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Fall of Frost
In his most recent novel, I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company, Brian Hall won acclaim for the way he used the intimate, revelatory voice of fiction to capture the half-hidden personal stories of the Lewis and Clark expedition. In his new novel, Hall turns to the life of Robert Frost, arguably America's most well-known poet. Frost, as both a man and an artist, was toughened by a hard life. His own father died when Frost was eleven; his only sibling, a sister, had to be institutionalized; and of his five children, one died before the age of four, one committed suicide, one went insane, and one died in childbirth. Told in short chapters, each of which presents an emblematic incident with intensity and immediacy, Hall's novel deftly weaves together the earlier parts of Frost's life with his final year, 1962, when, at age eighty-eight and under the looming threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he made a visit to Russia and met with Nikita Khrushchev. As Hall shows, Frost determined early on that he would not succumb to the tragedies life threw at him. The deaths of his children were forms of his own death from which he resurrected himself through poetry-for him, the preeminent symbol of man's form-giving power. A searing, exquisitely constructed portrait of one man's rages, guilt, paranoia, and sheer, defiant persistence, as well as an exploration of why good people suffer unjustly and how art is born from that unanswerable question, Fall of Frost is a magnificent work that further confirms Hall's status as one of the most talented novelists at work today.
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First published March 27, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
July 26, 2018
This is what I would call a prismatic, novelized biography of Robert Frost. As with Brian Hall's earlier work, "I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company" (which I loved, and which is amazing), this is told in a fractured way, and assumes some familiarity with Frost's life and work. Without it, you'll be lost. I think Hall has the soul and mind -- as well as the pen -- of a poet, and admire the way he gets into the minds of his characters. That said, I didn't find this nearly as compelling or successful as the earlier book, perhaps because 1) Frost is a really tough nut to crack, and even at the end, I'm not sure how well I understood him, and 2) this book doesn't have the overarching narrative drive of the Lewis & Clark book. Still, I think Hall is an extremely gifted writer, and will definitely read whatever he writes next.
December 14, 2017
This book is all over the place. It is hard to follow as it keeps jumping around chronologically. It is full of small interjections of parts of poems that are not relevant or necessary to the story. I hgave up on this about two thirds of the way through. I liked Frost as a poet, butt I liked him less as a man after reading this. You come away with the feeling some of his celebrity was nothing short of luck, or ill gotten gain.
May 2, 2010
I was lost almost the whole time plot-wise but between Frost's language and Hall's it hardly mattered.
February 7, 2020
Made it about 25 pages and had to give up. If I'm going to read a book predominantly in 2nd person, it needs to be a Choose Your Own Adventure.
December 15, 2020
Professional hit-job picking apart a genius' life. Yes, a genius. All else does not matter, including the misery-for-profit writing of J.C. Oates. Let the man Rest In Peace
March 9, 2025
The style of this novel is rather off putting, broken as it is into many short chapters and describing segments of Frost's life over many decades, in apparently random order. But in totality, as you lean in to the beautiful wordsmanship that Hall demonstrates and as you allow the poignance of Frost's tragedies to roll over you, results in a more powerful connection to his verse.To know that Two Roads Diverged was shared with a dear friend, who erroneously interpreted it as a call to enlist for WWI, is just heart breaking.. The anecdotes of family losses are searing. How can one family endure so much? And the story of his trip to Russia to act as an informal diplomat with Kruschev for JFK, literally on the cusp of the Cuban missile crisis, is so mind- blowing , it's worth reading the whole book just for this. This is a book to read over time, to savor small amounts, to appreciate the word play, and to ponder. It will send you back to poetry. And that's a very good thing.
October 26, 2020
I have one Robert Frost poem that I like and must admit that I don't read poetry or pursue it in any way. Still, the novel sounded good when I read the synopsis. Now that I've finished Brian Hall's book, I'm left wondering if he intended to make Frost sound as miserable as the poet came across in the novel and/or meant to destroy him in the eyes of the reader. Strange is the only word I can use to describe the novel told in snippets of different periods of time throughout Frost's life, no chronological order whatsoever. Perhaps Frost really was as Hall portrayed him. Instead of wanting to know more about Frost/his poetry, I could completely walk away from him/his work and never look back.
February 15, 2020
I've only just now discovered and read Brian Hall's splendid novel. What an enormous pleasure to learn about the famous American poet through such rich, intimate, astonishing prose. In this age of fast-food novels, Hall's prose is a rare, gourmet, seven-day feast for language lovers. Have just ordered I SHOULD BE EXTREMELY HAPPY IN YOUR COMPANY and SASKIAD, which I look forward to reading. Thank you, Brian Hall, for renewing my belief in poetic, complex, literary fiction. Please keep writing!
April 7, 2021
Worth picking up for the Khrushchev chapter alone. Recommend.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 12, 2021
Did not finish. Too painful to read. Author skipped all over the place and you spent more time trying to figure out who he was talking about. Harsh, unnecessary profanity.
September 6, 2021
The four star review is generous. I don't know why Hall didn't attempt a new critical bio of Frost instead of a creative nonfiction account of highlights of his life.
August 21, 2008
For the second time since I began reading his work, Brian Hall has taken on a subject that sounded woefully unpromising to mew, and made a great novel out of it. I was enormously impressed by The Saskiad and by Hall's non-fiction, so much so that I wrote to him. He sent me back a charming letter and mentioned that his next book was to about the Lewis and Clark expedition. I inwardly groaned. Then, a few years later, I read I Should be Extremely Happy in Your Company, and was completely blown away both the imagination of the novel, and its fidelity to its sources. The moments that seemed most novelistic, turned out to be the most accurate.
So when I heard about the Frost project, I was a little more hopeful than I had been about the Lewis and Clark project; yet on the whole it sounded rather dreary. In one sense I was right; Frost's life was one which had many dreary times, which I had not been especially well aware of. But other people's misery can make for interesting reading, and Hall tries to show how Frost invested his heartaches and failures with meaning through his poetry.
Other readers have objected to the leaping about of the narrative, as a source of confusion and irritation, but I did not find it so. The timing and location of events is very carefully provided, and movements through time are not at all as haphazard as they seem. For instance, very early in the novel we learn that Frost's son, Carol, shoots himself in about 1940. This lends Carol's subsequent appearances as a child, a young man, a father, a farmer, a poet, dramatic irony and a kind of pathos.
The book both throws Frosts poetry in very flattering relief, and humanizes him, removing the grandfatherly homespun aura that surrounds and obscures him and his work, showing the nervy, sad, funny, witty, sidelong, angry, loving, tricky aspects of his character.
As a side note, Hall mentions at the end of the book that he was not able to quote much of Frost's poetry that remains under copyright. I hope that he might consider revisiting the novel when the rest of Frost's poetry enters the public domain.
So when I heard about the Frost project, I was a little more hopeful than I had been about the Lewis and Clark project; yet on the whole it sounded rather dreary. In one sense I was right; Frost's life was one which had many dreary times, which I had not been especially well aware of. But other people's misery can make for interesting reading, and Hall tries to show how Frost invested his heartaches and failures with meaning through his poetry.
Other readers have objected to the leaping about of the narrative, as a source of confusion and irritation, but I did not find it so. The timing and location of events is very carefully provided, and movements through time are not at all as haphazard as they seem. For instance, very early in the novel we learn that Frost's son, Carol, shoots himself in about 1940. This lends Carol's subsequent appearances as a child, a young man, a father, a farmer, a poet, dramatic irony and a kind of pathos.
The book both throws Frosts poetry in very flattering relief, and humanizes him, removing the grandfatherly homespun aura that surrounds and obscures him and his work, showing the nervy, sad, funny, witty, sidelong, angry, loving, tricky aspects of his character.
As a side note, Hall mentions at the end of the book that he was not able to quote much of Frost's poetry that remains under copyright. I hope that he might consider revisiting the novel when the rest of Frost's poetry enters the public domain.
August 7, 2008
Several years ago I visited Robert Frost’s Franconia, New Hampshire farm and followed foot paths where he easily created poetry but as this story unfolded, I realized I didn’t really know much about him.
The book was a challenge as the short chapters continually alternate between different periods of time; it was tough to keep track of who was alive, not yet born, deceased etc, to keep reflections in perspective and the events in some sort of understandable sequence. Interspersed throughout too were voluminous lines of poetry whose titles and authors were not identified – I picked out some Tennyson, Longfellow and obviously some Frost but for the casual poetry reader that I am, I found this feature very, very frustrating. I did enjoy the interesting and central theme of Frost’s meeting with Khrushchev -- we will bury you, shoe banging on table at the UN Khrushchev. I remember the shoe banging
episode.
Frost had a hard life and undoubtedly was immensely influenced by the fact that his father died when he was 11; his only sibling, a sister had to be institutionalized; of his six children, one died before the age of four, one committed suicide, another died in infancy, one went insane and one perished in childbirth. Enough is enough; it is unimaginable that he could have written anything while living through all of this….. but he did.
The book was a challenge as the short chapters continually alternate between different periods of time; it was tough to keep track of who was alive, not yet born, deceased etc, to keep reflections in perspective and the events in some sort of understandable sequence. Interspersed throughout too were voluminous lines of poetry whose titles and authors were not identified – I picked out some Tennyson, Longfellow and obviously some Frost but for the casual poetry reader that I am, I found this feature very, very frustrating. I did enjoy the interesting and central theme of Frost’s meeting with Khrushchev -- we will bury you, shoe banging on table at the UN Khrushchev. I remember the shoe banging
episode.
Frost had a hard life and undoubtedly was immensely influenced by the fact that his father died when he was 11; his only sibling, a sister had to be institutionalized; of his six children, one died before the age of four, one committed suicide, another died in infancy, one went insane and one perished in childbirth. Enough is enough; it is unimaginable that he could have written anything while living through all of this….. but he did.
September 8, 2016
Although many readers are annoyed by all the time jumps, I found them purposeful (if not sometimes distracting): Hall's use of snapshot images blur time, much like memories. I knew nothing of Frost before reading this and have to say the portrait is haunting and thorough. I appreciate that almost every chapter had a footnoted source to remind us that despite the dreamy non-linear narrative, all this is rooted in fact... which, of course, makes Frost all the more tragic. Hall conveys his rage, his arrogance, his regrets and instability with delicacy. When Frost realizes poetry wasn't (as he'd originally believed), his way of experiencing life but instead his way of avoiding it... well, ouch. He was a complicated and lonely man. I may not have loved the book, or liked the poet, but his experiences and suffering linger nonetheless.
December 17, 2009
I had a hard time with this book. I felt it jumped around too much. The chapters were very short, some only one sentance. They would sometimes go from 1915 to 2004 then back to 1931. They were little snipets it seemed of Frost's life or thoughts of his life at that point in time. Initially it didn't bother me as I felt I was getting a glimspe of the poet and the man but when you realize you're reading a novel it, at least for me, lost some of that mystique and I wondered how much of it was real or just imagined. I was interested in learning more factual informaiton about Frost and this felt to disconnected and just didn't flow in a way I could enjoy.
August 11, 2011
An incredibly capable writer. His scene with Khrushchev and a feverish Robert Frost is one of my favourites of all time. The use of second person narrative gets tedious, as does the jumping from decade to decade (particularly) in the first half of the book. But just when I was prepared to skip the occasional short chapter, Hall rose up and wrote every word as if it counted. Great conclusion. Don't read this novel if you're feeling your mortality close at hand, but try reading it if you become thankful for your own good life by peering into someone else's constant sorrow. I shouldn't have to find a book of this high quality in the Chapters "bargain" books section.
September 6, 2015
The craftsmanship is astonishing. The complex nature of the story is thrilling and captivating. The close attention that is necessary simply to understand the story line is so different from other stories. It's so outstandingly written that honestly, this book deserves more than 5 stars. It needs some shooting stars in that rating but sadly they don't have those. We need more authors like this out there in the world. I bought this book on a whim when I was 9 and I couldn't even understand what the heck was going on so I just picked it up off of my shelf recently and realized how lucky I was to stumble upon such a masterpiece.
August 11, 2009
I did not enjoy Brian Hall's "I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company" in which he used the voice of fiction to capture some of the personal stories of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Found it long-winded, boring and tedious to read.
However, found this book fascinating and motivating to read biographies about Robert Frost. While I've enjoyed Frost's works, never knew that he had six children - four of which predeceased him. " ... a portrait of one man's rage, guilt, generosity, paranoia, defiant persistence,.... and how art is born from unanswerable questions."
However, found this book fascinating and motivating to read biographies about Robert Frost. While I've enjoyed Frost's works, never knew that he had six children - four of which predeceased him. " ... a portrait of one man's rage, guilt, generosity, paranoia, defiant persistence,.... and how art is born from unanswerable questions."
September 10, 2013
First off, I don't think there can be anything legitimately called a "fictionalized biography" which is what this book is. If a biography is fictionalized, it is a novel, albeit an historical novel...but does not qualify as a biography.
As to the book itself, it seems the author had an axe to grind with the esteemed poet he was writing about. He dwelt on Frost's failures and tragedies and not on his talent and the gift of his poetry that he bestowed upon the world.
Very disappointing, indeed.
As to the book itself, it seems the author had an axe to grind with the esteemed poet he was writing about. He dwelt on Frost's failures and tragedies and not on his talent and the gift of his poetry that he bestowed upon the world.
Very disappointing, indeed.
July 9, 2008
Two stars for using Frost's poetry. I think the author tried to mold the poet into his own creation. Skipping back and forth between perspectives and timelines only added to the odd sense I got from reading this book. I read a lot of Frost, my favorite poem is 'Bereft' but the poems and this book seemingly almost had nothing in common except that they were in the same place at the same time. Very unfortunate.
February 11, 2010
I was skeptical at first that a novel about Robert Frost would work, especially one in which time is fractured into episodes that cut back and forth across the poet's life. But this novel worked very well. It was well-researched, true to its subject, yet imaginative. There was a real development that seemed outside of or above time. Well-worth reading, especially if you like Frost's poetry, but even if not.
January 29, 2011
This was very different from anything I've read before. Although it is a novel - it is poetry throughout and I liked it. It was challenging to read - I really had to stay focused and keep an open mind. It jumped around between years, back and forth, back and forth and again. I enjoyed learning about Robert Frost and had no idea how much tragedy there was. I liked how the author presented the story of Frost's life. It was very creative.
March 17, 2015
Good in showing both man and poet; some troubling parts as Frost's brutal upbringing by a drunken father poisons his relationships throughout his life. The rapid shifts in time and place worked in the beginning but overloaded the end.
The Frost Family
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Elinor White (1872-1938)
Elliott (1896-1900)
Lesley (1899-1983)
Carol (1902-1940)
Irma (1903-1981)
Marjorie (1905-1934)
Elinor Bettina (1907-1907)
The Frost Family
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Elinor White (1872-1938)
Elliott (1896-1900)
Lesley (1899-1983)
Carol (1902-1940)
Irma (1903-1981)
Marjorie (1905-1934)
Elinor Bettina (1907-1907)
December 18, 2008
I didn't dislike this book but stopped reading it halfway through. It isn't written in a very linear manner, so it was hard for me to follow. I did enjoy learning more about Robert Frost's life. I did not know that he experienced so many hardships. I think I would rather read a straight biography than try to interpret this fictional account.
March 1, 2009
A historical fictional account of Robert Frost's trip to the U.S.S.R. plus a look back on his life and the tragedies contained within. The copy I got from the library was signed by the author and contained a business card within the pages with a scribbled address in the Bronx, NY. I thought that was a bit cool. I left it there.
April 19, 2010
Hall enters Frost's life obliquely, linking vignettes and images and lines from poems both shopworn and still fresh. As such, I (or it) lost a little steam toward the end. I'd sort of like to see what he could do without source material, but I also really enjoyed this novel and his earlier one on Lewis and Clark.
July 23, 2013
If you wanted a simple fictional biography to read this is not it. The author chose a different style of writing. The life stories move back and forth through the life of Robert Frost, some of it from letters, news articles or historical records. It requires attentive reading to keep up with characters and where they intersect in the life of Frost.
July 28, 2013
I wanted to like this book and did read it through to the end; however, the nonlineal structure and change of person just did not work for me. Kudos to the author for taking the risk and using this unusual approach. Based on the reviews, it was obviously successful for some readers. I was just not one of them.
September 6, 2015
It's often one comes across a book so intelligently written that is not just a work of fiction. It is not often that one finds a book that makes you think so much and is well, not in chronological order. I find this author amazing at writing and I strongly recommend anyone to read his books, just be prepared. It's not an easy read.
Read
October 4, 2008This was a fascinating concept - a fictional biography of Robert Frost, written mostly in short prose chapters. I was enjoying it, but not really getting into it. Going to put it aside for now and try again another time.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews