For those skeptical of memoirs after the James Frey flap, here's a reason to give the genre another shot: Ken Dornstein's The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky, a compelling account of his older brother's death in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, and his struggle to move forward with his own life in the aftermath.
Complete with 10 pages of notes with disclaimers and explanations about how he acquired some of the information and how he handled portions of the material, Dornstein is upfront with his audience:
This book relies on memory, which is famously fallible, but it's also heavily dependent on various sources outside of my own head.
Throughout, he builds credibility by citing sources. Yet, while he earns readers' trust initially because we know the tragic event in the book is real, it is when he relies on his "fallible" memory that the book is most intriguing.
The story takes us on a 16-year journey that starts with Dornstein's discovery that his brother, David, an aspiring writer, was on the doomed flight and how he finally comes to terms with this. The substance of the book is everything in between: denial, despair, putting the pieces of his life and David's back together.
There's also a healthy dose of survivor's guilt. After college, Dornstein lives with a couple in California who are more anal-retentive than Martha Stewart, requiring him to practically vacuum himself out of the house when he leaves each morning. His description of the meticulous nature of his living situation lets us in on the remorse he had for simply being alive.
Here I was, alive and living in sunny California, while David was dead and not living in sunny California. It was as if I were committing a crime each day by living after he had died, and all of the carpet smoothing and closet thinning helped hide the evidence.
Left with the "Dave Archives," an enormous volume of his brother's journals, letters and manuscripts, Dornstein obsesses over reading them to understand more about his brother who, six years older than himself, was not someone he felt he knew entirely.
The book takes a raw look at David through his journal entries and anecdotes. The view is not clouded by nostalgia. An eccentric and mentally unstable person, David was consumed by his desire to become a famous writer, but his obsession quickly turned to torment as he never actually completed a story.
Committed to getting David's work published posthumously, Dornstein set out to write the book he thought his brother would have written from the fragmented writings he left behind and interviews he conducted with David's friends, acquaintances and girlfriends. Through it all, Dornstein discovered his brother's vulnerabilities, passions and secrets, yet what he's created is not what he originally planned, but rather a story of his own life.
If I was looking for answers, the questions were about my own life more than David's.
Dornstein skillfully weaves David's writings with his own memories of his brother, highlighting the differences and parallels between the two and creating vivid portraits of each. The prose flows beautifully, and while it deals with a heavy subject, Dornstein is subtly funny, telling stories about the things he and his brother did to entertain each other. These stories are not frivolous. Every aspect of the book is deliberate and moves the story of Dornstein's journey along, taking you through the various phases of his grief.
Early in the book is an account of Dornstein's trip to Lockerbie eight years after the bombing. He went to see firsthand where his brother and 258 other people fell from the sky. Full of particulars about the accident, the book masterfully melds factual information with Dornstein's personal turmoil. The trip finally allows him to accept that his brother is gone.
I was proving to myself that Lockerbie was a real place, where people lived and worked and watched videos and ate cheese. And if this was true, I began to allow some eight years after those first strange reports about a 747 bombed over Scotland, it might also be true that my brother was dead.
His acceptance of the death does nothing to move him beyond it, and his search for something not quite definable continues for another eight years. Toward the end, you begin to wonder if Dornstein will ever be able to move forward. At times, he seems to be okay with hanging on to David forever.
The ending echoes the style of the beginning. In 2000 and 2001, during the trial of the terrorists charged with bombing the flight, Dornstein watches the proceedings on a special screening for family members of victims and flies with them to the Netherlands to hear the verdict. He describes the specifics of the trial as if he were writing a textbook on it, while powerfully portraying the feelings the trial brings to the surface for him
Finally, those unanswered questions about the tragedy get answered. And at some point through the telling of his story, Dornstein can finally let go. You feel thankful the journey is over, but honored to have been a part of it and to have witnessed David's writing and Dornstein, as an author, take flight.