Falling Man: A Novel

Written by Don DeLillo

Narrated by John Slattery

Falling Man is a magnificent, essential novel about the event that defines turn-of-the-century America. It begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and tracks the aftermath of this global tremor in the intimate lives of a few people.

There is September 11 and then there are the days after, and finally the years.

Falling Man is a magnificent, essential novel about the event that defines turn-of-the-century America. It begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and tracks the aftermath of this global tremor in the intimate lives of a few people.

First there is Keith, walking out of the rubble into a life that he’d always imagined belonged to everyone but him. Then Lianne, his estranged wife, memory-haunted, trying to reconcile two versions of the same shadowy man. And their small son Justin, standing at the window, scanning the sky for more planes.

These are lives choreographed by loss, grief, and the enormous force of history.

Brave and brilliant, Falling Man traces the way the events of September 11 have reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory and our perception of the world. It is cathartic, beautiful, heartbreaking.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: May 15, 2007
• ISBN: 9780743567190

Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo is the author of many bestselling novels, including Point Omega, Falling Man, White Noise, Libra and Zero K, and has won many honours in America and abroad, including the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his novel Underworld. In 2010, he received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award. He has also written several plays.

Reviews for Falling Man

[ameise1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story revolves around the aftermath of 9/11. It shows the processing of the experience from the perspective of different characters. It took me a while to dive into the story as it jumps from one place to the next. What impressed me is not only the visibility of the survivors but also the preparation of the terrorists.I still remember well when I got home from work and the TV ran very unusual at our home, and I saw an airplane fly into the tower. As a European woman it was impossible to understand what was happening. While listening to DeLillo's book, these pictures came up again and again.

[kirstiecat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well, I think this book was really insightful but probably not the best choice for around Christmas time. I think it's a well written novel but as a flaw it was difficult for me to get into the characters. DeLillo sometimes pulls of the disjointedness of his novels well but this time the storyline suffered for me because of it. I think a better book to read that concerns fiction and the human experience surrounding 911 is Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close but if you are a fan of DeLillo, this is still a worthwhile read.

[heathersblue · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was not incredibly impressed.

[maquisleader · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Interesting, but depressing. A 9/11 survivor goes back to his ex-wife -- he walks from the falling towers to her apartment building. The story was hard to follow, characters weren't always identified as to who was speaking.

[pam8enser · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I've been dying to read this, I was so excited the library had this in audio!

UPDATE:
Alright, I've tried. I don't know whether it was because I was listening to it or that my thoughts in my head are that distracting. But I've learned that if a book is really interesting nothing in my head can distract me that much. I'm on disc 2 and I just can't pay attention. I think I'm going to have to give up. My goal was to finish this week, but if I can't pay attention, what's the point? When I find myself more interested listening about the Yellow River on NPR I know it's not a good book. Oh well...

[goldiebear · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I tried with this book. I really did. I couldn't finish. I just didn't care anymore. For one, the use of pronouns in this book drove me crazy! Half the time I just spent trying to figure out which He or She DeLillo was referring to. The basic story line was okay. A family intertwined after the events of 9/11. The story line was a bit hard to follow at times. A couple brought back together, a couple torn apart. A child scared and making up ideas of what actually happened, or not believing what actually happened. In the end, I just gave up. I didn't care about the characters anymore. I liked Windows on the World or Extremely Loud and Incredibly close much more.

[mjpronko · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of DeLillo's most disturbing, and confusing, works. It's brilliant, without a flaw, which is, perhaps a flaw.

[railarson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Manhattan, many were looking to quintessential New York author Don DeLillo to take on the unenviable task of explaining to us what it all meant.DeLillo?s stories have always dealt with the twin specters of terrorism and mass psychosis. It made perfect sense to want to search for deeper meanings lurking just under the surface of his latest novel.To his credit, DeLillo didn?t exactly deliver what was expected of him. Instead of a myopic study of events on 9/11, Falling Man is a deeper exploration of loss in all its subtle and insidious forms.When Lianne?s estranged husband Keith walks away from the collapse of the Twin Towers relatively unscathed and ends up on her doorstep, it is her volunteer work with elderly patients in the early stages of Alzheimer?s that helps her maintain some sense of normalcy. The intimate description of the slow erosion of what has defined those few lives actually threatens to emotionally eclipse the larger tragedy for all its wide-screen horror.That is until the novel?s final act, where DeLillo takes us inside a doomed plane and the resulting inferno to show us what those struggling to escape had to go through. DeLillo?s careful, claustrophobic depiction of the exodus from the north tower rivals Hampton Sides? piece in Americana: Dispatches from the New Frontier for all its nightmarish immediacy.

[beccac220 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the fresh perspective and thought some of the writing was exceptional. However, I had a hard time connecting with the characters (although I think he may have written it this way intentionally) and following who said what.

[ben3cumberledge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read Falling Man recently, coincidentally during the ten year anniversary of 9-11. I was pleased with the read, but not blown away as I have been by some of DeLillo's other novels (see: Underworld, Mao II). Some of the less-than-scholarly reviews I've seen on the Internet have described the characters as hollow, one-dimensional or dysfunctional. This entirely misses the real strength of the book for me at least-- the dispassionate narration and stark point-of-view shifts (the real wallop comes when DeLillo shifts to the terrorists' POV). With a book of this breadth, expecting the characters, which are quite numerous, to be richly portrayed and fully developed is akin to walking into Mastro's and asking for a well done steak smothered in gravy. Best to leave the grown-up literature to the grown-ups, Nancy Drew.

[tigerlms · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Where were you when 9-11 happened? What if you were in New York City, near the Twin Towers? In the moment the the planes hit, or the towers fell, did you know what was happening, or why, or by or to whom? Probably it was chaos?and that?s exactly the feeling you get when you read Falling Man. Delillo is considered a master writer and has the credentials to back that up (National Book Award, Pen/Faulkner Award, Underworld was named one of the three best novels of the last 25 years by NYTBR). The reason you may not keep track of who the characters are or what they?re doing is that DeLillo doesn?t really want you to. The Falling Man of the novel is a performance artist in New York who dangles, suspended in the air. Yet he could be anyone, including Keith?who walks away from the Twin Towers after they fall, his estranged wife Lianne, who struggles to understand the new version of Keith who walks back into her life, or their young son Justin, who with his friends continuously scan the skies waiting for more planes to arrive. DeLillo?s skill as a writer keeps you off balance, unsure, and struggling to find reason. You might come away with more questions than answers, but ultimately you know something of profound importance has just occurred.

[unicycledad · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read White Noise a long time ago and really enjoyed it, but I found this one to be overly "literary" and esoteric. He's a good writer, but it was a bit too much for me. Maybe a smarter person would appreciate it more, I'm not sure.

[dylanwolf · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A powerful, personal response to the 9/11 attacks by a master of his craft. I love DeLillo's writing and this is a master class of control in what is a dangerously risky project. Survivor Keith Neudeckor finds himself at his estranged wife's apartment picking out shards of glass from his skin. DeLillo writes about the effects of the attacks on him and the people around him, including a street performer, the Falling Man. Tender and tough.

[archangelsbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For myself, this novel of DeLillo's was hard to place. My favorites among his many have been The Names, Underworld, White Noise, End Zone and Great Jones Street. This, however, is so different. It is hard to say that the scope isn't grand in the way that the scope in Underworld was - after all the attack on 9/11 on the World Trade Center is at the heart of this novel - yet there is something so intimate, so personal in this narrative as to defy the grander scale. It is as if DeLillo were saying that the tower's fall was personal. Given his relationship to New York City I would not doubt this one bit. One of the most amazing parts of the novel is towards the end when he begins describing the emotions of one of the hijackers on the plane about to hit the towers and segues seamlessly into the thoughts of Frank, the main character, as he is in his office in the tower that is first hit. DeLillo remains to my mind one of the most important American writers of the last 50 years.

[nohablo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Difficult, difficult, difficult. Reads oblique and milky and opaque, studded with some hard islands of fierce, sharp-eyed prose. Delillo dodges the obvious drama and easy, available sentiment (rage, sorrow, indignation, LITERATURE), and conjures up page after page of shock, numb, silly, ringing, and infinite. Some people (Michiko! Andrew!) did not like this! They did not like the stilted, disengaged, coldly analytical prose (admittedly, sometimes a little jarring and frustrating); and they did not like the lack of killer instinct. Falling Man in no ways tries to home in on the pulpy, beating heart of 9/11, and instead seems to skirt the edges. Also Things They Didn?t Love: the lack of any real skeleton. Again, Falling Man feels loose, anecdotes of Small Shit bobbing around around in the aftermath of a typhoon.However! I think the lack of any truly solid, coherent narrative (jesus, THIS IS NOT A BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT. It just, uh, sounds like one.) is sort of deliberate! And also infinitely more honest and complex. We tell stories to make sense of things (hay Didion), but who can honestly make sense of 9/11 in all its dimensions? A few of the characters try, but their sparring arguments seem so sparse and brittle and obviously lacking. Also! The command immediately afterwards (hay, Bush) was to resume normality: to go shopping of all things. Delillo knows that, remembers that despite the heroic myth we?ve erected around the event, so much more of what happened that morning was this utterly lost, alienated fumbling.And Falling Man is that, that feeling of limbo after disaster: that moment of dust rising, debris settling. It?s not the 9/11 novel we want - there?s so little heroism, so much pettiness, so much self-absorption - but it?s the one we?re going to get.PS: Not without fault though; some of Delillo?s old tricks verge on parody here which, uh, NO GOOD. The usual sharpness of his parody and humor gets blunted by the sheer magnitude of the event he tries to describe.

[buddhapenguin · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Writing is pretentious at best and megalomaniacal in the worst places. I say this in complete disregard to the plot of the story, which I found interesting and promising. DeLillo is clearly a technically skilled writer, but he abuses the craft without earning it in it "Falling Man". The dialog is unrealistic. People just do not converse this way. In addition, the thoughts of each character are impossibly grand at each moment. Even during times of crisis I find it hard that people would become this poetic philosophical or have an almost omniscient understanding of their thoughts and feelings. If the pretentiousness could be scraped out of the book it may make for a good read. As it stands it feels like engorging oneself on a dozen rich brownies. As a result I found no reason to finish the book.

[rachissy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a quick read, but also hard to read in places. Falling Man by Don DeLillo follows a survivor of 9/11. It begins with Keith walking away from the World Trade Center covered in ash and blood. In the aftermath of the disaster, he moves back in with his wife and son, whom he had been separated from at the time of the attack.There are parts of the book, when the characters are recounting their experiences of the day, trying to get out of the tower, that are downright haunting. Some were very difficult to read, so overly detailed in places so that I felt like I was there. The book left me with a bit of a heavy heart, though being a book about 9/11, it wasn't as thought I was expecting a feel-good read.I just finished the book a few minutes ago, and I'm not sure yet if I liked the book as a whole. It could be that I still need to absorb it, let it sink in or whatnot, but I'm on the fence. I liked parts and I hated parts.The book is narrated in the third person and follows several people. Sometimes the transition from one character to the next was so abrupt that I found myself getting confused as to who it was referring to. One minute we're with Keith, then a few paragraphs later we're with his wife or someone else, often with little warning. It would take me a few lines to realize we were suddenly in a different place or time.The dialog was also bit awkward in places and almost hard to follow, everyone seemed to speak abruptly and only one sentence at a time. Though these are characters in turmoil and Lord knows I wouldn't be too chatty if I went through something like that. It's just that most of the conversations seemed like they were on a bad first date; question, quick answer, one line comment, rinse and repeat. People just don't talk like that on a normal basis.What I did like about the book was that these were real people trying to make sense of the tragedy and dealing with the aftermath. Keith's young son begins watching the skies for more planes, his wife, Lianne, lashes out at a middle eastern neighbor and doesn't seem to understand why. These are not heroes such as a firefighter or policeman. These are just normal and flawed people adjusting to life 'after the planes', as they put it.In the end, I think I liked the overall story behind the book but had a problem with the execution of that story. The rapidly changing POV's tended to pull me out of the story as I had to reread passages to figure out what was going on. I do think I would still recommend it to other though. The good far outweighed the bad in my eyes. Just be prepared for a few gut-wrenching moments.

[janeajones · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As I was reading this book (slowly), I kept telling my husband -- this is a really smart, well written book. It's a book for and about grownups (mostly -- although there is a brilliant episode about children). It's about the tenuous quality of relationships. It's about the fragility of life -- not just individual life, but the life of society and cultures. It's understated, it's tender, it's brutal. It's about 9/11 and its aftermath -- specifically its affect on one family, but it's also about modern urban life, about America, and about the ways we find to cope. I thought it was brilliant.

[aimless22 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The fractured narration by DeLillo amplifies the characters' fragmented lives post-terror. My personal emotional memories make parts of the novel difficult to read.The truncated sentences and scenes fit the scattered mental reactions in those few days after the planes. On two different occasions, two of the main characters punch someone else in the face. While not knowing much about these two people pre-terror, I strongly felt that their actions were completely out of character. Those two scenes are fascinating revelations about emotions, pent up or otherwise. Keith's life 3 years after seems a metaphor for all life. He gambles, both at the poker table and flying to and from tournaments. Yet he does not bet his emotions. He allows no one in, he prefers inward solitude and habit. Every day, everyone gambles. In the car, in an elevator, on a plane, crossing the street. Strangers could become criminals or friends, yet many people do not want to take that chance. Those that do have allowed their gambling to cross over into their emotional lives. Those that don't are just like Keith - traveling here to there, alone yet connected, risking all and wondering how much it's all worth.I found those penultimate chapters set 3 years after to be the most interesting in the entire book.

[cdeuker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A September 11th novel. Moves from victims to perpetrators, but focuses mainly on Keith, a survivor, and the psychic toll the event has taken on him. It returns him to his estranged wife, but the marriage is not happy, their child is angst-ridden, and Keith--even as he resumes his marriage--has an affair with another survivor whose briefcase he has "rescued" from the collapse of the towers. Keith ends up a poker player, flying to and from his family. Poker games are described as being "like a seance in hell." DeLillo is amazingly talented. The writing at times is breathtaking. However, he is also amazingly frustrating. He seems to be in love with pronouns. Sections begin with "He did this or that . . ." and then the reader is required to figure out who "he" is through context. Annoying and self-conscious. Same thing with the central metaphor. Failling Man is a performance artist who keeps 9/11 on the minds of New Yorkers by "falling" out of buildings. He's harnessed, but the falls are not bungee jumps. They cause real pain to Falling Man and real pain to those who see him fall. Just a bit too tricky.

[bnbookgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was intrigued by this post 9/11 story. It is such a unique take on the subject. The prose are very sparse and the images are very real. This is my first book by DeLillo and I don't think it will be my last. The characters are not all that likeable, but the are well written, interesting characters. It is a short book to listen to, but worth the time.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story of a family who survives the World Trade Center attack on 9/11 and how their lives change as a result. Another briefer plot thread follows one of the terrorists as he becomes indoctrinated in radical Islam and comes to the U.S. to flight school. I think this book really captures the feeling of 9/11--the confusion and helplessness we all felt.

[proustitute_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very disappointing, with two-dimensional characters who might be going through any traumatic event?as such, it felt almost as if 9/11 was being exploited by DeLillo here, especially as the depth is more superficial than incisive. The only saving grace of the book is the last section which is masterfully done and shows a sincere sense of humanity, compassion, and how interlocked all our lives truly are that the rest of the book lacks.

[ashley_schmidt_65 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book seemed to give first hand insight into the world of a 9/11 Survivor. DeLillo did a good job of taking the reader into the buildings on that day. At times the heaviness of the language can become suffocating and the chronology can become broken, but I do not think that this was done accidentally. That fragmentation and disorientation allows the reader to physically feel the part of the main character. Great book and nicely done!

[readerspeak_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

If I didn't want to finish for book club, I could have stopped anywhere before the last five pages and not been curious about how it ended. I really disliked how DeLillo used pronouns more than names for his characters - not only did it cause me confusion three paragraphs into a new section (and then having to go back to re-read when I figured how who he was describing) but it also contributed to a complete lack of empathy for the characters. I expected more emotional impact from a book about 9/11. Really disappointing overall. :(

[sfhaa_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Delillo's method of writing in Falling Man is deliberately fragmented, in time and in place. It is worried, confused and unreal - despite its premise lying in a harsh reality outside of fiction - and Delillo's prose conjures up a detached experience of events. He forms vignettes of narrative and character thought, heavier than I found in White Noise - which takes some effort by the reader - but the overall effect, once past the intense climax, makes it more than worthwhile. The horrifying image of the falling man is the ghost that haunts this novel.

[casualfriday_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Falling Man is about Keith Neudeckor, a survivor of the World Trade Center attack, who flees the smoke and ash to make his way uptown to his estranged wife. She takes him in, and the two of them cope with the aftermath in different ways. Keith has a brief affair with a fellow survivor, and eventually turns all his attention to high-stakes poker. Lianne, his wife, is consumed by anger and anxiety to the point of physically assaulting a neighbor playing Middle Eastern music. Their child searches the sky for returning planes and makes a game of talking only in monosyllables.This is my first DeLillo novel and I found it difficult going. The main characters seem disconnected from each other; their most intense experiences occur alone. The writing is deceptively lean, using short sentences and disjointed phrases to convey complex ideas. It took me about 100 pages to feel anything about these people at all; then I surrendered to the book's odd rhythm and got involved in spite of myself. I need to think about this one some more.

[edfinn_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the best 9/11 novels I've read so far. DeLillo brings in a lot of major themes relating to the trauma of the WTC attacks without getting too lost in cheap comparisons. The attention to memory (of trauma, Alzheimer's, stream of consciousness) makes it worthwhile.

[brenzi_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A story about a family directly involved in 9/11 and what their lives were like immediately following (days, months) the terrorist attacks. The "falling man" was a performance artist who recreated the bodies falling from the towers on that day, but really represented the protagonist, Keith, who was in Tower 1 on 9/11. It was really slow-moving and its only redemption for me was the last chapter, which re-created Keith's life when the plane hit and his descendance down from the tower and to his ex-wife's home. Agonizing.

[dmarsh451 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I thought I didn't dislike this at the time, but now I realize I did. It's been two years and I barely remember it. I just get this sense of 'bleah' whenever I think about it--like that guy you fuck so he'll just go home. I don't think I liked 'Underworld' very much either.