time. This makes it difficult to follow, hard to understand, but then, nothing about the subject is easy to understand. There are those with dementia who can't help forgetting and the rest of the people who can't help remembering, those stumbling out of the grey dust of 9/11 and those who are inevitably falling into the grey mist of memory loss.
This is the mirage into which Delillo watches everything merge into uncertainty. The Twin Towers emerge from a still life painting, Keith struggles to tell what is live action and what is a replay in the sport on TV, religious belief leads to disbelief and vice versa, and Keith enters the world of professional Poker playing, desperate to recreate the Friday night game he enjoyed with friends before all of this happened.
You must read this book. Don Delillo has mapped the psychological fallout of 9/11 more superbly than I imagined possible.
Keith's wife, Lianne, is reeling from the death of her father almost twenty years before. Now she runs writing sessions for those with dementia and worries that her own mind is fading. Their child, Justin, searches the sky with binoculars for Bill Lawton (Bin Laden) who speaks in a monosyllabic language and is certain to return. Lianne's mother and her art dealing lover Martin argue over the nature of God and jihad. Keith himself can only begin to remember that crazy morning by meeting with a woman who was there as well.
All the while a street performer named Falling Man is performing stunts across New York, leaping from heights and hanging frozen in the air, daring people to remember.
This is the world Don Delillo presents, a world which started long before 9/11 but whose consciousness was created in that fateful morning. If anyone should write a book about this subject then this is the man. With `White Noise' he expertly tackled the Cold War fear of nuclear fallout and death and now here he is tackling the modern paranoia: terrorism. He is a master of plotting the psyche of terror and this is every bit as good as `White Noise'. Falling Man is exactly what you wish for in a book, intelligent, witty and intensely poignant. Take this dialogue, could anyone else delineate that disbelief better?
"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."
`Falling Man' is caught in the crossfire between remembering and forgetting, it is a hazy, snapshot view of the lives that 9/11 shaped. It is written in a distorted, confused manner, with shifts in character and plot and time. This makes it difficult to follow, hard to understand, but then, nothing about the subject is easy to understand. There are those with dementia who can't help forgetting and the rest of the people who can't help remembering, those stumbling out of the grey dust of 9/11 and those who are inevitably falling into the grey mist of memory loss.
This is the mirage into which Delillo watches everything merge into uncertainty. The Twin Towers emerge from a still life painting, Keith struggles to tell what is live action and what is a replay in the sport on TV, religious belief leads to disbelief and vice versa, and Keith enters the world of professional Poker playing, desperate to recreate the Friday night game he enjoyed with friends before all of this happened.
You must read this book. Don Delillo has mapped the psychological fallout of 9/11 more superbly than I imagined possible.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
Most Recent 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... Read more
Published on 10 Aug 2008 by John Kwok
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? Read more
Published on 28 Feb 2008 by fifi-m
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. Read more
Published on 23 Oct 2007 by Demob Happy
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. Read more
Published on 23 Oct 2007 by Demob Happy
Good start and then De Lillo becomes bored and disjointed
This book starts off absolutely brilliantly and holds the reader for at least the first half or even two thirds of the book and then he seems to become bored with it. Read more
Published on 22 Sep 2007 by Cl Smith
post mortem of falling man
The book has the feel of a post-mortem and works a bit like piece of modern art in the sense that you can engage and interact with the characters from a personal perspective. Read more
Published on 31 Aug 2007 by essex reader
Heartless exhibitionist, or Brave New Chronicler of the Age of Terror?
Like the reviewer below I thought September 11 might have arrived too late for DeLillo. His event, surely, was the Kennedy assassination, the one that 'shaped' him as a writer, as... Read more
Published on 7 Aug 2007 by James Choles
Decline and Fall
Having read a large quantity of DeLillo's previous work I knew exactly what to expect with this novel. And that is part of the problem. Read more
Published on 4 Aug 2007 by Adam Kelly
Brave and important
There is a problem with novels which attempt to address burningly contemporary issues, since they necessarily overlay the reader's existing perception with the author's... Read more
Published on 1 Aug 2007 by G. L. Haggett
Terrific!
FALLING MAN is a terrific book to read but a challenge to review. The reason lies with DeLillo's writing style, which is terse but suggestively profound. Read more
Published on 19 July 2007 by Ethan Cooper
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