The Book Everyone Should Read

Holidays are just around the corner so I thought I would recommend a good book for you to read in case you found yourself lying idle over the coming months. I normally recommend motivational books and the biographies of successful people to gear you towards reaching your goals. The book I’m going to recommend today is a work of fiction, but it is still highly motivational and conveys beautifully a key message of success: If you believe in yourself you are capable of anything!

The novel I’m recommending is Before the Fall by Noah Hawkley. It is a rollicking good read and in many ways reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. It is the story of an aeroplane crash and the only adult survivor, Scott Burroughs, who finds himself injured in the ocean, miles from anywhere. The only other survivor of the accident is a four-year-old boy. Scott embarks on an epic swim, towing the child behind him on a floatation device.

A story of will power and determination

I really like how the author, Noah Hawley, writes about will power and determination. The hero, Scott, swimming in the inky black Atlantic, remembers (as a child) seeing a stunt man perform an incredible feat – he swum handcuffed, towing a boat. This is what prompted Scott to learn to swim long-distance, hence he is equipped to swim the Atlantic in the dead of night, and more importantly believes he can do the distance – it is his childhood memories of the muscle man that drive him on.

These are some awesome description of the stunt man:

• His discipline transcended age. He was a tool constructed to complete a task, an overcoming machine.
• Looking at himself in the mirror, he didn’t see a mortal man. He saw a being of pure energy.
• In his mind there was no boat. There was no current. There were no sharks. There was only his will. ‘Ask the guys who are doing serious triathlons,’ he would later say, ‘if there are any limits to what can be done. The limit is right here in your head. You’ve got to get physically fit between the ears. Muscles don’t know anything. They have to be taught.”

You’ve got to get physically fit between the ears

I love this writing – “You’ve got to get physically fit between the ears”! The author is Noah Hawkley, who once described his career as a twenty-year overnight success story. After he graduated from university in 1989, he tried to become a rock musician, but he likes to go to bed at around 6pm so that plan didn’t work out! He then moved to San Francisco and wrote two novels, but couldn’t find a publisher for either. Next he moved to LA and did crack a job writing on the Fox drama, “Bones”.

After he got into television he created a show, “The Unusuals” but it was canned after one season. He then produced “My Generation”, a story about a group of teenagers and their lives ten years after graduation but the president of the network resigned a week before the show should have gone to air and it was also cancelled. At this point you could have understood if Hawkley had walked away from TV but he didn’t.

Hawkley is now a big player in Hollywood

His next project was producing a TV series based on the Coen brother’s film “Fargo”. That of course has gone on to be a huge worldwide hit, winning both an Emmy and a Golden Globe. Hawkley has now managed to get five of his novels published: A Conspiracy of Tall Men, Other People's Weddings, The Punch, The Good Father and Before the Fall. The film rights for Before the Film have been bought by Sony and I think they are turning it into a movie next year. Hawkley, now 50, is now a big player in Hollywood, but his success didn’t come easy. He had to work for it. He was 40 when he finally had a hit with “Fargo”.

There is a lovely section of the novel when the key character, Scott, realises he has made a mess of his life and decides to change course:

He woke up one day and found he was a forty-year-old man with twenty years of booze and debauchery ballooning his middle and weathering his face … He had been young once and limitless, and then somehow his life became a foregone conclusion. An almost was, not even a has been.

But instead of giving up the character Scott starts swimming 5km a day and cleans up his diet. He also devotes himself to his work and it pays off. I’m sure that there are aspects of Noah Hawkley in his main character of Before the Fall.

Anything is possible, everything is gettable

Before the Fall is a story about defying the odds. It is also a story of survival. The main character, Scott, not only has to survive being lost in the ocean, he also had to survive being lost in life – he stopped believing in himself and lived a debauched life. It is a terrible thing, losing faith in yourself and your beliefs, having nothing to aim for and just drifting aimlessly. But Scott turned his life around and began producing remarkable art work. Scott learns a crucial lesson: “Anything is possible, everything is gettable. You just have to want it badly enough”.

As I’ve said this is a wonderful read during the holidays. It has a great cast of characters and some very authentic villains. There is a ghastly tabloid TV journalist who peddles filth, a corrupt investment banker, and the billionaire heiress daughter of an online hi-tech pioneer. The novel is set around New York and Martha’s Vineyard. You can see that Hawkley was inspired by the search for John Kennedy Junior’s plane and also the New Corporation phone hacking scandal. Before the Fall won the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Novel Selected by The Sunday Times as a top summer page-turner.

The novel imparts a valuable lesson

Yes, this book is a fantastic read, but it also does a great job imparting a valuable lesson. When Scott has to hand the four-year-old boy he rescued after the plane crash his parting words are “Never give up!”

Isn’t that the ultimate lesson we all need to learn?