Selected Reviews of
The Time It Takes to Fall
by Margaret Lazarus Dean

 

“Affecting, original debut about a girl’s coming-of-age, set against the backdrop of the NASA space-shuttle program…an accomplished first novel about the American family.”

—Kirkus (starred review)

“The household represents a typical family during the Reagan era caught up in the materialism of buying things ‘to correct our incorrect lives.’ The result is a gripping judgment of American culture with a harrowing depiction in the epilog of the last few minutes in the lives of the Challenger's seven astronauts. Highly recommended.”

—Library Journal

“The Time it Takes to Fall is a deft reflection on the loss of national and personal innocence that skillfully explores a series of events rarely addressed in fine adult fiction. Writing might not be rocket science, but Dean's first novel does the science and art of both proud.”

—Bookpage

“The terrific title of the novel refers not only to a basic principle in physics and to the Challenger tragedy, but also to the unmeasurable and unknowable.”

—Boston Globe

 

 “Dean gets the details of being a teenager right, from trips to the mall to the forbidden thrill of cutting class, and she captures the feel of the era too. Those who were children—and adults—during the time of the Challenger disaster will find in The Time It Takes to Fall a truthful and thought-provoking novel about how we face tragedies big and small.”

—Chicago Tribune

 

“Dean has created an immensely believable heroine and delivers a fascinating and approachable look at that most intimidating of all endeavors: rocket science. If there's any justice at all, her book will be read by women's book clubs across the country.”

—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

 

"One of the nicest written coming-of-age stories that I've read in a long time. It's always hard to think of what an author can do to make a coming-of-age tale new, and what Margaret Lazarus Dean does in her novel is...meld the public tragedy of the Challenger disaster with the private tragedy of Dolores's family."

—Nancy Pearl, NPR, April 16, 2007

 

 “Dean weaves together an insider’s story of the space-shuttle program and the life of protagonist Dolores Gray with a thread of cynicism about both adolescence and space technology. Ultimately, The Time it Takes to Fall is a tale about confronting and denying mortality.”

—Small Spiral Notebook

 

“This debut novel is a witness to the fall, from innocence surely, but more importantly from passive acceptance to an engaged struggle.”

—Bookslut

             

“Margaret Dean’s beautifully adroit first novel is about a fine intelligence painfully located in a girl who can barely stand to be smart, and of a whole generation lifted up, and then brought down, by the Challenger disaster. The Time It Takes to Fall is a story of liftoffs and crash landings, of growing up and growing down. It is at once a meditation on American life—on what we know and what we can’t or don’t know—and a suspenseful page-turner.”

—Charles Baxter, author of Saul and Patsy and The Feast of Love

 

“Taking as her backdrop the Challenger shuttle disaster, Dean subtly probes the hidden design flaws at the heart of the American family. Emulating the engineers and astronauts her characters orbit, her work is equal parts cool precision and wondrous dream. If a novel can be likened to a spacecraft—both are an intricate assembly of hundreds of thousands of parts—Dean’s is flawlessly constructed, ready to launch the reader on a soaring emotional trajectory.”

—Peter Ho Davies, author of Equal Love and The Ugliest House in the World