Earn Before The Fall Rendered By Noah Hawley Exhibited In Booklet

firstpages of this book were FANTASTIC, Seriously thrilling stuff.

But after that great first section, it was a mixed bag,

Before the Fall is the story of a private plane that crashed in the ocean after leaving Martha's Vineyard.
Who was on the plane Why were they there What caused the plane to crash What happens to the survivors

If you ever saw the show "Lost," which also featured a plane crash, the structure of this novel reminded me of those episodes, in that the book jumps back and forth between current events and each character's backstory.
The author, Noah Hawley, also writes for TV, so it's fitting that his novel reminded me of a TV show, At times this technique worked great, and at other times, it was tedious, Hey, that's also true of Lost!

My favorite character in the book was Scott, one of only two people to survive the crash.
That's not a spoiler. You learn this in the first few pages, I loved Scott's backstory about how he became a swimmer, which helped him survive in the ocean, Scott is also a painter, and he was a surprise guest on the plane that day, After the crash, the media decided Scott was suspicious and he was hounded by the press, and also questioned by investigators,

Unfortunately, there were a lot of characters in the book who were unlikeable, including a RogerAilestype TV executive, and a BillO'Reillytype TV host, which was partly why it took me so long to finish this book.
I got stalled because I disliked those characters so much, and their storylines took up a significant chunk of the novel, To be frank, I hatehour news channels, especially ones whose name rhymes with Schmox News, So reading a novel that features huge sections about SchmoxNewsesque figures wasn't fun or delightful it was actually painful, But I have to give some credit to Hawley here, it was so difficult to read those parts because his story rang true.
The plot points in the novel could have come from real life, and that mirror image of our media culture is disturbing,

At this point you might be wondering why I rated this bookstars, considering how frustrated I got with it, Well, the thing is, it's still a good story, and it's a decent thriller, Mostly I enjoyed the book while I was reading, and there was some satisfaction in how the story turned out,

Hawley does have one writing quirk I wish he would fix in future works: often when a character is asked a question, Hawley wrote, "Scott thinks about this.
" Or, "Scott thought about that, " This phrase happened so frequently that I couldn't believe an editor didn't catch it, I listened to most of this book on audio, and that reaction really stood out, Maybe it's not as noticeable in print,

So, bottom line, would you recommend this novel Diane thinks about this, Diane looks at you, wonders if you're a more laidback reader than she is, Finally, she says, "Definitely. "

Favorite Quotes
"Everyone has their path, The choices they've made. How any two people end up in the same place at the same time is a mystery, You get on an elevator with a dozen strangers, You ride a bus, wait in line for the bathroom, It happens every day. To try to predict the places we'll go and the people we'll meet would be pointless, "

"Floating in the North Atlantic, Scott realizes that he has never been more clear about who he is, his purpose, It's so obvious. He was put on this earth to conquer this ocean, to save this boy, "

"It is the job of the human brain to assemble all the input of our world sighs, sounds, smells into a coherent narrative.
This is what memory is, a carefully calibrated story that we make up about our past, But what happens when those details crumble, . . What happens when your life can't be translated into a linear narrative" It's difficult for me to recommend thrillers to nonthriller readers, I grew up reading them and so have a high tolerance for the genre conventions, You know, men named Jack or Tom who will later be played by Denzel Washington or Liam Neeson, Shadowy figures from whichever country your grandpa thinks is sketchy, We need YOU, civilian man with no training, to help us with this investigation, or it will all fall apart, Machine guns referred to by brand, in case you were in the market yourself, A certain number of fridged relatives in order to grease the emotional gears of the plot machinations, Titles like DOUBLECROSSED and DON'T LOOK BACK and MAN ON THE RUN and TRIGGER HAPPY,

Look, I know,

But I think BEFORE THE FALL is a mystery/thriller I can recommend to nonthriller readers, "This," I will tell them, "is a thriller!" Actually I will mean, "This is what I always want thrillers to be, "

The hook is simple: a small plane crashes with two fancy business moguls on it, Also in attendance are their families and a downonhisluck painter, Only the painter and a fouryearold boy survive, The narrative winds back and surges forward in order to examine the events leading up to the crash and the consequences after,

It's fastpaced and tightly plotted, which is always on the menu of Genre Thriller Cafe, But BEFORE THE FALL also has a playful turn of the phrase, a decidedly characterdriven story, and something to say about the media.
It means that while you're devouring this particular menu item, you'll find that you might have to stop to chew, a welcome request in a genre that in both print and film has been overflowing with lumpfree puddings since thes.
I'll be putting this one on the plates of both my thrillerloving friends and those who normally stick with more literary fare,



The main reason I wanted to read this is because Im such a huge fan of the TV show Fargo.
Noah Hawley is the main producer and writer responsible for transforming the great Coen brothers movie into something that has risen to the top of my viewing list even during this Golden Age of Television which has filled so many DVRs.
If you havent seen it yet then watch it right now, Go on. Well wait. Its only two seasons of ten episodes each so it wont take you that long, Then youll be ready to properly appreciate Hawleys talents, All done Good. Lets talk about the book then,

A private plane carrying eleven people crashes in the ocean shortly after takeoff from Marthas Vineyard, A middleaged painter named Scott Burroughs survives the impact and saves both himself and a small boy by making a miraculous swim to shore.
Scott is at first hailed as a hero, but he wants only to be left alone, Since the plane was also carrying a media tycoon who ran a cable news network and a wealthy financial advisor who was about to be indicted for shady dealings there are a lot of questions about why it crashed.
An opinionated bully of a political commentator from the news network uses his show to spin wild conspiracy theories as well as inciting a witch hunt against Scott for having the unmitigated gall to survive while rich and important people died.


Theres two parallel stories going on here, The first is a Bridge of San Luis Rey kind of thing where we follow the lives of the people on the plane as well as others impacted by the crash.
The second involves Scott trying to cope with the crash and its aftermath, Theres also a mystery lurking in the background of what ultimately did happen on board the jet,

A lot of the history and reflections of the characters have to do with wealth, As a person who wasnt rich and was essentially just hitching a ride because of a chance encounter theres an interesting dynamic in that Scott was in this bubble of privilege for only moments before being thrown out of it violently.
His lack of money and yet being with people who had it in that moment where their bank accounts couldnt save them is seen as suspicious.
The lingering presence of wealth hangs over the backgrounds and actions of the other characters, too, Everyone has to come to terms in some way with how money serious money is what makes the world go round.
Heres a bit I particularly liked:

“But money, like gravity, is a force that clumps, drawing in more and more of itself, eventually creating the black hole that we know as wealth.
This is not simply the fault of humans, Ask any dollar bill and it will tell you it prefers the company of hundreds to the company of ones, Better to be a sawbuck in a billionaires account than a dirty single in the torn pocket of an addict, ”

I wasnt entirely happy with the ending which seemed rushed and as if it was kind of what Hawley wished could happen in this situation rather than what actually would.
Still, this was a very well written story with many profound bits of wisdom about life, death, art, money, media, and air travel gone wrong.
Its the same kind of story telling skill hes shown himself to be a master of on Fargo,

I received a free copy of this from NetGalley for review,
A plane crash, eleven on board, only two survive, Scott a painter with a troubled past and the young boy, J, J. that he manages to save, Like when the Malaysia aircraft went down, there is speculation about why, who, Controversial figures were onboard this plane, could they have been targeted Is Scott a hero or villain Either way he has lost his right to privacy.


Not an edge of your seat page turner but rather a behind the scenes look at the talking heads we see on our television screen after every disaster, the role of the media in inflating outrage and conspiracies.
A look at the lives of each of those who were on the plane, The involvement of all the government agencies, search for the debris field, the bodies and the black boxes, Really an in depth look at what goes on after a disaster, very well done, just loved the character of Scott, who tries to put his future in perspective, after the glare of suspicion falls on him, . Jack Lalane plays a small part, he of the fitness craze of years ago and the man who was unknowingly the motivator for Scott's swimming ability.


This book is very well written, constructed well, and holds a fascination for all those who want to know what goes on beyond the public's knowledge.
What happens to those who survive a disaster of this magnitude, how it is to be the last man standing, Enjoyed the slow unraveling where at the end we finally find out exactly what happened,

ARC from Netgalley, “Scott thinks back. The takeoff, the offered glass of wine, Images flash through his mind, an astronauts vertigo, a blare, Metal shrieking. The disorienting whirl. Like a movie negative that has been cut and reassembled at random, It is the job of the human brain to assemble all the input of our world sights, sounds, smells into a coherent narrative.
This is what memory is, a carefully calibrated story that we make up about our past, But what happens when those details crumble Hailstones on a tin roof, Fireflies firing at random. What happens when your life cant be translated into a linear narrative”
Noah Hawley, Before the Fall

The premise is simple: A small private plane, carrying eleven people, crashes into the seas off Marthas Vineyard.
All die, except for two: a struggling artist on the wrong side of forty, and a four yearold boy,

A mystery arises, What caused this plane to crash In order to answer that, a second riddle must be solved: What brought all these people onto this plane in the first place

Also, I should mention: the ocean off of Marthas Vineyard is full of red herrings.


I came to Before the Fall because of Noah Hawley, He is the creator of Fargo on FX, a dazzling show that often gets overlooked in this era of Peak T.
V. When you read the description of this book, about an inexplicable plane crash that focuses intently on the lives of its passengers, you think to yourself, Ive heard this before.
But part of Hawleys genius, as he proves with Fargo, is his ability to take something familiar and make it feel original.


Hawley starts things off by putting us on the plane with a bunch of strangers, people we have not met, but who are in the middle of their lives.
Very quickly, most of them are dead, except for the painter, Scott Burroughs, and the four yearold, JJ, who is the heir to a multimillion dollar fortune.


Scott and JJ are plunged into the Atlantic, where Scott channels his inner Jack LaLanne who is used in cameo to marvelous effect:

Around him the sea is pockmarked and ever changing.
Swimming, he tries not to think about the great tracts of open water, He tries not to picture the depth of the ocean or how the Atlantic in August is the birthplace of massive storm fronts, hurricanes that form in the cold troughs of undersea gorges, weather patterns colliding, temperature and moisture forming huge pockets of low pressure.
Global forces conspiring, barbarian hordes with clubs and war paint who charge shrieking into the fray, and instantly the sky thickens, blackens, an ominous gale of lightning strikes, huge claps of thunder like the screams of battle, and the sea, which moments ago was calm, turns to hell on earth.


Scott swims in the fragile calm, trying to empty his mind,

Something brushes up against his leg

At a certain point, the linear narrative fractures, and Before the Fall presents as a puzzle with many of the pieces withheld.
Playing off one of his themes, the failings of human memory, Hawley gives us a series of fragments, many consisting of wonderful vignettes.
Most of these cutaways are flashbacks to the lives of the people on the plane, and Hawley manages to generate a surreal kind of power in giving the breath of life to men and women he has already killed.


Some of the vignettes are mundane we join one man for a uneventful meal with his mother, while some are extraordinary such as the story of a legendary Israeli security guard, but each is tinged with the resonance of knowing all are doomed.
Death gives even banal occurrences a kind of profundity,

There are also interludes with characters who were not on the plane, These include a rightwing talk show host modeled after Alex Jones an NTSB investigator and the surviving sister of one of the victims.
Frankly, these sections are not nearly as interesting as Hawley intends, The farther Hawley drifts from the plane crash, the novel's animating event, the less necessary certain characters feel,

Before the Fall works best as a character study, Though we are only given flashes and glimpses of the passengers, it is enough to give almost everyone real dimensions, More than that, they are compelling enough to carry their own storylines, even though this is an ensemble piece,

The problem here, if it is a problem, is that Before the Fall also purports to be a thriller.
It teases you with the prospect of a twist ending, As the story progresses, Hawley keeps adding intrigue, reasons that the plane might have been targeted for takedown, More than that, as we cycle through the flashbacks, we start to see connections between all the passengers, and not simply the ones who already know each other.


At this point, the comparison to ABCs Lost become impossible to ignore, Remember Lost I dont blame you if you dont, For three years, it was the best television show on the air, a worldwide phenomenon about plane crash survivors on a strange island.
As the show progresses, a series of flashbacks portended the hand of fate or some other power in bringing those people to the island.
The show thrived on teasing the audience with vague hints and tiny clues, snippets of dialogue, character names, even the titles of books on shelves.
Millions of people theorized, and dissected, and drew elaborate flow charts, In the end, though, the show collapsed in a heap, and all was revealed to be smoke, mirrors, and misdirection, What had felt philosophically deep and thematically reverberating turned out to be as hollow as the Tin Mans chest,

The show tied itself into a Gordian knot, shrugged its shoulders, and reached for the Korin Gyuto,

That sort of happens here,

As I read Before the Fall, I took notes, I kept track of crossing paths, and I tried to divine the outcome.
When I came to the end, I realized it had been a waste of time,

This bothered me for a moment, It might bother you, depending on what you are looking for in this book, If you are seeking a mind blowing Gone Girl kind of finale, you will probably feel cheated,

I actually came into this with tempered expectations, A friend had told me that he found the ending to be a letdown, Thus, before I started, I was prepared for a certain level of discontent, But as I got deeper into Before the Fall, I began to forget about my friends warning, I began to wonder if wed even read the same book,

In the end, his analysis was correct,

And despite my emotional preparation, I felt burned,

But as I prepared to write this review, I quickly flipped through my notes, In doing so, I found

a PostIt stuck to the back cover, I had written it about halfway through Before the Fall, as I was laying on the couch on a blessedlylazy Saturday afternoon.
The message: Remember: As of right now, you are enjoying this,

It was a good reminder,

If Before the Fall didnt quite stick a Kerri Struglike landing, thats okay, I had fun reading this, A lot of fun. This is like a rollercoaster, It doesnt take you anywhere, but its a great ride, .