Falling Man Audiobook By Don DeLillo cover art

Falling Man

A Novel

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Falling Man

By: Don DeLillo
Narrated by: John Slattery
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In the opening scene of Falling Man, Keith Neudecker emerges from the smoke and ash of the burning tower where he worked and makes his way to the apartment of his ex-wife and young son uptown. Throughout this bold and haunting novel, DeLillo traces the way the events of September 11 kindled or rekindled relationships, reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory, and our perception of the world.

Falling Man is a direct encounter with the enormous force of history, yet the story is told through the intimate lives of a few people immediately affected. It is beautiful, heartbreaking, and ultimately redemptive.

©2007 Don DeLillo. All rights reserved (P)2007 Simon and Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. Classics Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic reviews

"There have been a number of novels written in the past years about 9/11 that have attempted to come to grips with what that horrible day means to us. None of them are like this one....It's a testament to DeLillo's brilliant command of language that readers will feel once again, whether they want to or not, as scared and as sad as they felt that day." ( Booklist)
"This novel is a return to DeLillo's best work. No other writer could encompass 9/11 quite like DeLillo does here....The writing has the intricacy and purpose of a wiring diagram....It is as if Players, The Names, Libra, White Noise, Underworld - with their toxic events, secret histories, moral panics - converge, in that day's narrative of systematic vulnerability, scatter and tentative regrouping." ( Publishers Weekly)
" Falling Man brings at least a measure of memory, tenderness and meaning to all that howling space." ( The New York Times Book Review)
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I read a lot of criticism about the narrator but I think he uses a style appropriate to the text. Don DeLillo is one of the finest American writers and this is a short, deeply engaging, thoughtful book. If you want something that makes you think, where each sentence is a marvel, and if you can get used to his use of the word "this" when you were expecting "that", this is for you.

Incredible writing

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DeLillo is one of the greatest writers of the last half-century. And ‘Falling Man’ is one of his most sublime, deeply moving, human novels

Unforgettable

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The story is fragmented and the pieces of story fall short of the larger themes DeLillo seems to be reaching for.

Complicated

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delillo's solid attempt to capture what many novelists have attempted to captures, and what is probably in the end unable to be captured: the change, trauma, and impact of 9/11 on the American psyche. delillo sets his goals even higher by attempting to flesh out. philosophically, how a subjectivity of individualism and autonomy was crushed by a painful entrance into the larger world through violence. delillo's effort is unfulfilled, but if delillo can't do it no one can. overall, nice work By a great writer.

solid novel by great American novelist

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An extraordinary book made more so by Slattery’sb extraordinary reading of it. I ache in my chest for how it moves me.

A poignant memorial of that time

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After reading a magazine review of this book, I was happy to find it already available on Audible. I listened to it over the course of 2 days and immediately listened to it again. There are many layers to this book, only the most obvious being the first-hand experience of the September 11 hijackings. The horror of those events is protrayed in the awestruck and stunned manner of those who were in New York on that day, but the underlying feelings are much more widespread and relect all our humanity. I experienced that day from thousands of miles and 4 time zones away, in my home in Alaska, but felt many of the same feelings that I found in this book. The simple act of looking at oneself in a mirror and comparing this view to that held by others who see us, the innocent simplicity of children's misunderstanding of the name of a terrorist and their fear of returning planes, and of course the inability to undo what happened, to have to remember it and view it repeatedly in the media are just some of the subjects covered simply but so well in this book. We have heard and read often that 9/11 was a day that changed all Americans: I think this simple yet complex and deep book captures many of the deep and human ways it changed us. I highly recommend this book as a reminder of our common feelings, whether we were on the streets of Lower Manhattan, the Interior of Alaska, or the many thousands of other places where Americans felt, and feel, the impact of that day.

A Reflection on Humanity

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This book is complex but beautiful. It’s about a couple, 9/11, terrorism and a mysterious man known as The Falling Man..... enjoy!

A soaring novel

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I literally had to press 'stop' on my ipod on several occasions just to think about what I just heard because of the beautiful language and construction. Listen to this for the writing alone.

Gorgeous Writing

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… read or listen to, or read and listen to Falling Man! It’s exquisitely beautiful, luminous!!

If you haven’t already …

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As my professor who taught this book told our class, "This may not be the book about 9/11 you want, but it is the book you need". DeLillo is definitely an interesting writer and I have to say, after reading several of his books, I'm not really the biggest fan of his style. That being said, this is a very "real" book. It may be fictionalization, but it's certainly not a fairy tale, which is something people "need" in a book about 9/11. In terms of the audiobook, I thought the narrator did a pretty good job considering how hard DeLillo's dialogue can be to follow (and he was MUCH better than the narrator for "Libra").

Mixed feelings

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