Falling under De Lillo's fateful spell - Rated 
A masterful book, filled with show-stopping prose and insight. Disjointed, off-kilter dialogue and an overall tone of fractured unease (dis-ease?)- perfectly sculpting life "with the rug pulled from under you". Already beautifully summarised by Sam J Ruddock's review, so I have little to add to that, except my recommendation to buy it, so you can savour the melancholy delight of falling under De Lillo's fateful spell -and waft -like the shirt -where his intelligence blows you.
Falling Man - Rated
In 'Falling Man' DeLillo tries to tackle the Big Theme of the 21st century - namely September 11, 2001 - and how it has impacted on the collective psyche. However, there is less of the virtuoso omnipresence of Underworld, for example, but more examination of the attack at a local and intimate level. Terrorism is by no means a new theme for Delillo, who has explored the ways in which political violence shapes society in many of his books. Here he also focuses on another traditional preoccupation, the way that mass media saturates the visual symbolism of such events until its original meaning becomes disjointed.
As with other DeLillo novels, the characters' lives are rendered dispiritingly unsympathetic by his cynical attitude towards modern (i.e, consumer) society. The dehumanisation and creeping inertia of the protagonists, for example, makes a deadening reading experience. Communication in DeLillo's novels is often so stunted and inarticulate as to seem emotionally retarded. This is probably the point, but it can also have the affect of feeling contrived and overstylised. DeLillo tells one strand of narrative from the perspective of one of the plane hijackers, which doesn't add an enormous amount to our understanding of the attack but reads credibly enough.
DeLillo is one of the great writers of modern American fiction, and isolated passages leave you breathless with their observational insight, mood and originality. But sometimes you wish that DeLillo had more empathy for his characters, as they seem so vacuous as to make reading his novels a distinctly cold experience. Nevertheless, DeLillo's unusual perspective is arguably much more satisfying to read than some of the more prosaic interpretations of September 11th already written and no doubt yet to come.
Falling Man - Rated
In 'Falling Man' DeLillo tries to tackle the Big Theme of the 21st century - namely September 11, 2001 - and how it has impacted on the collective psyche. However, there is less of the virtuoso omnipresence of Underworld, for example, but more examination of the attack at a local and intimate level. Terrorism is by no means a new theme for Delillo, who has explored the ways in which political violence shapes society in many of his books. Here he also focuses on another traditional preoccupation, the way that mass media saturates the visual symbolism of such events until its original meaning becomes disjointed.
As with other DeLillo novels, the characters' lives are rendered dispiritingly unsympathetic by his cynical attitude towards modern (i.e, consumer) society. The dehumanisation and creeping inertia of the protagonists, for example, makes a deadening reading experience. Communication in DeLillo's novels is often so stunted and inarticulate as to seem emotionally retarded. This is probably the point, but it can also have the affect of feeling contrived and overstylised. DeLillo tells one strand of narrative from the perspective of one of the plane hijackers, which doesn't add an enormous amount to our understanding of the attack but reads credibly enough.
DeLillo is one of the great writers of modern American fiction, and isolated passages leave you breathless with their observational insight, mood and originality. But sometimes you wish that DeLillo had more empathy for his characters, as they seem so vacuous as to make reading his novels a distinctly cold experience. Nevertheless, DeLillo's unusual perspective is arguably much more satisfying to read than some of the more prosaic interpretations of September 11th already written and no doubt yet to come.
Falling Man - Rated
In 'Falling Man' DeLillo tries to tackle the Big Theme of the 21st century - namely September 11, 2001 - and how it has impacted on the collective psyche. However, there is less of the virtuoso omnipresence of Underworld, for example, but more examination of the attack at a local and intimate level. Terrorism is by no means a new theme for Delillo, who has explored the ways in which political violence shapes society in many of his books. Here he also focuses on another traditional preoccupation, the way that mass media saturates the visual symbolism of such events until its original meaning becomes disjointed.
As with other DeLillo novels, the characters' lives are rendered dispiritingly unsympathetic by his cynical attitude towards modern (i.e, consumer) society. The dehumanisation and creeping inertia of the protagonists, for example, makes a deadening reading experience. Communication in DeLillo's novels is often so stunted and inarticulate as to seem emotionally retarded. This is probably the point, but it can also have the affect of feeling contrived and overstylised. DeLillo tells one strand of narrative from the perspective of one of the plane hijackers, which doesn't add an enormous amount to our understanding of the attack but reads credibly enough.
DeLillo is one of the great writers of modern American fiction, and isolated passages leave you breathless with their observational insight, mood and originality. But sometimes you wish that DeLillo had more empathy for his characters, as they seem so vacuous as to make reading his novels a distinctly cold experience. Nevertheless, DeLillo's unusual perspective is arguably much more satisfying to read than some of the more prosaic interpretations of September 11th already written and no doubt yet to come.
A fall from the heights - Rated 
Don DeLillo is one of the great contemporary authors, but recent work has shown a loss of form, and to my regret the same applies to Falling Man. There is a brilliantly low-key but engrossing start to the novel which presents us with the story's hero, and a remarkable last few pages which haunt you long after you've finished reading ... but in between the plot meanders, characters come and go with little or no impact, often so ill-defined they blur into one another, and the story barely moves from one chapter to the next.
I felt that DeLillo had set up the Falling Man of the novel as a motif for the hero's trajectory, but this didn't materialise. There are moments of great writing, but overall the novel was a disappointment to me. Having said that, an out-of-form DeLillo may still be superior to the vast majority of novelists working at the height of their powers. Hopefully he will do so again.
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