Stylistically, the novel is a success. Its opening scene is frantic—it’s built of short, staccato clauses and is indeed, outside of any historical context, quite harrowing. Chaos has descended; people run in reverse and wear shoes on their hands. Down is up, all is “falling ash and near night.” At the center of this is Keith Neudecker, a 39-year-old lawyer who has just escaped from the towers. Keith observes, somewhat coolly, the madness, while making his way to the apartment of his estranged wife.

Once reunited, the couple progress toward eventual sexual congress, and Keith also falls into a brief affair with a fellow 9/11 survivor named Florence. In both cases, however, the sex is nothing more than an attempt to gain comprehension, and is hardly intimate. Intercourse seems to be the only way two individuals might hope to connect, and DeLillo’s characters engage obligingly, remaining void of all gratification, both sexual and revelatory. In the novel’s most remarkable scene, a gaggle of women test department store mattresses for purchase. They bounce up and down, shedding coats and shoes, their falling bodies evoking both sex and death, a familiar duality in DeLillo’s work. Here again, though, the sex is absurd, ersatz, and partnerless. Not surprisingly, the scene climaxes in impotent, confused violence when Keith starts a fist fight with a stranger.

This fundamental human disconnect is a cornerstone of DeLillo’s fiction, though here the failure to communicate discloses a fundamental shortcoming. Struggling to comprehend the terrorists’ actions, each character speaks of them in muddled, ineffectual generalities, suggesting a lack of understanding on the author’s part. “Those men who did this thing. They’re anti everything we stand for,” Lianne laments. Even Martin, the novel’s would-be sage, offers little real insight. An art dealer with nothing on his walls, he remains mysterious and underdeveloped. His hip nihilism feels reductive, his observations lazy and convenient. “I don’t know this America anymore,” he says before disappearing from the novel (and the country—he sells his New York apartment and retreats to one of his many European residences), “I don’t recognize it. There’s an empty space where America used to be.” It’s not that simple, though—it can’t be—and a reader expects more than this sort of idle observation from someone of DeLillo’s stature.

Possible sources of wisdom abound in the novel, though all ultimately disappoint. While DeLillo often has channeled poignant, adult-like insight through children, Keith and Lianne’s son Justin is nothing more than an amalgamation of strange habits. The most significant of these is his consciously monosyllabic speech, and while this stilted diction works thematically within the novel, it certainly isn’t enough to make for an engaging character. Also frustratingly underdeveloped are DeLillo’s three brief ventures into the terrorists’ lives. He claims to have felt an obligation to include this in the novel, and the scant passages indeed feel obligatory. We’re not sure whether Hammad’s lingering doubt is sincere, or if it’s merely indicative of a refusal on the author’s part to accept that these attacks were carried out with completely clear consciences.

The novel gets its name from a performance artist who begins staging public free-falls shortly after the collapse of the towers. What commentary he hopes to provide beyond simple controversy—which he most definitely stirs—is unclear, though. The man’s use of a safety harness renders his performances all but innocuous; he hides behind a layer of artifice, much like DeLillo uses style to distract from a lack of real wisdom concerning the attacks.

By the end of the novel, Keith has left his wife and son again for the Las Vegas poker circuit. He aims simply “to rake in chips and stack them,” to reverse the towers’ fall, to control fate, to rebuild. Following her mother’s death, Lianne begins to doubt her own physical and spiritual health, and spends her time in doctor’s offices and church pews. In the novel’s chronological conclusion, she accepts Keith’s departure, though her epiphany is abrupt and insincere, comprising a single final sentence. The reader is then thrust back to the towers for a spectacular finale, but is left with no greater understanding of the event.

Given DeLillo’s irrefutable knack for astute, even prognostic cultural insight, Falling Man’s frivolous nihilism is perplexing. Its observations are rich, well-crafted, and evocative, but are accompanied by a complete dearth of interpretation. Perhaps an insufficient amount of time has passed to allow for this insight, though considering this is hardly the first novel to tackle the subject—Updike, Foer, McInerney, and McEwan, among others, have all taken their stab—Falling Man brings surprisingly little to the table.