Falling Sideways
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Review
Falling Sideways is the finest novel I have read in many years. Thomas Kennedy is a true discovery, an author of rare intelligence and moral vision. Not least, the book is immensely compelling and beautifully written Alain de Botton Kennedy gives us the complacency, the envy, the flirtations and the sycophantic laughter that will be familiar to anyone who has worked beneath strip-lighting ... This is a small novel in a minor key, as nimble and intimate as a piece of chamber music. But when it does reach outside the immediate world of Copenhagen, it touches on the contemporary moment with a deft precision. The fear of losing one's job, the rejection of the corporate world by the young and the treatment of immigrants by different generations are all of the utmost timeliness Financial Times Falling Sideways is that rarest of commodities in American literary fiction, a novel about men and women at work; it is part satire and part drama, and it is very smart Washington Post Surprisingly touching ... In the younger generation's contempt for their parents' materialism, Kennedy offers a welcome, if tentative, message of hope -- Michael Arditti Daily Mail This witty, dark, Franzen-style tale of a downsizing company features backstabbing execs who betray each other and their own families ... One for anyone who has ever had a job they hate Red 'Thomas has an ear and eye for modern life. He knows how neighborhoods gentrify, how kids stay in lousy apartments for "street cred"; he knows how women long for children after their career has used up the time of their unquestioned fertility, and most of all he knows Copenhagen' Minneapolis Star-Tribune A quietly impressive novel that has much to say about the way we live and work now Metro As he slots together his narratives with masterly elegance, an intimate picture of local life is set before us ... Kennedy's finely calibrated observations make his cast eminently believable Independent
Product Description
There has never been any shortage of business at the Tank, a high-profile firm in Copenhagen. There are round-table meetings to attend, circular memos to write, colleagues to indirectly undermine.But when the Tank's nefarious CEO announces a period of downsizing, everyone is exposed and the game-playing begins in deadly earnest. Top executive Frederick Breathwaite suspects his days might be numbered, and is frantically trying to ensure a foothold on the career ladder for his son Jes. Harald Jaeger, estranged from his wife and daughters, harbours desperate passions for an alarming number of women (including, dangerously, the Tank's married financial officer). Lost in his amorous fantasies, he has somehow managed to catch the CEO's eye - as a possible replacement for Breathwaite. Meanwhile the CEO's son Adam should be following in his father's alpha-male footsteps but instead is head-over-heels in puppy love with his au pair. And in a nearby shoe repair shop, Jes, who personally can't imagine anything worse than his father's corporate life, is pursuing a very different kind of future. As the city settles into autumn,a season of brittle days and foreboding nights, the impending downsizing causes a ripple effect that touches not just every employee in the Tank but their spouses, children and lovers as well. Sharp, funny but remarkably tender, Falling Sideways is a shrewdly observed tale of ambition and anxiety, of backstabbing and backsliding, of office politics and family affairs.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"It's hard to be alone and hard to love and to really love is the hardest thing we have to do, and the most important thing.",
By
This review is from: Falling Sideways (Hardcover)
In the second novel of the Copenhagen Quartet to be published in the US, American expatriate Thomas E. Kennedy shows his immense versatility, writing a totally different kind of novel from In The Company of Angels (2010), the first novel of the quartet. In The Company of Angels , is a powerfully dramatic story of a man who suffered several years of torture under Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile before arriving, physically and emotionally ravaged, at a Copenhagen rehabilitation facility which treats victims of political torture. In this new novel, Kennedy provides a vision of a totally different side of Copenhagen in a totally different style of writing, broadening his overall themes and his depiction of this city. Here he focuses on the business world of one company, establishing a set of characters whose business and personal lives become so intertwined that the characters fail to grow or even recognize who they really are.In fifty-three individual episodes, the most important main characters, who illustrate business stereotypes, gradually come to see the limitations of their lives, and some even prepare to make changes. Ultimately, these characters deal with the themes of love and death, freedom and confinement, and the worldly and the spiritual, though for several of them the emphasis here is primarily on the worldly. Copenhagen itself becomes the equivalent of a character here, too, as it continues to reveal itself ever more fully as a vibrant force, for better or worse, in the personal lives of its residents. Over the course of one week in autumn, three businessmen from "the Tank" and their families reveal their dependence upon their business environment--in addition to their own intellectual and spiritual ignorance and emotional vacuums. It is not until they are forced to confront issues of who they really are and where they are going that some of them begin to grow beyond their stereotypical behavior to become interesting individuals struggling with life's realities. Among the main characters, is Frederick Breathwaite, an American in his fifties, who has been the public face of the Tank for years. He has a devoted wife and a bright twenty-one-year-old son Jes, who has given up college to work at a shop that makes keys and repairs shoes. Harald Jaeger, divorced from an angry wife, is a serial philanderer who has recently received a promotion to a high management position. Martin Kampman, the Tank's CEO, has been hired to "clean house" and reduce expenses by firing long-term employees, which he proceeds to do. He is the father of Adam Kampman, an alienated seventeen-year-old who finds that he has more in common with the non-conforming Jes Breathwaite and his counterculture life than he has with his parents. As these characters interact, they raise questions of honesty and ethics, the need for self-realization, the importance of the spiritual (through religion, philosophy, and literature), and most of all, the importance of true love. Filled with observations about particular places and institutions in Copenhagen, the novel is laden with a variety of symbols and motifs--from literature, art (especially sculpture), jazz, the seasons, the spectre of death, and even a ubiquitous sausage cart. Major themes flit in, out, and through of the lives of characters, who do not always recognize their importance. Kennedy has written an unusual book with multiple main characters, none of whom, at the beginning of the novel, are self-aware or unique. As the themes unfold, however, some of these characters grow and escape their own limitations, becoming more human and less self-centered, and giving the novel a lasting thematic resonance. Mary Whipple In the Company of Angels: A Novel
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews) 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Didn't See the Point,
By Karie Hoskins "karieh" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Falling Sideways (Hardcover)
When I started "Falling Sideways" - I thought its would be a book about either office politics or greedy corporate downsizing and the effects on the employees....and I take full responsibility for that mistaken assumption.The book jacket describes this as "empathetic"...but I would characterize it exactly the opposite. I found almost all of the characters to be completely self-centered...and in the words of another reviewer, filled with "egocentric callousness". There was very little in these characters that I could find either interesting or remarkable. As their deepest thoughts seemed to vacillate between their bowel movements (or lack thereof) and their genitals...I lost interest pretty quickly. Again, this is probably my fault because of unrealistic expectations, but I just didn't see the point of this story. I did find one shining bit that I did mark as noteworthy. "Breathwaite closed Kampman's door behind him and moved slowly along the hall, hand in his pocket, stirring the coins there. He remembered then how his own father used to do that and how the sound of dimes and nickels and quarters and fifty-cent pieces clicking against one another had seemed wondrous to him when he was a boy. The wonder of money in the possession of adults." Very descriptive and evocative - and the one image I will take from this book. 2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Falling Sideways: A Novel - Review,
By Hira N. Hasnain "~Enamored Soul~" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Falling Sideways (Hardcover)
Author Thomas Kennedy in his first book, "Falling Sideways: A Novel" attempts a satire based in the workplace. The novel tells the story of Tank, which is the company that characters such as Fredrick Breathwaite, Martin Kampman and Harald Jaeger call their workplace.We have Breathwaite, who is a high-ranking employee of the company, whose only dream and desire in life is to further the future of his son Jes, who happens to want no part of his father's dreams for him. On the other hand, we have Harald Jaeger, who is estranged from his wife and children, but despite his misgivings in his personal and love-life, he seems to be succeeding at Tank. And then, there's the cold, and hard-edged Martin Kampman, the CEO of the company who is down-sizing in order to keep Tank running efficiently. Because it was written as a satire, Kennedy's characters are mostly dark. They are not very personable, and although some narrative comes from their friends and family, the reader rarely makes a connection at an emotional level. On a cerebral level, this book is definitely a cleverly penned novel. Ultimately, this book had a few key high-points, and a few low-points as well. I did enjoy reading it, however, so if you read the synopsis and find it to be to your liking, go for it. For me, it was a good book, highlighting interesting situations in the workplace, but not a memorable book that had characters with which I could connect. 2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"It's hard to be alone and hard to love and to really love is the hardest thing we have to do, and the most important thing.",
By Mary Whipple - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Falling Sideways (Hardcover)
In the second novel of the Copenhagen Quartet to be published in the US, American expatriate Thomas E. Kennedy shows his immense versatility, writing a totally different kind of novel from In The Company of Angels (2010), the first novel of the quartet. In The Company of Angels is a powerfully dramatic story of a man who suffered several years of torture under Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile before arriving, physically and emotionally ravaged, at a Copenhagen rehabilitation facility which treats victims of political torture. In this new novel, Kennedy provides a vision of a totally different side of Copenhagen in a totally different style of writing, broadening his overall themes and his depiction of this city. Here he focuses on the business world of one company, establishing a set of characters whose business and personal lives become so intertwined that the characters fail to grow or even recognize who they really are.In fifty-three individual episodes, the most important main characters, who illustrate business stereotypes, gradually come to see the limitations of their lives, and some even prepare to make changes. Ultimately, these characters deal with the themes of love and death, freedom and confinement, and the worldly and the spiritual, though for several of them the emphasis here is primarily on the worldly. Copenhagen itself becomes the equivalent of a character here, too, as it continues to reveal itself ever more fully as a vibrant force, for better or worse, in the personal lives of its residents. Over the course of one week in autumn, three businessmen from "the Tank" and their families reveal their dependence upon their business environment--in addition to their own intellectual and spiritual ignorance and emotional vacuums. It is not until they are forced to confront issues of who they really are and where they are going that some of them begin to grow beyond their stereotypical behavior to become interesting individuals struggling with life's realities. Among the main characters, is Frederick Breathwaite, an American in his fifties, who has been the public face of the Tank for years. He has a devoted wife and a bright twenty-one-year-old son Jes, who has given up college to work at a shop that makes keys and repairs shoes. Harald Jaeger, divorced from an angry wife, is a serial philanderer who has recently received a promotion to a high management position. Martin Kampman, the Tank's CEO, has been hired to "clean house" and reduce expenses by firing long-term employees, which he proceeds to do. He is the father of Adam Kampman, an alienated seventeen-year-old who finds that he has more in common with the non-conforming Jes Breathwaite and his counterculture life than he has with his parents. As these characters interact, they raise questions of honesty and ethics, the need for self-realization, the importance of the spiritual (through religion, philosophy, and literature), and most of all, the importance of true love. Filled with observations about particular places and institutions in Copenhagen, the novel is laden with a variety of symbols and motifs--from literature, art (especially sculpture), jazz, the seasons, the spectre of death, and even a ubiquitous sausage cart. Major themes flit in, out, and through of the lives of characters, who do not always recognize their importance. Kennedy has written an unusual book with multiple main characters, none of whom, at the beginning of the novel, are self-aware or unique. As the themes unfold, however, some of these characters grow and escape their own limitations, becoming more human and less self-centered, and giving the novel a lasting thematic resonance. Mary Whipple In the Company of Angels: A Novel |
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