Library Journal - Audio
03/01/2022
Set in the near future, where children understand that adults have focused on the negatives—money, greed, self-importance, etc.—with disastrous results, Hawley's (Before the Fall) latest is an apocalyptic and provocative glimpse of what could be. The story follows a small group of rebellious young people on a rescue mission after they break out of the Float Anxiety Abatement Center: Simon, trying to recover from his sister Claire's death; The Prophet, who tells Simon about the man they must stop, The Wizard; and Louise, another young person at the Center. Veteran stage actor Shiromi Arserio delivers a solid reading of this story filled with challenging issues; Hawley reads the op-ed-style sections, where the author stops the story to talk directly to the listener. VERDICT This dystopian tale concerns difficult topics, but is full of drama, thrills, and insights, leaving listeners with a sense that change is still possible. Fans of Stephen King's The Stand will enjoy the tale.—Denise Garofalo
Publishers Weekly
★ 11/01/2021
At the start of this grim, thought-provoking near-future thriller from Hawley (Before the Fall), five Wisconsin teenagers die by suicide in less than two weeks, each writing "A11" somewhere near where their bodies are found. The plague spreads nationwide and then internationally, creating a mind-numbing death count. Adults struggle to understand what's happening, some theorizing that the fatalities are a consequence of the Covid pandemic's social isolation. Many fear the suicides represent an "act of collective surrender" presaging the extinction of humanity. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Simon Oliver, who found his older sister dead from overdosing on the opioids their family business manufactured, is told by a fellow resident of the Float Anxiety Abatement Center near Chicago, who calls himself the Prophet, that Oliver is central to establishing a new utopia to be started by children to save the species and the planet. Oliver joins the Prophet and some others in escaping from Float to realize the Prophet's vision. From the ominous sentence that opens the main narrative ("The summer our children began to kill themselves was the hottest in history"), the author creates an all-too-plausible dystopia rendered believable through matter-of-fact prose. Hawley makes this sing by combining the social commentary of a Margaret Atwood novel with the horrors of a Stephen King book. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
"A read-in-one-beach-day kind of book...A true page-turner, BEFORE THE FALL will leave you guessing until the final moments of the crash, and the final pages of the book."—Bustle
Library Journal
08/01/2021
Award-winning screenwriter/director/producer Hawley's recent Before the Fall won lavish love, New York Times best-selling credentials, and both Edgar and ITW thriller honors. So it's no surprise that his new literary thriller is being billed as the first big novel of 2022. With opioid addiction, environmental devastation, and clownface-dabbed vigilantes corroding their surroundings, U.S. teens desperately communicate with memes only they know and understand. Seeking to mend his grief over his sister's death, Simon Oliver attends the Float Anxiety Abatement Center near Chicago, where he meets Louise and The Prophet and joins in their wild-hare quest to free a young woman from a dangerous man called The Wizard. Immediate concerns within an ageless mission-driven, phantasmagorical format.
DECEMBER 2021 - AudioFile
Author and screenwriter Noah Hawley’s latest dystopian thriller, set in the near future, is a gripping yet distressing and profound listening experience. After teen suicide becomes prevalent in the U.S., a group of teens go on a mission to save a destructive and brutal society that is focused on greed and ego. It is divided between The Party of Truth and The Party of Lies. Narrator Shiromi Arserio provides an expressive, youthful, and velvety tone throughout the cryptic plot. Hawley, more stoic in nature, speaks during pivotal moments, providing commentary that evokes an existential response. A rapid plot, dramatic characterizations, and a horrific but believable setting will excite thriller fans and have them questioning where today’s society is headed. D.Z. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2021-10-27
The young heir to a pharmaceutical fortune and his friends band together to bring down an evil billionaire in Hawley’s near-future thriller.
It’s a few years after the Covid-19 pandemic, and things in America have not been going well. Political strife continues to worsen as climate change progresses, and all of a sudden teenagers start dying of suicide in droves. Simon Oliver’s older sister, Claire, was one of these cases, overdosing on the very opioids produced by their family’s company. In the months after Claire’s death, Simon becomes so anxious his parents have him admitted to a high-end mental health facility for the children of the wealthy. There, a mysterious boy who goes by the name the Prophet convinces Simon to escape the hospital with a few other misfits. Louise, one such misfit, tells Simon of “the Wizard,” a Jeffrey Epstein–like figure named E.L. Mobley. Like Epstein, Mobley is notorious for abusing young girls and getting away with it because he has too much money to be held accountable. The Prophet believes Mobley must be brought down, but what can a group of kids do against a vicious billionaire? Hawley is a TV veteran, and he knows how to quickly establish character, maintain pacing, and write excellent action scenes. But this very long book is stuffed with far too many characters, half-developed ideas, and asides from the author that would be more at home in an op-ed than a novel. Almost everyone who's mentioned gets a chapter from their own perspective, resulting in either a promising thread that goes nowhere or a passage that could easily have been skipped without losing anything pertinent to the story.
Simultaneously too much and not enough.
