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    Falling Sideways: A Novel
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    Falling Sideways: A Novel
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    Falling Sideways: A Novel
    Ebook356 pages4 hours

    Falling Sideways: A Novel

    By Thomas E. Kennedy

    2.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    There seems to be no shortage of business at the Tank, a high-profile
    firm in Copenhagen. There are meetings to attend, memos to write,
    colleagues to undermine. But when the Tank's nefarious CEO announces a
    round of downsizing, everyone becomes exponentially more concerned about
    ... whatever it is they're doing. Not since Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End has there been such a savvy satire of contemporary work culture, and the distorting effects it can have on our lives.

    Following
    these imperiled company men and women out into the autumn days and
    nights of Copenhagen, Thomas E. Kennedy traces the ripple effects of the
    news at the Tank as it impacts spouses, children, and lovers. Top
    executive Frederick Breathwaite is frantically trying to ensure a stable
    future for his son, while the boy's greatest fear is that his future
    might resemble his father's absurd present. Harald Jaeger is estranged
    from his wife and daughters but pursuing desperate passions for other
    women (including the Tank's married CFO). And while he's lost in amorous
    fantasies, he has managed to catch the CEO's eye-as a possible
    replacement for Breathwaite.

    Sharp, funny, but remarkably tender, Falling Sideways is the
    second book in Kennedy's virtuoso Copenhagen Quartet, and a book that
    will continue to build his reputation as one of America's most versatile
    literary novelists.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury USA
    Release dateMar 1, 2011
    ISBN9781608194438
    Unavailable
    Falling Sideways: A Novel
    Author

    Thomas E. Kennedy

    Thomas E. Kennedy's many books include novels, story and essay collections, literary criticism, translations and anthologies. He teaches in the MFA programme at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Beneath the Neon Egg is the final book in his Copenhagen Quartet, following In the Company of Angels, Falling Sideways and Kerrigan in Copenhagen. The multiple awards he has received for his writing include an O. Henry Award, two Pushcart Prizes, an American National Magazine Award and many translation grants from the Danish Arts Council. Born and raised in New York, he lives in Copenhagen with his two children. www.copenhagenquartet.com www.thomasekennedy.com

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    Reviews for Falling Sideways

    2.5/5

    52 ratings20 reviews

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    • 1/5
      I received this through the Early Reviewers program. Goodness knows why. Perhaps because the marketers were trying to link it to the success of Then We Came to the End. But this has none of the humor of that book. Instead it's a list of characters defined by their minutely described possessions. And some truly bad prose:"Thumb and finger in the handle holes of the little scissors, reverently recollecting the vision of Janne's perfect, pear-stemmed breasts and shy, bright smile, he inserted the pointy tips of the blades into his nostrils and snipped short the bristling red hairs, trimmed his blond mustache and its architectural extensions to the neat, square beard that framed his square, dimpled chin under the clear expanse beneath his full lower lip."It's a joke. But not the funny kind.
    • 4/5
      A Danish novel that has no connection to Scandinavian Noir or Danish politics a la Borgen. Nevertheless it's very good storytelling with a well drawn list of characters and an astute pictues of modern families, their trials and tribulations. The Copenhagen setting is always present in the background and gives a real sense of place.
    • 3/5
      Couldn't really get into this book. Seemed dry and cold and without a deeper center to hold the interest.
    • 3/5
      At first, it seemed like this was going to be a satire on corporate life and I wondered if I had made a mistake reading this so soon after The Pale King, but it eventually focused in more clearly on two families, one of the CEO of the company and one on an aging executive contemplating the end of many parts of his life. We also spend some time with their children. There is also some time spent with another man, a divorced father still rising in the company. Because we don't know his children or get a real picture of his wife (only his bitter post-divorce view), this part of the story gets less attention and development. The writing is engaging. The characters and situations did draw me in, though few of these people have much happiness and the book and its characters can dwell on mopiness and ugliness, but I didn't find it overwhelming. On criticism I had was with the pacing; the story takes place over a fairly restricted period of time (about a week) and follows multiple plot strands that are interrelated but not all directly leading to each other. If they all started and finished neatly in this time, it would feel very artificial. He doesn't do that, but it's not just a slice of life, random week in their shoes either. It's sometimes an odd balance of how much plot to fit into the space and time and a few times it felt rushed, like relationships were supposed to build or change very quickly. He sometimes spends enough page time developing them, but then you realize a lot of things just happened in only a few hours of clock time.
    • 2/5
      This story of corporate executives facing a round of downsizing didn't work for me. The story shows how the fears and self-doubt the employees feel affect their behaviour and their families. However, the characters are so self-obsessed they left me unsympathetic to thier feelings. Slightly more interesting was the intergenerational differences in definitions of success, but again, the relationship between fathers and sons was one dimensional and the same in all three of the families portrayed. Some variety would have been nice, and could have served to bring out messages about how people deal with adversity.I was mildly disgusted by the characters except for the times I was simply bored by them and the lack of any depth in how they were portrayed.
    • 4/5
      Thomas Kennedy, an American expat living in Denmark, finally sees his acclaimed Copenhagen Quarter begin to appear in print in the US; Falling Sideways being the second so far. Not having read In the Company of Angels yet, I am unable to consider more than this individual title.Essentially a meditation of the definition of success, how to achieve it and how it differs between individuals and generations, the novel examines a week in the lives of a group of corporate executives at a Copenhagen firm experiencing some financial trouble. As the executives plot their next moves, or are gripped by events beyond their control, their families - husbands, wives, children, friends - are equally impacted by the growing maelstrom.Successful businessmen in their own eyes are brought down to earth by cold-blooded executives, humbled by children seen as either churlish or bohemian, doubted by lovers and undermined by colleagues. A generation which defines success purely in materialistic terms is unable to even communicate about future paths towards success with their children who are not slaves to brand names, expensive liquors and worries over real estate prices. In this aspect, I detected a strong influence of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, updated for a new generation. Particularly, the CEO refuses to believe that his son could have no interest in a career that would lead him in the same direction as his father. Naturally, the father will not allow his son to become romantically involved with the au pair who watches the youngest children in the house, as she is of a lower class.Others define success as sexual conquest and there appears to be a John Updike influence here. A teenager is simultaneously obsessed with and frightened by sexual overtures; a seemingly cold, ruthless executive is serviced by a dominatrix; another executive engages in fetishistic behaviors that cost him more than he can afford to pay.Essentially, lies are told to each other and to themselves, all in an attempt to maintain an illusory quality of existence. In the end, the structured world these people have built for themselves crumbles and their dionysian essences are released, for good and bad.Ultimately, Kennedy creates a believable world rooted in office politics and sexual confusion. If you have worked for any length of time in an office setting, you should find something enjoyable here. In addition, he has an ability to paint vivid landscape pictures, essentially surrounding the reader with the sights, sounds and scents of Copenhagen in Autumn. I am looking forward to further volumes in the Quartet.
    • 3/5
      One might call this book instead, "Men Who Spend A Lot of Time Thinking About Their Penises, And Some Women, Who, Unsurprisingly, Also Spend A Lot of Time Thinking About Those Same Penises, Because, Really, What Else Is There to Think About, And Also One Woman Who Does Not Think About Penises Enough But is Instead A Grasping Bourgeois Harpy Who Wrongfully Accuses Her Ex-Husband of Molesting Their Daughters." Also, several characters spend an unnecessary amount of time thinking about poop.The novel spends some time thinking about approaching some interesting points about race and class differences, about generational differences, about fathers and sons, about what a marriage is, but ultimately it walks away from making any real observations and chooses not to give the reader anything to come away with other than the general hatefulness of the men. The book puts the reader in the absurd and really untenable position of being forced to root for two hopeless teenagers who've read too much and not understood enough of it, simply because the adults in the story are so hateful and clueless, except, of course, for the token foreigner, whose otherness allows him to dispense wisdom which is of course lost on the people he dispenses it to. There's nothing wrong with Kennedy's writing, really; his language is vivid, and the interplay between languages in the book is well done. It's the story itself that is miserable, and although I've read "In the Company of Angels" as well, I have difficulty imagining that I'll find the will to read the remaining two books in the Copenhagen Quartet.
    • 2/5
      Books are often described as something one "can't put down." I would describe this book the opposite way--I couldn't wait to put it down. The first portion of the book is taken up with so much description of the characters, the brand names they wear and use, and really minute descriptions of, well, minutiae. Later the reader realizes that this is all in services of showing how screwed they'll be once they're downsized, but by then I didn't care that much about them.The book seemed to be attempting to make several points--about the value of work, about tolerance, about Danish society and American society--but the book is too disjointed for them all to work. Plus, as I mentioned, the beginning of the book so turned me off that I just wanted to get it over with--any redemption, of characters or plot, was moot by the time I turned the last page.
    • 3/5
      Author Thomas Kennedy in his first book, "Falling Sideways: A Novel" attempts a satire based in the workplace. The novel tells the story of Tank, which is the company that characters such as Fredrick Breathwaite, Martin Kampman and Harald Jaeger call their workplace.We have Breathwaite, who is a high-ranking employee of the company, whose only dream and desire in life is to further the future of his son Jes, who happens to want no part of his father's dreams for him. On the other hand, we have Harald Jaeger, who is estranged from his wife and children, but despite his misgivings in his personal and love-life, he seems to be succeeding at Tank. And then, there's the cold, and hard-edged Martin Kampman, the CEO of the company who is down-sizing in order to keep Tank running efficiently.Because it was written as a satire, Kennedy's characters are mostly dark. They are not very personable, and although some narrative comes from their friends and family, the reader rarely makes a connection at an emotional level. On a cerebral level, this book is definitely a cleverly penned novel. Ultimately, this book had a few key high-points, and a few low-points as well. I did enjoy reading it, however, so if you read the synopsis and find it to be to your liking, go for it. For me, it was a good book, highlighting interesting situations in the workplace, but not a memorable book that had characters with which I could connect.
    • 2/5
      After enjoying 'In the Company of Angels,' I had been excited to read another of Kennedy's books, but 'Falling Sideways' was a disappointment. I think I'd need to understand a lot more about Danish culture to appreciate the satire in this approach, which for me just made the characters seem tired and flat. I'm left feeling that something crucial was lost in translation.
    • 2/5
      I received this book through the Early Reviewer program and I tried my best to get into this book, but once again I find that this kind of thing which I think could be classified as a satire is lost on me. I did not like or care much for any of the characters and i think that was partly the point, but it made it difficult to want to invest in the story. I'm sure there is some interesting commentary on the modern work world in here, but it is such an atrocious picture, that it is hard not to just look away. I am sure there are many others who would enjoy this point of view, but it is not for me.
    • 3/5
      Played in Copenhagen, the novel tells about the life of some employees in a firm.Every chapter carries the caracter's name and tell us a lot about his life and how it's affected by work.Among these high class, totally useless characters there is Jalalal-Din, bartender and realistic musilm counterpart of this drama.Very well written, fast-paced and with a good analysis of the characters, this book mocks the Danish high-society, but in a different way than the best Danish writer Peter Hoeg.This novel has more to do with brain problems and gossip papers and sadly describes real life of real people having no real problem but themselves. I found the descriptions irresistible: the colours the scenes the way people behave.
    • 2/5
      Not for me. I love satire but all I could read about was the price of expensive things, and the lack of caring about other people. I tried but I could not stay with this book all the way through. There were no characters that I could remotely care about, could get interested in the story, if there is one. Some people may like this book, but not me.
    • 3/5
      It is autumn in Copenhagen and the Tank, a business enterprise of undisclosed purpose, is in the midst of downsizing. Martin Kampman, the self-absorbed and tyrannical CEO who was hired to oversee the firm’s reorganization, is plotting his strategy even as he tries to control every aspect of his family life. His actions and his duplicity estrange him from his wife Karen and his teenage son Adam. Frederick Breathwaite, an alcoholic, impotent and suicidal senior manager who is laid off from his position, is also estranged from his son Jes, who has turned his back of his father’s traditional dreams for him in order to pursue a more proletarian lifestyle in the employ of Jalal, a philosophizing Afghan shopkeeper who has managed to alienate his own son as well. Harald Jaeger, another mid-level manager of the Tank, is an inveterate womanizer who has been accused of molesting his young daughters by his bitter ex-wife as he begins an affair with Birgitte, a co-worker.So goes the plot of “Falling Sideways,” the second installment of Thomas Kennedy’s Copenhagen Quartet to be published in the United States. If nothing in the preceding summary sounds remotely interesting or engaging, rest assured that it is not. Indeed, following the author’s transcendent “In the Company of Angels,” this novel is something of a disappointment. Although well written—Kennedy really has a wonderful command of language and images—the story is a confusing attempt to blend satire about modern corporate life with a series of archetypal character studies. Unfortunately, nothing here works particularly well; the tale of the Tank feels like it has been told many times before and none of the characters are drawn with sufficient depth and clarity to allow the reader to care about what happens to them. Even Jaeger, who would seem to have the most potential in this regard, is so one-dimensional that is hard to sympathize with his eventual fate.If there is an unlikely hero in this novel, it would have to be the city of Copenhagen itself. Throughout the book, Kennedy goes to great lengths to describe his adopted town in loving, but direct and unvarnished, terms that offer us a virtual road map. For instance: “See the gardens! The parks! All the statues given us by brewer Jacobsen of Carlsberg and the thirsty love of beer! All out to the west side and Frederiksberg and the canals, too, and over the north and south toward the bridge and Amager…Only too late now you see how beautiful this city is, what a privilege to be here, a human city where a human being might choose a human life.” So, along with every else the book is not, it also is a moving paean to a place that, while uniquely Danish, could also be anyone’s home town. That is what finally redeemed an otherwise pedestrian reading experience for me.
    • 4/5
      Falling Sideways is the second book from Thomas E. Kennedy’s Copenhagen Quartet to be published in the U.S., following the publication of In the Company of Angels last year (2010). Falling Sideways was originally published as Danish Fall and was the last book of the Quartet. I’m not sure what the logic is behind publishing the books in the U.S. out of the original order. From what I can tell, the books stand alone in terms of plot, so you don’t lose anything story wise. The books follow the course of the seasons in their original order.Falling Sideways is marketed as a book about office politics, in particular the effects of downsizing, but I think that does the book a huge disservice. It is true that the shady corporation nicknamed the Tank connects all of the characters in one way or another, but that is only the shell of the book. Kennedy is more interested in his characters and their relationships with one another.Martin Kampman, the CEO of the Tank, is an axe-man. He was brought in several years ago and has now gotten to know the operations and the employees enough to determine how to trim the fat, position yes-men, and improve the Tank’s financial standing. Kampman is a ruthless and controlling dictator who repeatedly refers to himself as “the man who takes care of things.” He is a character you love to hate. He prides himself at waking earlier than everyone else, running miles to work, and always being the last to leave. He takes mental notes on everyone’s strengths and weaknesses based on his stringent standards. He is a master of controlling emotions and manipulating people and situations to suit his purposes. However, Kampman’s son Adam suddenly rebels, which challenges Kampman’s sick need for control and changes the entire family.Frederick Breathwaite, an American and the protagonist if one must be named, is the international consultant at the Tank. He loves his wife, his cigars, his expensive whiskey, and his youngest son, Jes. Breathwaite, who has lost most of his passion for life, is a casualty of Kampman’s political maneuvering. He will lose his job, but he wants to set up his son with a career before he goes. Jes, like Adam, can’t relate to anything his father has to offer. Jes works for an Afghan in a key and heel bar and lives the life of a bohemian. Breathwaite’s reflections are my favorites in the book. He describes his son: "He’d dabbled in post-modernism, and he’d dabbled in post-traditionalilsm and in post-colonialism, and he’d dabbled in post-ethnicity and in behavioristic post-ethicism and no doubt in post-postism, too, leading up to pre-sim, retro-ism, which could end only in now-ism, and then on to neo-nowism ad infinitum, until time stops its survey of all the world. As far as Breathwaite could determine, he was a very bright kid with an understanding of everything and a grasp of nothing."Harold Jaegar is the third character the book flows around, but he is in a much more minor role. Jaegar appears to be Kampman’s foil and comic relief. Kampman promotes Jaegar, not realizing the man is nothing like himself. Jaegar reflects on the weekly meetings the department heads have at the Tank, in which everyone mumbles: "Here, thought Jaegar, we speak quietly about important things, though unfortunately not distinctly enough to be understood."Where Kampman must have complete control, Jaegar has no control over his lust for women. He pines after the head of accounting. He relieves himself in the rarely used bathroom. Jaegar realizes his weaknesses and the cost (he has already lost a wealthy wife and his two little girls), but he is helpless to his libido. The result is hilarious and disastrous.The relationships all suffer from lack of communication and the inability of ever really and truly knowing another human being; whether it’s fathers and sons, Mrs. Kampman trying to get behind her husband’s mask, or the head of accounting secretly watching her husband pick his nose. For example, Breathwaite doesn’t tell his wife he is losing his job, and the news is broken to her at a party. They discuss it:“…you lied, Fred. You didn’t tell me. For how long?”“It wasn’t a lie, exactly.”“You can lie by not telling something, too.”“I wanted to spare you.”“You wanted to spare yourself.”The point may be that selfishness- the need for control and respect, the need for love and appreciation, the need for pleasure and satisfaction- is often what gets in the way of our relationships and communication.As part of the Copenhagen Quartet, the book is full of beautiful descriptions of the city in autumn. If you read In the Company of Angels, which takes place in summer, you will recognize many of the same locales through the autumn lens. Another element of the book I enjoyed was the constant references to literature: V.S. Naipaul, Joyce, Kerouac, Rilke, and the list goes on. I think all of these were made by Breathwaite and his son, Jes. Ultimately, of the two books published in the U.S. so far, I enjoyed this one the most.
    • 2/5
      When I started “Falling Sideways” – I thought its would be a book about either office politics or greedy corporate downsizing and the effects on the employees….and I take full responsibility for that mistaken assumption.The book jacket describes this as “empathetic”…but I would characterize it exactly the opposite. I found almost all of the characters to be completely self-centered…and in the words of another reviewer, filled with “egocentric callousness”. There was very little in these characters that I could find either interesting or remarkable. As their deepest thoughts seemed to vacillate between their bowel movements (or lack thereof) and their genitals…I lost interest pretty quickly. Again, this is probably my fault because of unrealistic expectations, but I just didn’t see the point of this story. I did find one shining bit that I did mark as noteworthy.“Breathwaite closed Kampman’s door behind him and moved slowly along the hall, hand in his pocket, stirring the coins there. He remembered then how his own father used to do that and how the sound of dimes and nickels and quarters and fifty-cent pieces clicking against one another had seemed wondrous to him when he was a boy. The wonder of money in the possession of adults.”Very descriptive and evocative – and the one image I will take from this book.
    • 4/5
      In Falling Sideways, it’s never explained what type of business occurs at the Tank, a corporation in Copenhagen. The business doesn’t matter. The effect the corporation has on the lives of its employees does. Martin Kampman is the CEO who has been brought in to get costs under control. Kampman himself is obsessed with control. He practices extreme self-control and wields the same iron hand over his family and employees.Jes Breathwaite, son of long-term - and about to be downsized - Tank employee Frederick Breathwaite, has rejected his father’s efforts to get him into the corporate world. During a student job at the Tank he perceived that “they all just sat in offices sending e-mails to one another or went to meetings where they sat around a table and talked about the e-mails.” Instead, he drinks beer, quotes philosophy, and works for an Afghan refugee in a shoe repair and key-making shop. Adam Kampman, son of Martin, the Tank CEO who is firing Adam’s father, is beginning to reject all his own father stands for. They meet by chance and become friends.Several employees respond to the uncertainty through either scheming, illicit office affairs, or both. Through the fictional firm, Thomas Kennedy exposes the brutal emptiness of modern corporate culture and how it ignores basic human needs. Quoting the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Jes Breathwaite boils it down for Adam Kampman: “To really love is the hardest thing we have to do, and the most important thing.”
    • 3/5
      At the Copenhagen offices of The Tank, the managers are called to a meeting to go over the company's future. Among those in attendance is Martin Kampman, the CEO of The Tank and the man with a reputation for "streamlining" companies. One of the first to fall victim to the new plans for the future is Fred Breathwaite, the only non-Danish employee at the company and the one responsible for all foreign relations, especially with The Tank's counterpart in Dublin. Once he learns his fate, he sets out to engineer a future for his youngest son Jes by getting his replacement to convince Kampman that a good speaker of English is necessary. Jes, however, see things differently and doesn't want to burdened like his father in what he considers a dead-end life of work and nothing but work. As if to show his lack of desire to work in an office, Jes takes a job in a Muslim-owned bar. On the other hand, Fred's replacement -- Harald Jaeger -- is trying to deal with his new job duties while trying to maintain his visitation rights with his daughters and his insatiable yearning for women.For me, too much was going on in the story, too many little side stories trying to weave their way into the main storyline that I never quite grasped what the main storyline was supposed to be. Is this a book about employees dealing with drastic changes at their employer and how those changes affect their everyday lives? Or even how that change affects office politics? Is it about the next generation not wanting to follow along in the footsteps of their parents -- such as with Jes and his father Fred, or other characters (Harald Jaegaer and his son Adam, Jalâl al-Din and his estranged son Zaid)? How about fathers trying to connect with sons? Or simply people trying to connect with others any way they can?I like that each chapter focuses on a specific character, showing events and the mindset of one individual. It offers a great opportunity to get to know the characters, and many times, these chapters could stand on their own as short stories. Such as Chapter 6. "The Mumble Club". During this chapter, the reader witnesses the initial meeting with the CEO that sets things in motion, and all from the perspective of Harald Jaeger. He tries to focus on the content of the meeting, but the little details capture his attention more, like the beautiful Birgitte Sommer, the way the shadows vary his perception of the CEO, what others in the room are doing. It's the perfect picture of a board meeting.Yet even with such chapters, the entire book ends leaving more questions and seems unfinished. Nothing appears to be resolved. I wanted Breathwaite to be more savvy, Jaeger to show a little more backbone, but they sort of fizzled toward the finale. For me, that's an unsatisfying way to leave things.
    • 3/5
      Unlike other reviewers on this site, I found this book to be engaging, entertaining, an easy read, but also a work that had some cultural depth to it. There aren't a lot of quick and easy reads out there which manage to also include existential debates or references from literature, music, religion, and psychology. I thought the end of the book was disappointing because it never provided sufficient closure, but the book was good and thought provoking. While not a masterpiece, it had its moments of intense depth and charm.
    • 2/5
      I got this book through Early Reviewers. I was excited to read something set in a culture that I don't really know - contemporary Denmark/Copenhagen. I have to say that this book really wasn't that great. I found the characters uninteresting and mostly one-dimensional - the women especially seemed to be written as stereotypes. The info about the city itself was interesting - integration of Muslim immigrants into the culture, discussion of a character from Jutland, etc, but this was generally a pretty boring book to me.