London Falling
Introducing your next non fiction read! London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
Reviewed by Isabella.
“‘London Falling’, Patrick Radden Keefe’s formidable narrative non fiction account of a young man’s deadly fall from a luxury building in London and the weeks, months and years that lead up to what can only be described as a tragedy is a work of investigative journalism that will keep you turning the pages well into these balmy summer nights.
Zac Brettler is a young man at boarding school when he becomes obsessed with wealth and privilege to a degree that he creates an entirely new and fictional persona for himself. As a ‘son of a Russian oligarch’ he moves into a world of deceit, crime, unbridled wealth and power - a world that is, it turns out, way beyond his control.
But ‘London Falling’ is much more than a straightforward account of a young man’s fateful decision to fly ‘too close to the sun’. It is also a deep dive into Zac’s life story, that of his parents and of his grandfathers’, both of whom arrived in England as survivors of the Holocaust.
This is in many ways a classic story of gangsters and confidence men, but it is also the story of the lies people tell - those told deliberately and the ones fallen into by coincidence - to create the lives they long for, the circumstances they envy, and in particular the societies we create and/or allow to be created which in turn enable deception and corruption at an almost unfathomable level.
The book is full of fascinating twists and turns, and one particularly enjoyable aspect is how Radden Keefe intertwines the story of Zac Brettler with the history of the city of London, showing how the city has changed over past centuries, with increasing inequality, warped by money and the power and (sometimes criminal) privilege it buys.
These many facets of the story make for a fascinating puzzle, and with each piece we come closer to a full(er) picture of a city, a culture, a tragic death, and a grieving family.”
Happy Reading!