Before The Fall is a book that has made it onto Ryan Tubridy’s reading list and into his heart this summer and on The Ryan Tubridy Show, he was joined by its author Noah Hawley to talk about why you should wait until you’re on terra firma before diving in. Noah says:
"The disclaimer would be helpful – not to read it on an airplane – but a surprising number of people do and they live to tell the tale!"
You can probably guess the subject matter from the above quote, suffice it to say it’s a high-flying whodunnit that was named one of the top page turners of the summer by The Sunday Times and won the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Novel. The novel careens towards the catching of a culprit, but Ryan’s curious to know if Noah was always aware of who his villain was.
"I knew pretty early, probably within the first 100 or 150 pages. I knew that if a reader was going to invest all their time into a mystery like this, they didn’t want it to be a faulty valve or a mechanical failure, but I wanted it to be a human solution as opposed to some overarching conspiracy which can be very impersonal. It starts out talking about how none of us can really predict where we’re going be or who we’re going to be with. You get on an elevator or on a bus and maybe you’re a few minutes late today or a few minutes early. There’s a randomness to life, and I wanted that to be a part of the story."
This is a mentality that he brings strongly to his writing work on the hit TV series Fargo, based on the Coen brothers' cult film by the same name.
"Part of its success is that it’s unpredictable and that we do plot it in some ways in a truth-y manner. Our twists are not necessarily movie twists and there’s a certain element of randomess to it…. We’re so trained that the guy with the white hat is going to face off against the guy with the black hat in the town square at noon, and we rarely get that in Fargo because that’s not how real life works… I think there’s something really exciting and nerve-wracking about that."
As a writer, Noah is used to the nerve-wracking, white-knuckle ride that an artistic life can bring.
"You have this freelance mentality which is, you’re working now, but tomorrow you might have nothing, so when opportunities come your way, you say yes to everything so that your children will eat and you’ll have a roof over your head. It took me a long time after Fargo to realise that because of the success of that show, I didn’t have to worry about that… You have to prepare yourself for success as much as you prepare for failure."
Noah has certainly tasted success, but where is it all going?
"I like the image, to bring it back to the Coen brothers, at the end of Raising Arizona, of sitting at a table next to my wife as an old man surrounded by my children and grandchildren…Those are things you make, a family, that is your real legacy, and I hope to really enjoy that for a long time."
Listen to the interview with Noah Hawley in full here.
