Falling Man: A Novel by Don DeLillo

Delillo explores the open wound left by the events of September 11. His prose is raw, stripped down to the bone. Reading "Falling Man", one is carried along on a slow drift through the ashes and the aftermath. On a personal level, I was pre-numbed by my father's terminal brain tumor when the events of September 11 occurred; in clinical terms I was already experiencing isolation of affect, and September 11 just became an echo of the suffering which my psyche was doing its best to keep at bay. "Falling Man" enabled me to at last engage with September 11 in a meaningful way. Delillo shows us how, after an event such as September 11, the strangest thing is the slow creep back to everyday routines and relationships, a strangeness that resembles a constant droning background noise that you can always almost hear.