Before the Fall

A private plane crashes shortly after taking off from Martha’s Vineyard. Only two of the eleven people on board survive - a child and Scott Burroughs. Scott was flying to New York in the hopes of turning his paintings, an outlet for his personal demons, into a source of income. Instead, he becomes a media-created hero when he saves the four-year-old son of the plane’s owner. The NTSB’s investigator is inclined to believe Scott’s explanation for being a passenger on a mode of transportation clearly outside his financial means and social circle. But there are many factors to consider. The owner of the plane was a controversial public figure, another passenger was potentially involved in international money laundering, and even show more mechanical error cannot be ruled out until the crucial parts of the plane are located.

Meanwhile, Scott desperately avoids the media circus and tries to make sense of his life, the boy who will inherit a fortune is barely coping with the death of his parents and sister, and the cable news network keeps the story alive by floating baseless but sensational accusations.

Author Noah Hawley slowly builds tension by interspersing the fraught aftermath of the crash with back stories of each of the deceased, making the reader more and more certain that the cause of this tragedy started well ‘before the fall’. A captivating, thought-provoking, and emotionally satisfying story ripped from the headlines and explored from all angles. show less

Holy shit, Noah Hawley, where have you been all my life?

This is one of those novels that pisses me off mightily, because I have nothing but both love and jealousy for someone that can build such real characters, so monumentally human and fallible, then take those characters and interlace them like the gears and sprockets of a fine watch, so that each one, through their own actions, push or influence those around them, inevitably driving the story forward, even as we live it out of order.

I got this book quite a while ago, and had it sitting on my TBR list long enough that I'd completely forgotten what originally tweaked my interest in it. Hell, I couldn't even tell you what it was about, aside from falling and waves, based on the cover. show more And, as usual in situations like this, I took no effort to find out. Instead, I just went into the book cold, wide open to anything it could offer.

It offers a lot. Each character is meticulously built right in front of you, and each one is someone you know, or you've heard about in the media.

Ah, then there's the media. Hawley doesn't take a poke at the current state of journalism in America, no he slaps it around and makes it his bitch. And he's spot on. He perfectly executes the media spin, taking two friends to an affair, taking an upcoming arrest and death to conspiracy, taking a crash to a terrorist event.

And, at the heart of it all, he has Scott, the only adult survivour of the crash, who is alternately loved and reviled by different characters.

I can't tell you more than this, but I will say, in a year of some pretty damn good books, this one is top three.

I gotta go find me some more Hawley books. show less

I started reading this anticipating that it would be dark, but within the depths of that darkness there was hope.

This book truly envelops the fact that we can't control all aspects of our lives and people we hardly know can have a long lasting impact. While we may not be able to control that impact we can control whether we fall and stay down or if we stand and preservere.

Every character is developed perfectly and while I thoroughly enjoyed their back story, I was also driven mad by the fact that I just wanted to know what had happened. About half way through the book I thought I had figured out what happened but the story took another twist and with only 40 or 50 pages left I thought I would be left forevering wondering who or what show more was to blame.

Bravo Noah Hawley! show less

Scott Burroughs survives a plane crash, and rescues a little boy. Everybody else in the plane dies. One of the passengers was CEO of a TV news channel, and in the aftermath of the crash, a news anchor goes all out to spin the story into an hysterical and squalid epic. As the survivors struggle with their shattered lives, the lives of the victims are described, and the crash is investigated. What was the cause? Was it an accident or and act of terrorism or something else?

A brilliant, meaty, chunky, intellectual, heart-filled, character-driven novel, as much about the differences between the people who grow and mature and people whose development seems stunted and the damage they inflict in their heedless narcissism as it is about who show more done it and why. It's also about lots of other things, including art and entertainment, money and morality, class and family. It's a incredibly satisfying read. show less

The author of this novel is the Emmy, PEN, Peabody, Critics' Choice, and Golden Globe Award-winning creator of the TV show “Fargo." This story is a thriller-ish mystery but also a very clever political and social commentary.

The story begins with the crash of a private plane returning to New York City from Martha’s Vineyard. The plane was carrying eleven people, including a couple of very important figures. One was David Bateman, the founder of fictional ALC News (written to sound a lot like Fox News), the number one cable news network in the country. Another was Ben Kipling, who was about to be indicted by the SEC for laundering billions of dollars for countries that sponsored terrorism, such as North Korea and Yemen.

Miraculously, show more there are two survivors of the crash. Scott Burroughs, 47, a not-very-successful artist and a former member of his high school and college swim teams, swam for eight hours through the darkness in the Atlantic with a dislocated shoulder and with Bateman's son, four-year-old JJ, on his back. Scott had been invited on the plane by Maggie Bateman, who got to know him at the local Farmer’s Market.

The story of the downed plane is reported by the ALC network’s Bill Cunningham, a Rush Limbaugh type of media figure who cares more for sensationalism than the facts, and who has decided that it is suspicious that this nobody, Scott, was on the plane, and moreover, survived the crash. He declares that “no one on earth can convince me there wasn’t some kind of foul play involved.” ALC ratings soar.

David’s network had become so successful because he realized that “. . . people didn’t want just information. They wanted to know what it meant. They wanted perspective. They needed something to react against.”

Cunningham was the perfect spokesman for this “club of the like-minded”:

"Cunningham was David’s gift to the world, the angry white man people invited into their living rooms to call bullshit at the world . . . who told us what we wanted to hear, which was that the reason we were losing out in life was not that we were losers, but that someone was reaching into our pockets, our companies, our country and taking what was rightfully ours.

. . .

. . . [He appealed to] the people who had been searching their whole lives for someone to say out loud what they’d always felt in their hearts.”

Cunningham digs deeper into the life of Scott Burroughs, using a hacker to help him find Burroughs and monitor his activities, which Cunningham then announces to the world via his broadcasts.

Scott largely ignores the media mania; he is busy trying to process what happened to him and why he survived. He worries about the boy, JJ, whom he saved, and he struggles - along with the government officials who question him - to remember what happened on that plane before it went down. Scott insists he is not special, but understands that people need heroes and “to believe that magic is still possible.” Nevertheless, he has a hard time facing what his life has become.

As the chapters unfold from different points of view, we get ever closer to finding out what happened on that plane. Still, the ending is a stunner.

Discussion: The author turns his sharp wit to pillorying the media’s fixation with sensation; it’s tendency to make too much out of too little and sometimes ruin lives in the process; the willingness of some people to latch onto those who voice aloud what they don’t have the nerve to say because it would expose their prejudices and vindictiveness; and the ways that money and greed drive so much of what happens and what is valued in America.

But the author does all this without a bit of didactism. Rather, he has deftly fashioned a plot that explores simultaneously the farcical hold over Americans of a sensationalist media [its extension into the realm of politics comes to mind] and the impersonal cruelty of disasters, whether caused by Mother Nature or human nature, that can change or end one’s life in an instant.

Evaluation: This book held my attention the whole way through, and raised an incredible amount of issues that could similarly engage book clubs. It is deliciously wicked but with a surprising tenderness and compassion for the human condition. A great read!

Note: Sony Pictures has acquired the rights to the story. show less

As we are getting close to the end of the year, I tend to compare books I am reading to the others I have read this past year. This particular book was a standout. The plot is engaging, and the characters are not only believable but I can relate to many of their concerns about life and the struggle to overcome tragedy. The main character, Scott, boards a private plane just by chance and all the passengers die within 20 minutes of the plane taking off. The rest of the book covers the lives of each character, the main characters reflection on his own struggles, and the way that outsiders react to tragedies -- which can range from just inappropriate to down right hateful. Having survived a tragedy myself, this was the part of the book I show more could relate to the most. Fortunately, Scott knows that the point of life is surviving the challenges the face, and the author states "This was the hubris of mankind, to rally in the face of overwhelming odds, to thread the needle and climb the mountain and survive the storm." The book reminds me of several other books I have read where all the passengers die such as The Perfect Storm or Salt to the Sea. You can attached to the characters, but you dread the ending because you know how futile all their actions become. show less

Never seen so many freebie reviews on LT! Heavy marketing campaign.

Easy read, like one of Kate Atkinson’s character-driven crime books, with echoes of Bridge of San Luis Rey, which I should re-read.

Secondary theme, echoing Wilder: individuality of every person victimized in a catastrophe, irrespective of moral standing. Will the movie go Medieval and do close-ups of the bloated and mutilated bodies found trapped in the plane’s fuselage?

Primary theme: Although Bill Cunningham is ostensibly a caricature of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, his role is closer to CNN/HLN’s former personality Nancy Grace, so Hawley isn’t really stabbing his Fox employers in the back. Bill/Nancy is a fun-house reflection of the constant reader of show more mysteries, lured on by the need to find out what “really happened.”

What really happened : How does Scott Burroughs, at the climax of the Bill Cunningham interview, know what happened in the last seconds before the crash? Did he suddenly recall under the stress of the moment? Did he hear voices from NTSB in his head? Answer: the need for a climax in the story (just punishment for the truth seeking/creating Bill C./Nancy G./reader surrogate) causes a momentary collapse of Scott’s wish fulfillment reverie, itself an attempt to make sense of an inexplicable catastrophe. As many have noted, the ending of BtF is rather abrupt. This is because there is in fact a MISSING CHAPTER. In the reverie, Scott, with a dislocated shoulder, swims impossible miles in freezing water & saves a 4 yr old boy, is too modest to recognize himself as a HERO (damn, he even has a 3-legged dog!), rejects the promiscuous billionaire after painting a masterpiece on her sterile white modernist apartment wall – me, I would be pissed -- rejects her for the good sister Eleanor (subbing for his drowned sister), replacing the feckless Doug – an amusing goof reminiscent of supporting characters in The Sopranos – and becomes the true stepfather of the rescued JJ heir to $100 million – while all the greedy thoughts are sloughed off on the artisanal beer loving bro bad stepfather. But then the need for a climax of the interview with Bill Cunningham creates a rupture in the reverie’s suspension of time. The reverie – stimulated by childhood memories of Jake LaLanne and the paintings Scott has been creating to revitalize his failing career and make sense of (or exploit) his sister’s drowning —the reverie is falling apart, and Scott then returns to reality, finding himself again in the cold waters of Long Island Sound, with JJ on his back already dead of hypothermia, just before a black wave covers him for the last time. But then Hawley or his editor realizes he may be re-writing an Ambrose Bierce story familiar to high school required reading, and so the last chapter is cut. Bill Cunningham was right; Scott was responsible for manipulating the story – in his dying mind.

Possible sequel: Gil Baruch, the missing 3 days. Kudos to the reader who noticed that Baruch’s obit. has him dying Aug. 26, while all the other victims died Aug. 23. Or is it a religious custom to add a few days for persons lost at sea? show less