Add This to Your Summer Reading List:

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley

Not a work meaty enough for a book club discussion, this novel works fine as a satisfying summer read.  It gives nothing away to say that in the first few pages of the story, a small chartered plane goes down, killing  9 of the 11 passengers and crew aboard.  A wealthy and powerful CEO of a major news outlet (think FOX) that offers fairly biased commentary, David Bateman, has arranged for the company jet to fly him, his wife Maggie, and their two children (Rachel, 9 and JJ, 4) back from their vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard to New York.  They are accompanied by an Israeli bodyguard who runs the security force that protects the Batemans after Rachel’s kidnapping as a toddler.  The morning of the flight, Maggie runs into Ben and Sarah Kipling, another high-powered couple, also spending their last day at the Vineyard and Maggie impulsively invites them as well as a local artist, Scott Burroughs, with whom she has crossed paths several times, to fly back to the city.  The plane is aloft for only 18 minutes before it plunges into the sea.  Scott, a champion swimmer in his youth (inspired by having seen bodybuilder Jack LaLaine swim across San Francisco Bay pulling a boat), somehow survives the crash and begins swimming.   He hears a cry and, miraculously, the little boy has always survived.  Scott swims with JJ on his back for 8 hours, finally reaching shore.

This is all preface for the real story – or stories.  The book moves back and forth between the aftermath of the crash and the back-stories of all of the people on board, including those of the three crew members.  As investigators try to find remnants of the plane, bodies and the all-important black box, the back stories serve to create possible reasons that someone would want to crash the plane. 

Hawley raises philosophical questions through his main character, Scott, who had taken to painting huge mural –like canvases of disasters (drownings, train collisions, and yes, plane crashes) – prior to the fateful day.  One investigator believes there are no coincidences and pursues Scott as a possible perpetrator of the crash.  Scott himself asks questions about the nature of art:  does it reflect observations of what is already there?  Can art work reflect intention?   Scott has also struggled as an artist, his work not always finding a paying audience.  Does art mean anything if no one wants to look at it?  With the buzz around Scott as the swimmer survivor, his disaster paintings suddenly become worth tens of thousands of dollars.  Hawley invites the reader to think about the nature of celebrity and its largely negative effects.

Bill Cunningham is the smarmy commentator on Bateman’s main news show (Think Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh) and, rather than report the news, he creates a narrative that he thinks people will want to hear.  Willing to illegally bug phones and, in the vein of tabloid photographers, he sends people to follow Scott, whipping up a fairly ridiculous series of news bites that have little to do with reality and more to do with generating ratings and advancing conspiracy theories.  Hawley’s contempt for such people is obvious and the reader feels gleeful when Scott finally admonishes Cunningham with an eloquent speech about truth and privacy.

Throughout, the novel emphasizes both the serendipitous nature of life – e.g. Scott almost missed the plane because the taxi didn’t come – as well as both spontaneous and intentional choices – What does it mean that Scott visits his fellow survivor, JJ? - that have consequences one can’t predict, sometimes like a row of dominoes.  Was it a fluky mechanical error or was something more sinister going on?  Hawley keeps you reading, wondering about the answer to that question until the very last pages when the reason behind the plane crash is revealed.