Falling Man

Critics

• The trembling air

  Falling Man by Don DeLillo 246pp, Picador, £16.99 Falling Man is Don DeLillo's 9/11 novel. Readers have been expecting it. With his understanding that it is terrorists, not artists, who now speak most directly to the collective unconscious, DeLillo - ... (read full critics)

  guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

• As his world came tumbling down

  Falling Man by Don DeLillo Picador £16.99, pp246 To date, the most successful attempts to address in narrative the events of 11 September 2001 have been the most direct. Frederic Beigbeder's novel Windows on the World, published in 2003, imagined the ... (read full critics)

  guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

5 Reviews

• 

  Regretful - that's the right definition for what I felt about this book!

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  Anmar08 said on Feb 12, 2010 | Add your feedback

• 

  As he had already written on the other event that shocked America ("Libra" was about the Kennedy assassination), and as he lives and was brought up in New York, it was only a matter of time for DeLillo to write about 9/11. This book is not a masterpiece, yet it shows how DeLillo's skills have consta ... (continue)

  As he had already written on the other event that shocked America ("Libra" was about the Kennedy assassination), and as he lives and was brought up in New York, it was only a matter of time for DeLillo to write about 9/11. This book is not a masterpiece, yet it shows how DeLillo's skills have constantly increased through the years. The idea of the performance artist known as "The Falling Man" is one of his best, and his description of the life of one of the survived and his wife is haunting. They are only a couple of people in an enormous crowd, and their actions and problems seem shallow and empty and banal: yet, they could not be more significant. This books show what it must really mean to live through those terrible days, the absurd quality that life had took on itself.
  I only regret the fact that DeLillo felt the need to tell about the actual facts that brought about 9/11. The brief chapters on the terrorists are the least realistic of the novel, looking like ordinary docu-fiction. It would have been far better if he had left the Towers' ruins on the background: they would have haunted the reader even more.

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  il Ciri said on May 10, 2009 | Add your feedback

• ARC

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  Becky said on Nov 10, 2008 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

• 

  Great writer, a reality slicer

  9/11, again. But what's different now? No conspiracy theories, no mentions of Bush, no reference to a war.
  Simply, 9/11 from the perspective of the humble humans. Two persons that were in the Towers, but almost no focus on the accidents. Just some little words in a vast novel. Like "planes". Or ... (continue)

  9/11, again. But what's different now? No conspiracy theories, no mentions of Bush, no reference to a war.
  Simply, 9/11 from the perspective of the humble humans. Two persons that were in the Towers, but almost no focus on the accidents. Just some little words in a vast novel. Like "planes". Or, "x days/years since the planes".
  DeLillo is a master of prose. He analyzes the Man-inside and the Man-outside, the outer, factual world in complete submission to the way the Man sees it.
  No rhetoric, just normal lives with existing problems, plus two planes that make them uncertain on the last certainties they had.

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  sturmer said on Jul 3, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• 

  reading the first chapter I was amazed, but in the end it wasn`t as good as I expected it to be!:(

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  Sempre Cindy said on Apr 29, 2008 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

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• English Books
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• ISBN-10: 141656229X
• ISBN-13: 9781416562290
• Pub date: Jun 01, 2008
• Also available as: Paperback, Hardcover and eBook
• In other languages: other languages Livres Français, Deutsche Bücher, Libros en Español, llibres en català, Libri Italiani, Norske Bøker

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• NY Times Notable Book Club (481)

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