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"Falling Man" by Don DeLillo (Scribner, ISBN 1416546022, $26.00)

Don DeLillo, writer of prescient novels and chronicler of pivotal American
events, has written a novel of our post 9/11 world, entitled "Falling Man."
DeLillo’s mastery of description and language lend strength to this
powerful, though flawed, novel: he imagines the lives of the terrorists and
interprets the emerging emotional landscape of our newly altered world.

The novel focuses on the lives of an estranged, early 40s, couple. Keith is
in the towers at the time of the planes, but he gets out, showing up at
Lianna’s door. She says he looks “like gray soot head to toe, I don’t know.
Like smoke, standing here, with blood on his face and clothes.” The issues
that forced their previous separation now seem insignificant. 

Lianna seeks comfort and safety, while Keith continually tempts fate, but
they support each other, living with an arrangement that works individually
and collectively. 

Like the preliminary sketches for an artist’s masterpiece, "Falling Man," is
brilliant in its episodic parts, and for those parts alone is worth a good
hard look. 

Review by Sarah Bagby, July 12, 2007
 

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