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The Boy Who Fell Out Of
The Sky
The author loses his brother David when the Pan Am flight 103, he is aboard is blown apart by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1998. David was 25 when he died and "words were his life". All through his life he had chased only one dream, of becoming a great writer. Despite his short life span, he left behind quite a bulk of unfinished stories, journals, letters and ravings, which he hoped would form the content of his ‘great American novel’ one day. But David died with the dream in his eyes. Eight years after his death and still unable to get over the loss, Ken feels he may still be able to save his brother and sets upon a journey to look for him. He could not bring back David to life but he does manage to stitch together his notebooks into the book that David never lived to write. David wrote to Ken in one of his letters: "You are beautiful and your nature is narcotic to me, my time is not ever so blissful as when I am in contact with you. I have absolute trust and belief in you`85 You must realize that what I write to you are love letters." In the process of writing the story of David’s life, Ken lives out David. He excavates the most soul-stirring details of David’s life and pursues the people who had formed a part of his life. In writing this book, he simulates David’s world. "I bought a cup and sat down at a table near the back. I wanted to imagine what David had felt here, sipping coffee and writing clever things in his notebook.." So much so, that he undergoes a serious identity crisis and nearly suffers a nervous breakdown. He even falls in love with David’s lover but his marriage with her flounders because he is unsure if it is him enacting David. The book is not only the story of a young writer’s tragic death but of a tortured artist who could not make his words amount to anything during his life. "Why can’t I just be a writer without shuffling around? `85Goodnight David-Not-The-Writer`85I am falling out of the sky like the space shuttle Challenger, a puff of smoke and I’m gone. I am about to cry, really about to cry`85"And he imagined dying a dramatic death that would ultimately make his unpublished words famous and be a befitting end to a passionate life. Many an aspiring artist may tend to identify with the story of David. It epitomises the struggles of an artist and the conflict between art and reality. David was someone who never compromised. And as the book says "it was best for him to have lived a fast life." The prose is simple and straightforward as if it really was a journalistic writing; true to the journalist-like precision with which the author retraces the steps of David’s life. But the vein of pathos that runs through the writing can be very moving. Anyone in whose life love has been a presence will surely see herself within these pages. Others might find themselves turn into believers in love in the course of this remarkable story. It is a powerful work on the theme of love. It is infrequent that we read about great love which is not between a boy and a girl. Ken’s relentless chasing of his brother even in death is love raised to the level of meditation. Though the book is full of David’s letters to Ken, the one that makes your heart burst is Ken’s letter to David in the end, written 16 years after his death and signed as "Still your brother, Ken". It is normal for living people to love and run after dreams. But for someone to run after a dead person is a love that sets new precedents.
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IF there was ever a story
that proved beyond doubt that death could not do loved ones apart, then
Ken Dornstein’s memoir of his dead brother could well be it. Many
books have been written about the most transcendental of human emotions,
love; but The Boy Who Fell Out Of The Sky talks about love to an
extent when it hurts.