The Sound of Things Falling

by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

I have heard a lot of praise for this author so was looking forward to reading this book.

The story is about a lawyer who  likes to play pool. The main character enjoys playing pool with one particular man.  It is suggested that this man had only recently been released from prison, but the law doesn't really do anything to ask the man to reveal anything about his past. They become casual friends.  The man tells him that he was estranged from his wife but that she is coming to see him.  He hopes they will be able to reconcile.

Then, one day the man shows him a cassettte tape and asks where he can play it.  The lawyer takes him to a place where he can use a cassette player.  The lawyer watches as the man is listening to the cassette and sees that he is crying.  He averts his gaze so as to not embarass the man, but when he looks for him again the man is gone.  The lawyer rushes out onto the street and eventually catches up with the man.  As he does a motorcycle starts up on the street and zooms past them shooting at the lawyer's friend.  The friend is killed and the lawyer is badly wounded.

The lawyer is devastated by the attack.  He takes a long time to recover. He seems to be suffering from post traumatic stress.  He wants to know why this has happened to him, and to his friend.   What did the man do to get people to murder him?

The man has an affair with one of his students/former students.  She becomes pregnant and they start living together.  When the child is born the man loves his child but his wife is frustrated by his inability to let go of the attack.

The lawyer finds out that the dead man was flying drugs and got caught, that is why he was imprisoned.  His wife was an American Girl who had come to the country to do U.S. Government aid work and had decided to stay.   The man was brought into the drug trade by one of the woman's Amerian colleagues.

He then learns that the man's wife was killed in a plane crash on the way to visit him.  The cassette the dead man was listening to was the cockpit record from the plane crash that killed his wife.

The lawyer travels out into the country to meet the daughter of the dead man.  She is living on land that her father had bought with money from his drug running.  She tells him that her mother had told her that her father was dead.  The man is so enthralled with her story that he doesn't bother to tell his wife where he is or for how long.  He eventually calls his wife and she is furious that he has not thought to call her.  She has been worried about him.  The man doesn't really apologize. When he returns home he finds his wife and child gone.

From the many positive comments I had heard about this author I had expected the book to be great, but I have to say I was disappointed.  It seemed to be much ado about nothing.  I have never been a victim of a random attack, so I don't know how I would react.  However, it just seemed that this character's reaction was way beyond normal.  Many people have tragic things happen to them and seem to be able to pick themselves up and carry on eventually.  I just couldn't accept the lawyer's inability to recover and his obsession with the dead man and his story.  He seemed somewhat of a character from a Dostoevsky story. - author of his own demise through obessions/inaction.