Book Review: Before the Fall by Noah Hawley - Entrepreneur Generations

I'm continuing my Summer of Mark, and that means plenty of reading. But, for me, this summer, that has meant more listening to Audible, because I just can't seem to sit still long enough to read much (I've been pushing through a paper novel next to my bed at night, but that's it.) But every time I'm running an errand, getting a workout in, cleaning the house, doing yard work, grilling food, I've got a book playing in my headphones or on my bluetooth speaker. I've gotten so into them that I can't wait to rush back to listening.

The last few days have been consumed by Before the Fall by Noah Hawley, which clocks in at around 13 hours. It's an absorbing novel, which begins with the crash of a small private plane full of rich passengers off of Martha's Vineyard on an August night in 2015. The crash kills most aboard, including David Bateman, head of a Fox News-type news organization, along with his wife, Maggie, and daughter, Rachel; Ben Kipling, a Wall Street investor in trouble with the feds, and his wife, Sarah; an Israeli-born head of security for the Batemans; as well a pilot, a co-pilot, and a flight attendant. The only survivors are a last-minute addition to the flight, a working-class painter who has befriended Maggie named Scott Burroughs, and the Bateman's youngest child, the 4-year old JJ. Burroughs saves the young boy by swimming with a separated shoulder for ten miles, holding the child with him as he swims.

After beginning with the crash, Hawley spends the rest of the novel pinging between the its investigation and flashbacks with each of the characters on the plane, telling the story of how they ended up on that flight. The flashbacks make the novel feel more like a character study than a thriller, and I was fine with that; by the time we discover just how the plane went down, it feels anticlimactic to me, but we have spent time caring about and grieving each of the deceased passengers of the plane. In addition, the focus on protagonist Burroughs reveals a flawed man, a recovering alcoholic and unsuccessful artist, trying to make sense of being thrust into the national spotlight after surviving a suspicious plane crash.

Hawley peppers his novel with lots of red herrings, my favorite being the fact that the flight takes place almost entirely during the longest at-bat in major league history, an epic 16-minute, 22-pitch battle by a fictional Boston Red Sox player. The men on the flight are watching the at-bat, and the investigator mentions that the plane goes down at almost the exact moment the at-bat ends.

And we wonder how they could be related, but, in Before the Fall's nod to some sort of cosmic truths, Hawley is trying to examine how moments impact us in life, how our lives are less chronological and more about the moments that define us. By the end of the novel, we are seeing this more and more, and the flashbacks that have built the novel underscore this idea. I particularly loved a thread that Hawley creates about the late exercise star Jack LaLane, who pops up in two major flashbacks and works as sort of a symbol in the novel.

 Hawley is also trying to work in a media critique with Before the Fall, and there's a thinly disguised Bill O'Reilly character named Bill Cunningham. This critique of our 24-hour news cycle and news channels that seek to create a story rather than report a story works within a larger, more subtle, motif that the novel focuses on as well: of escaping from technology; Burroughs, for example, has no cell phone, and there are interesting riffs on recording human voices. The Cunningham character is boorish and comically unethical, and I enjoyed a final confrontation he has, even if I thought the character itself was a bit on-the-nose to be a totally effective satire.

But as a character study and a whodunit, Before the Fall was a great summer read/listen. Highly recommended!

More Summer of Mark book reviews:

The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir by D. Watkins

Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman

I've also listened to Ghettoside by Jill Leovy, and am immersed in The Turner House by Angela Flourney. They'll be coming shortly!

Now, what's next on Audible? Hmmmmmm.

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/29PtGf8 Book Review: Before the Fall by Noah Hawley - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet