Falling Man

Whatever clichéd remarks have been slung at New Yorkers for their famous disconnection are dispersed with Don DeLillo’s vision of a different reality. Falling Man is not a harrowing account of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. It is an eloquent and universal imagining of what happens to people after the traumatic event, after the unimaginable. The novel visits the New York bedroom of an estranged couple during the days immediately following Sept. 11. Readers stand alongside nervous survivors at the entrances of subway tunnels and sleep in the crowded apartment of an ambivalent would-be zealot. It’s a quiet novel, but Falling Man’s tiny hostilities are as jolting as the major violence that caused them—like profanities whispered under breath at the dinner table, but heard nonetheless.