Falling

This review contains spoilers.

Falling is a shallow thriller that heavily relies on overused tropes and stereotypes to tell a by-the-books story of a plane being hijacked by terrorists: full of one-note characters and predictable twists, the novel is also marred by a strong reluctance to delve into its own themes.

The book opens with a shocking scene full of death, dismemberment, and despair. “WHEN THE SHOE DROPPED INTO her lap the foot was still in it,” it starts. At first, it seems to be an in medias res opening, as it shows a plane whose side has been blown up, its passengers dead or heavily hurt. A woman believes her husband was shot by someone, but the narrator remarks, “They weren’t bullets. They were rivets from the plane.” But we soon discover that the man observing all this carnage in a state of shock is actually the plane’s pilot, Bill Hoffman. He runs to the cabin to try to save what is left of the plane… and sees his family in the co-pilot’s seat, which is the novel’s first major twist: the whole scene has just been a nightmare, so Bill wakes up safe and sound at home and no one is harmed or dead.

It’s a strange opening because it promises a kind of bold, tragic narrative that Falling simply isn’t interested in delivering. This is not the sort of story where innocent civilians die, with displays of raw violence, but one where good, patriotic Americans get a chance to act heroic and save the day.

The first chapters try to present Bill’s main arc: he’s a man divided between work and family, seemingly both unable and unwilling to reconcile both parts of his life.  A great early passage shows how he’s a man that refers to his son by the boy’s name and refers to his plane as “his baby”. In a battle between work and family, for Bill the winner seems clear:

“So when your boss says the operation needs you? You say yes. No isn’t even an option. He had told Carrie as much. But he didn’t tell her that Scott’s game hadn’t crossed his mind when O’Malley asked if he was available. Or that even if it had, it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

The villain of the story will tap into this arc in a very unsubtle manner. Sam, as he likes to call himself, kidnaps Bill’s family and tells him he must choose between work and family: he must either crash the plane or watch his family be murdered on video. It’s curious how the narrative never delves into how crashing the plane means suicide for Bill, the framing is around his duty as a pilot alone, and how this would betray everything his job stands for.

Bill, of course, decides he’s not going to cooperate. He refuses to make a choice and keeps repeating that he will not crash the plane and that his family will not die, as if he’s the living embodiment of the “The United States doesn’t negotiate with terrorists” motto.  This unwavering position, however, doesn’t get him into too much trouble. Even though Sam reiterates it’s all about Bill’s choice, Bill’s choice doesn’t have consequences:

“All I want is to see what a good man — a good American man — does when he’s in a no-win situation. What does a man like you do when he has to choose. A plane full of strangers? Or your family? See, Bill, it really is about the choice. You. Choosing who will survive. That is what I want.”

The problem is that the villains are not exactly ruthless in their resolve and – even worse – sometimes they are even textbook stupid, falling to the “I need to pee” act and giving too many second chances to Bill and his wife Carrie, ignoring what are clearly coded messages between them, and flat-out refusing to punish Bill’s family when they or Bill misbehave. In one scene, Sam pretends to burn Carrie’s hand in front of the camera to make sure Bill complies, but it’s all just an act. One could argue that this gives the villains a more nuanced development, showing that they are not pure evil, but this is a book where the very same terrorist exclaims “God, this is fun,” as he tortures Bill psychologically and commands him to kill every passenger in the plane.

An early twist reveals that Sam’s name is actually Saman, and it’s simply bizarre how a book about a terrorist hijacking a plane in the United States treats the Middle-Eastern origin of the terrorist as a twist, as if it were unaware it is falling (sue me) into the most basic stereotype. Sam is Kurdish, a man without a nation, who blames the US for his hometown’s purge by Turkish forces. He wants to punish the US for the death of his loved ones and, at the same time, make Americans care about the plight of his people – he’s mostly pissed off that they don’t even know who the Kurdish are, and so are totally unaware how their political decisions directly impact Kurdish lives. And, for some reason, crashing a plane seems to be the way Sam believes he’s going to accomplish both goals.

One of the main problems of Falling is that, for a book where a major character preaches about political awareness, it is utterly and bizarrely uninterested in politics. Take Sam’s motivation: he blames the political decision that allowed his home to be destroyed but never questions why it was made – how and if the United States profited from it, both economically and politically. The novel isn’t interested in these questions, so Sam’s speeches ring hollow, never really selling how Bill’s country – and especially how Bill’s lifestyle – is directly linked to the exploitation of people in the Middle East.

When Sam blames Americans for not caring for the Kurds, he also gives an easy way out to the protagonist. Bill simply says he’ll educate himself and this is it. The ending indeed shows the pilot, safely at home, reading about the horrific acts of… Saddam Hussein, as if this would help with anything. The narrative even relieves the protagonist from responsibility here, as Carrie tells Bill he can’t fix things by just reading, but framing it as something akin to “there’s really nothing we can do about these things, so we must just be aware that people in the Middle-East suffer and feel sorry about them.”

The book ends with Bill happily reunited with his unscathed family at a new, temporary home, which means the only lasting consequence of the whole story besides a gun wound that will take some months to heal is that, since his last house blew up, Bill has to pay rent now. This is a book where the good guys – the proud, patriotic Americans – win the day, while the villains – the hurtful Kurdish people – die. The plane is hijacked, its pilot is shot and nothing less than two poison canisters are thrown at the passengers, but the only fatalities are the Kurds and an unlucky politician who was near Bill’s house when it blew up.

There’s a scene in the climax about a baseball game that is so absurd it almost works as self-parody. To extend the suspense of what will happen with the wounded Bill – will he be able to land the plane safely? Spoilers: he will – the narrative shifts the focus to the people at a stadium during a baseball game. They are notified that they are the terrorist’s target and the plane is just minutes away from the stadium, but instead of evacuating the place, the players decide to continue the game while Frank Sinatra plays on the speakers. While the Kurds despaired at their situation and decided to commit a terrorist act, Americans are shown to be resolute when faced with death, they keep doing their jobs and proudly performing their roles in society. “See, that’s where these guys miscalculated. They misunderstood duty,” Carrie explains to everyone Saman’s mistake.

Bill is not the only hero of the story, though, as Jo, his flight attendant, is even more badass, managing to contain the damage from the two poison canisters thrown in the plane using only utensils found onboard. And she does this while also maintaining order when dealing with panicked passengers.

Structurally, Falling is the classic modern Dan Brown style of thriller. Chapters are short and simple, ending in cliffhangers designed to keep the reader glued to the pages, postponing the resolution to the rising action. One chapter ends with an FBI agent running to intercept a man handing flyers before the guy knocks on Hoffman’s door, where Carrie is being kept prisoner. Will the FBI’s cover be blown by the guy or not? We must discover somewhere in the next chapter – “somewhere” because the next one doesn’t continue the action right away; it changes its point of view to tease us and prolong the suspense.

Falling, then, fails not only to develop its themes but also to bring anything new to the table: it’s just one more generic thriller about hijacked planes, full of familiar story bits and characters.

June 08, 2023.