Review: Before the Fall

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

If you went into this book thinking that just because it comes from the creator and head writer of Fargo, it would be something in the same mold...you'd be dead wrong.

That's probably my biggest disappointment, the fact that Before The Fall lacks the larger-than-life, philosophically waxy, creepy delights of the FX anthology series - or the classic 1996 film it's based on. In its place, Hawley instead serves up a platter full of loathsome rich people, mostly indistinguishable aside from the fact that some (mostly those who don't die in the plane crash) are more disgusting and detestable than others. He kills off most of them, except for the little kid of one couple, and an artist who happens to catch the same private plane. These two are easily the most likable in the cast (well, one's a kid, what'd you expect?), but if we're supposed to spend the next 350 pages or so trying to get to the bottom of how and why the plane crashed...

Sorry, Hawley, but I couldn't invest in this story. Well, there's always the next season of Fargo.

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