A Review of T. J. Newman’s “Falling”
9/11, Part Two?
Imagine the following scenario: You’re the pilot of a commercial plane with almost 150 passengers and crew aboard. You’re flying from Los Angeles to New York when, just moments after takeoff, you get messaged by a stranger who has strapped bombs to your wife, your 10-year-old son, and your 10-month-old daughter. The stranger indicates that he will kill your family unless you crash the plane into a to-be-disclosed target. If you break the rules, namely, by telling anyone this, there will be hell to pay. That’s essentially the set-up for Falling, the debut novel from T. J. Newman, an author who used to work in an indie bookstore, then became a flight attendant for 10 years — so she knows of what she speaks of with this work. However, it took her 42 tries to find an agent for the novel — which she largely worked on when her passengers were asleep during red-eye flights — which may say something of the book’s quality. More on that in a minute. Anyhow, despite her initial setbacks trying to sell this tome, she was probably paid handsomely for it by Simon & Schuster, and the movie rights were sold to Universal Pictures for a cool $1.5 million. So, you’ll probably be seeing Falling in the multiplexes when this pandemic is over.
And I’ll bet that Falling will make a good popcorn movie because it is such a good popcorn book. It reads like a draft of a screenplay, with clumsy flashbacks and a dream sequence that feels out of place to begin the novel (as someone on Goodreads has already noted, the book opens on a scene that would merit an R-rating, when the rest of it is more PG-13-ish, so, yeah, the scene’s out of place). However, having said that, the book is also really, really, really gripping, exciting, and entertaining. After all, how, as a pilot, do you weasel your way out of a terrorist situation when the terrorist is not even on the plane and you have your family to save (or at least make a trade-off with in terms of the lives of the crew and passengers aboard the jet). Still, you can punch holes in the plot, and a major plot point — and I’m trying not to spoil this — is centered around the fact that the pilot himself brings something on board the plane that’s very contraband. Doesn’t airport security check out the pilots, too, and what they’re carrying in their onboard bags?
The reason I’m trying to be careful in what I give away is the fact that, like some other books, this is a novel that’s more enjoyable to read the less you know about it going into it. Granted, once you start reading, it becomes a smidge predictable, but part of the tension of the novel is predicated on the fact that you sort of know that something bad is about to happen in advance of it happening in real-time. The book is like a car wreck you can’t turn away from looking at in some regards. Still, this is about as Hollywood you’re going to get in terms of reading a page-turning thriller, and it is about as enjoyable as Speed meets Snakes on a Plane. Put another way, I simply couldn’t put the book down — but was forced to at points because my eyes would get blurry from all of the reading I was doing on my Kindle. And that’s despite the fact that it’s a relatively short book, too. I’m guessing that, all told, it took about three or four hours to read — or the amount of time it probably takes to fly across the continental U.S.A.
One of the great things about the book is that it feels real. Newman has used her real-life flight attendant training to great advantage (and called in favours from a few pilot friends to vet her manuscript to boot) and uses real-life lingo related to aviation in the book and then only hints at what the terminology might mean. On one hand, it brings credibility to the read. On the other hand, it can be hard at times to figure out what the pictures in your head should look like — but, thankfully, this effect is used rather sparingly, so it doesn’t threaten the entire reading experience. And what else can I tell you about this engrossing and spellbinding book? Well, you can’t think about it too deeply — which makes it a perfect summery novel for the beach. After all, how does the terrorist (or terrorists) decide to pick our target? The hoops to jump through in getting his family taken hostage are many, and Occam’s Razor would say that the hostage-taking would be too complicated to set up in real life. The motivation behind the novel’s terrorism is a bit shaky at best, too. While the backstory is believable to a degree and leads Newman wanting to empathize with the bad guys through her heroes (to make everybody that more human and believable), it also seems like a rather flimsy excuse to go to a lot of trouble to bring a plane down (without knowing that the pilot might choose to not bring the plane down at all). However, all is forgiven when the target of the attack is revealed. I won’t say too much about this, though it’s not the first time that this sort of target has been the basis of a terrorist attack in literature. Still, it’s a bit on the unpredictable side, and you certainly won’t expect it, even if it is foreshadowed in advance at the novel’s beginning.
In any event, read this book. While it could have used another draft or two of polish, it begins to fire on all cylinders once the plot is put into place. And you won’t want to put the novel aside until you find out how the whole thing ends. That’s the best commendation I can give to a book of this ilk. It’s not going to win any awards for stylish writing and is — in fact — a bit on the hokey side in so far as writing craft goes. However, this is a big, loud, pedal to the metal thriller that punches all the right thrill buttons. You can’t want anything more than that from a book like this, which is to say that Falling is a novel that you just might fall for in the end. Warts and all.
T. J. Newman’s Falling will be published by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster on July 6, 2021.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
