Before the Fall

By: Noah Hawley

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's Summary

On a foggy summer night, 11 people - 10 privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter - depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: The plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are the painter Scott Burroughs and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's family.

Was it by chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something more sinister at work? A storm of media attention brings Scott fame that quickly morphs into notoriety and accusations, and he scrambles to salvage truth from the wreckage. Amid trauma and chaos, the fragile relationship between Scott and the young boy grows and glows at the heart of this stunning novel, raising questions of fate, morality, and the inextricable ties that bind us together.

Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Novel and the 2017 International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel.

From the Award-Winning Creator of Fargo comes "One of the year's best suspense novels". (New York Times).

©2015 Noah Hawley (P)2016 Hachette Audio

The end sure does fall...

Interesting book. Plane goes down in water shortly after it takes off. Nine known people on board but the only survivors are a forty something year old artist and a four year old. Miles from shore the artist a former long distance swimmer is able to swim to shore with the boy on a flotation cushion. The boys father (a media mogul) was worth over $100m and so the suspicions begin. One employee on a news show begins stalking the artist and publicly accusing him of somehow being responsible for the plane crash, as if he would crash to plane he himself was on! How would he know that he would survive?
As the book continues it examines the life of each of the passengers in detail. The media mogul and his wife, the banker who launders money for terrorist countries and is under investigation and his wife, the employees on the plane and the artist.
I wouldn't exactly call this a thriller. It is somewhat of a mystery as throughout the book you are lead in different directions as to why this plane literally fell out of the sky. Was it bombed or tampered with? Or was it simply an accident ? Or was this a purposeful act by someone on the plane?
The author fleshes out every single character, some from childhood right up to the time of their death. And then the plane crash and then THE END. It's not that the end was bad, it's that after all this build up it is very anticlimactic and abrupt.
Robert Petkoff does a fantastic job narrating this book.
I purchased this book on sale for $4.95 and for that price I would recommend purchasing it. If you read this review right after it is written (9/16/17) I believe this will be on sale for another few days.
If you found this review helpful please indicate so.
Thank You.

What you should know before listening...

A friend of mine recommended this book. It was not at all what I expected and I soon realized that the reason why I didn't like this book and would never recommend it to anyone is that it is simply not my kind of book.

From the summary, I thought I would be reading a mystery/thriller - when in actuality it was a 12 hour commentary on the moral disintegration of our society. From that perspective, the author does a great job. I was right there with him, experiencing it all. He enables the reader to visualize each character and each scene. Unfortunately, it wasn't something I was interested in listening through.

If I didn't appreciate the writing quality and what the writer was trying to accomplish, I would have given this book one star. I was so annoyed by the ending that I really didn't care why the plane crashed and sort of hoped that something terrible would befall the protagonist. That is never a good sign.

On the upside, the narrator was perfect!

Not what I expected

I heard so many rave reviews for this book. I was excited to start it, and at the beginning I thought the book was going to be a great adventure. But it starts strong and then fizzles out, at least to me. The mystery and suspense gets lost on a lot of unnecessary character details and weird existential questions. Oh well!

Wow!! Robert Petkoff is remarkable!

Finished this 1 minute ago and loved it so much I was motivated to jump right to writing a review. I have discovered my favorite narrator. It doesn't matter who is doing the "talking," he does them all: men, women, and children. I "lived" this book through Robert Petkoff. Whatever the award (given to audio book narration) is - he deserves it. I can't think of anyone on any Audible I've listened to where I've felt this way - he is phenomenal. I won't recap the story since I'm sure you've read the book summary. The mystery, while not the main thrust of the story, remains a mystery until fairly late in the book. Even though I pretty much surmised what happened (probably about when the author wanted the reader to) I was riveted right to the end. I chose the book based solely on the fact Noah Hawley wrote many of the scripts for "Fargo" (the TV series) Season 1 - and I loved Season 1. The story does a great job of chronicling the lives of the rich (yep, they are different), gas bag political TV news as well as what makes people tick. He even does a great job getting into the minds of his female characters, so much so I think he must have had input from his wife, girlfriend...somebody female. Impossible for me to say if I would have loved the book as much if a different narrator had done it. What I can say is I will definitely be looking for other books by him.

This one couldn't keep my attention

I ended this book feeling disappointed that I had spent so much time listening to characters, only to end with none of it really relating to them... it was anticlimactic. I also really wanted there to be some kind of a romance, but that didn't happen. I found myself rewinding while listening because I kept zoning out.

Read It, Listened to It, Loved It.

I read "Before the Fall" and liked it enough to buy the Audible version. This is a novel that went from good to great with a professional narrator. Robert Petkoff read smoothly, consistently, and confidently. He was clearly comfortable telling this story.

This is the story of a plane that goes down in the ocean. There are survivors, but the story is not just about the survivors. Hawley weaves back and forth as he tells his story, revealing slices of life from each passenger's past while maintaining forward momentum with the story of the survivors.

"Before the Fall" is about a man and a boy who are forced to leave their past and the people they love behind, and coming to terms with the realization that the past can never be entirely left behind.

Didn't finish it.

I don't often slam books but this is obviously doing so well that my review probably won't make much difference. I got really frustrated with it because the characters are so stereotypical they came across as paper thin. Their descriptions were so cliched that I occasionally wondered if the book was intended as satire and I was missing point. The dialog wasn't much better. The middle-brow philosophical musings really drove me crazy. Especially if they had to do with art.* The book wasn't interesting enough to be literature or exciting enough to be a thriller.

*Note to Author: DUCHAMP made the URINAL not Dali!

Not literary, not a thriller

I bought and listened to this book based on a rave review in the NY Times by Janet Maslin; now I wonder if she and other reviewers were prejudiced to like this book because of the author's wonderful work in tv's "Fargo". The most dramatic event happens in the beginning of the book and the intensity just continues to taper off. Flashbacks can tend to slow down the dramatic arc of a book, and this book is largely flashbacks connected by slow-moving events in the present. The protagonist tends to engage in more and more debates within himself as to, Is this real? Maybe that was real. What IS reality, anyway? When it was finally revealed whodunit, I could only shrug--not a surprise, not interesting. A long run for a short jump.

'Give Us Dirty Laundry'

I'd say the perfect beach read for any of you summer readers looking for the perfect BR, but if you take this one to the beach you won't be doing anything other than reading -- and maybe getting a sunburn, because this is 13 hours of thriller you won't want to set down. I love it when I finally - finally -- come across a book that isn't just a good read, but also the rare grabber you can get lost in. Hours tick by, the tide come in, goes out, the seagulls eat your lunch... If you are a fan of Fargo, you may be familiar with Hawley's myriad of skills. Not a television person myself, I haven't seen the series, but am certainly compelled to do so after reading this book! If he is half the screenplay writer that he is novelist, I am a newly devoted fan.

Hawley writes with a distinct clarity of language, creating a strong narrative with a powerful momentum that doesn't just recount this story, but has you experiencing the story, connected with these characters through profiles that act like connective tissue. Even recalling it to write this review it plays in my head vividly. It's refreshing, original, it doesn't waste a word or miss a move. BTF is a bonafide thriller; a who-dunnit-and-why that continuously expands. It is multiples that intersect with a pounding heavy after effect.

Jumping right in...Hawley crafts the opening mise-en-scène deliciously, infusing the cast with an importance that portends something to come. On a warm summer night in Martha's Vineyard, a private jet readies for take-off, bound for New York. Aboard, a pilot with an outstanding record; a co-pilot that jockeyed his way into this assignment to be with one of the flight attendants; 2 world-class-beauty flight attendants; David Bateman, a multimillionaire media mogul, his wife, Maggie and their two children, 9-year-old Rachel and 4-year-old JJ.; their private security guard Gil; Ben Kipling, a mega star of the financial world currently under investigation by the FBI, and his wife Sarah; and hitching a ride by invitation of Maggie, a 40-something struggling artist and former alcoholic, Scott Burroughs. Each has a story worthy of more than their introduction -- but that is yet to come.The back-stories of each character are revealed as the investigation is carried out. Each personal history seems to suggest some kind of connection to the accident, questioning whether it is purely coincidence or strategy.
18 minutes later, the plane plunges into the Atlantic Ocean. Surviving are Scott and 4 yr. old JJ.

The real meat of the story, and the moral driven to with such force, begins when Scott drags himself and little JJ. out of the drink after an exhausting swim (including fire in the water, wreckage, and sharks) and becomes the *hero.* In an act probably understood by Captain Chesley Sullenberger, *Sully,* after landing US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River, Scott becomes a reluctant hero, craving solace and reflection. In place of a personal and public account, conspiracies began to grow and distort, fanned by a loudmouth news anchorman, Bill Cunningham. From his popular bully pulpit, he conjures up his own scenario of the accident, until once a hero, Scott becomes the villain, suffering all manners of assaults on his person. Here Hawley doubles down and dishes out a hefty serving of what ails our own society. The public clamors for more dirt, hungry for scandal and gossip; Cunningham uses his role of *newsman* and the power he has to bug phones, prey on the families, and twist the truth for ratings..."I make my living off the evening news; Just give me something, Something I can use." Facts don't feed the audience as much as a juicy story and some dirty laundry.

As the investigation concludes it becomes a pyrrhic victory for Scott, and a glaring look at where we are as a society. Instead of giving us a who-dunnit wrapped in a scathing commentary, Hawley gives us a thrilling story where the answers aren't as important as the questions, and the story will leave you wondering where 12 hours just went. I enthusiastically recommend this page-turner!

Too Ho Hum

It got hard to plow through - couldn’t finish. When “shaping the news” came up I bailed.