Noah Hawley's Novel "Before the Fall" : Review

 

 Before the Fall is a novel written by Noah Hawley in 2016.  You may have heard of Hawley, mainly through television. He’s been as showrunner for FX Productions, best known for Fargo, but also wrote the scripts for other productions.  He’s won literary awards and accolades from the publishing set.   ?’ 

Okay so while I had trouble in the beginning of the novel I found it interesting anyway.  The author makes use of typical American TV cultural memes to keep the pot boiling. It makes for an entertaining read.

What gave me trouble in the beginning was that it required a great deal effort to accept the novel’s basic premise — that hero-protagonist Scott Boroughs swam to shore from   a plane crash  about ten miles out from Martha’s vineyard with a four-year-old on his back.    The indelible bond between the four-year-old child and the man, an aspiring but failed artist,  figures in later plot developments. 

    Hawley goes a long way and does much research in order to convince you  as to how the Great Swim occurred.  (Hint: It has to do with a once well-known body-builder/health-nut character named Jack LaLanne.) That was a tale in and of itself,  

I had already made the leap because what’s wrong with bypassing a device or two if awork is entertaining and you feel like reading? .   

Jacket blurb has it right that this is a character driven novel.  Character is one of the novel’s strengths, not only with reference to hero Scott, but with several of the other characters like the flight attendant, the crash investigators, the pilot, the co-pilot. . .    

I liked what I learned of private airlines and the way they operate.  This was well researched, I thought.   Once I got over the   hurdle that the MC would swim all that way, I began to enjoy the plot development. There was a certain consonance in events which gave the rest of it a strong sense of reality.    

While the story gets bogged down and fat in the middle as many novels do, the author generally keeps the action flowing at a high level.  This is one of the writer’s earlier novels.  I’d pick up another one if it so happens.