Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Summary and Reviews of Falling Sideways by Thomas E. Kennedy

Falling Sideways by Thomas E. Kennedy

Falling Sideways

A Novel (Copenhagen Quartet)

by Thomas E. Kennedy

  • Critics' Consensus (1):
  • Published:
  • Mar 2011, 304 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

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.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"A clever spoof about work and the relationships formed there." - Kirkus Reviews

"...his generational conflicts are familiar and his skein of thin story lines seems like a lot of too little." - Publishers Weekly

"Thomas E. Kennedy is an astonishment." - Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"[Kennedy] is a writer to be reckoned with." - Washington Post

"No one writes about the loves and lives of men better than Kennedy." - Kansas City Star

This information about Falling Sideways was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Thomas E. Kennedy Author Biography

Thomas E. Kennedy's books include novels, story and essay collections, literary criticism, translation, and anthologies. His essays won a National Magazine Award in 2008, and his fiction has been awarded several other prizes. He teaches at the Fairleigh Dickinson University MFA program. Born and raised in New York, Kennedy currently lives in Copenhagen with his two children.

His Copenhagen Quartet comprises four independent novels about the souls and seasons, the light and jazz and serving houses of the Danish capital. The US publisher has chosen to publish these stand-alone books in a different sequence to their publication order in Europe - starting with the third volume in the quartet, Greene's Summer but with a different title; and following with the fourth.

Starting in ...

... Full Biography
Link to Thomas E. Kennedy's Website

Other books by Thomas E. Kennedy at BookBrowse
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more literary fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

They say that in the end truth will triumph, but it's a lie.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.