“The writing is high-wire-Faulkner gone Fargo – and it is as deeply
moving as it is disturbing, as daring and captivating as it is humane,
and virtually bursting to life on every page. A triumph!”
—Jack Driscoll, author of How Like an Angel
Reviews: The Law of Falling Bodies
A Selection of Blurbs
I read The Law of Falling Bodies late into the night, cover to cover, all
the house lights on, the real “unreal” of where this novel took me refusing,
still, all these weeks later, to let loose of me. This is a powerful, bracingly
gutsy page-turner about war and innocence, and about the ways in which untamable
human desires – and their attendant fantasies – render us both vulnerable
and sometimes agonizingly alone. The writing is high-wire-Faulkner gone Fargo –
and it is as deeply moving as it is disturbing, as daring and captivating as it
is humane, and virtually bursting to life on every page. A triumph!
—From review by Jack Driscoll, author of How Like an Angel
Some of Brenna’s scenes are as delicately detailed as Monet paintings, others
so powerfully sensual you may experience olfactory hallucinations. Early on, one
of his characters says, “Everything adds up to one big true.” The one
big true materializes as Virgil Foggy comes of age in a maelstrom of awakening urges,
family brutalities and mysteries, his big brother’s gut-wrenching letters
from Vietnam, and the rigors of farm life during the sixties.
—From review by Robert Gover, author of The One Hundred Dollar
Misunderstanding
The prose is sweet and rich and sounds like life itself. Virgil Foggy and his family
are of the earth, human stalks bracing the weather of existence, discovering truths
that are at times too much for the heart to bear. The writing is hypnotic narrative
magic, Brenna at his best.
—From review by Greg Herriges, author of JD: A Memoir of a Time and a
Journey
The Law of Falling Bodies demonstrates what we already knew about its author:
Brenna not only entertains and keeps you on the edge of your chair – he is
an artist of the highest order.
—From review by Thomas E. Kennedy, author of The Copenhagen Quartet
Duff Brenna’s The Law of Falling Bodies is an astounding achievement
both in language and insight into the medley of human character. What muscle in
his prose! Brenna seems to exhale on every page. And yet his characters are never
over the top; always unflinchingly believable. This is the kind of novel that has
needed to be written, but had to wait until someone with Brenna’s inventiveness
and power could pull it off. A bravura performance by one of America’s best
talents.
—From review by Michael Lee, Literary Editor of The Cape Cod Voice
and a member of the National Book Critics Circle
On the spectrum between Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Cormac McCarthy’s
The Road lies Duff Brenna’s The Law of Falling Bodies. This
comic novel uses a deep irony and a fine sense of the grotesque to show the home-front
casualties caused when old men send young men off to war. It reminds us that Vietnam
wasn’t an anomaly in our nation’s history, and it reminds us that recovering
from war requires loving the unlovable, doing the unthinkable, and seeing the world
with clear and courageous eyes.
—From review by John Rember, author of Traplines: Coming Home to Sawtooth
Valley
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