A word on an absolutely astonishing new novel by Don DeLillo, Falling Man. American fiction has struggled to come to terms with the psychological and emotional dislocation caused by the trauma of 9/11. Exploring the tragedy through fiction seemed superfluous, self-indulgent and also largely impossible given how raw the terror continues to feel to this day. Yet DeLillo has written perhaps the first 9/11 novel that has been able to find the words to describe the violence and horror and make some sense of it all. The prose is breathtakingly beautiful in parts as the novel begins in the dust-filled moonscape of Ground Zero and charts the impact of the fall of the towers on the lives of a group of New Yorkers. Is it possible for literature to be cathartic? I don't know. But Falling Man suggests that while buildings fell and lives were shattered, there is something that endures in the human spirit. And American literature is beginning to play its part in exploring the pain and by so doing reducing it.
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