Falling Man

A Novel

By: Don DeLillo

Narrated by: John Slattery

Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

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)

No oversight

Love the book, and Slattery is astonishing, yet a couple misreadings sneak through showing there is no review mechanism at Audible.

Complicated

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

Confusing

The book was hard to follow as to the characters. The last chapter was less confusing.

Mixed feelings

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").

Nobody Has Any Fun in This Book

"the point is... invalidation," one of the characters says. Or something like that. That is the point of this book, alright.
This book is lots of thought, no wisdom.
Lots of mulling and self absorption and obsession. No passion. Just mindless repetition.

Is Delillo saying this is what happens when there's a major tragedy?
Is he saying that humanity has so little energy, so little humility, so little imagination, so little humor?
Yes. That's what he's saying.
Dust thou art to dust returnest. Is what he's saying.

I think the man's in need of an anti-depressant.
God, what a deadly group of characters.
No more Delillo for me.

Excrutiating

It took me three months to finish this book. I wish I had read it instead of listened to it. The narrator was monotonous and hard to follow, he had no emotion in his voice. I got bored and would have to stop for days before I would try again.

Dry and hard to follow

The narrator didn't do very well distinguishing between different characters and events. The story felt like a giant run on sentence.. several breaks were needed even with 1.50 playback speed. I eventually gave up - zero desire to finish.

solid novel by great American novelist

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.

Incredible writing

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.

Unforgettable

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