The 9/11 Attacks
The premise of this novel is predicated on the unfortunate reality of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks. In those attacks, religious and political extremists flew hijacked airplanes into important buildings in New York and near the U.S. capital. The attacks are shown through attentive, literal imagery, and the abstract quality of those attacks and their effect in American politics is the subject of the novel's plot. The novel is an attempt to capture the abstract imagery that could be felt in post-9/11 America.
Falling apart and rebuilding
The novel's title points to a painful use of imagery that the novel contains. Throughout the novel, things fall, fall apart, fall into disrepair, and things that one wants to fall do not. There are thwart attempts to "fall in love," and instead of the accidental, magical experience of time, the novel demonstrates a more tedious, intentional imagery for time. The relationship between Lianne and Keith is a failed attempt to fall backward into the innocence of pre-9/11 American, and the movement foreword is shown in Keith's tedious attempt to create some new fate with a woman named Florence.
Marriage and romance
The imagery of sexual union and marriage is an important part of the novel's abstract imagery. Lianne's experience with her mother is one of abstract, not concrete, imagery. To her, the relationship to mother also categorizes the ease of everything being taken care of, making sense—indeed, Nina's character is someone who "makes sense" of art, literally. This makes Nina's relationship to her art-collector boyfriend a symbol for a desired union that none of the dynamic characters in the book can seem to find. They see broken marriages and impossible romantic attempts.
Nostalgia and the past
The novel captures a desire to return to the past. The reality of the 9/11 Attacks was so challenging and catalystic in America that the characters are immediately sent into the past. Keith is literally sent into a past marriage by the paramedics who find him among the wreckage and deliver him to his ex-wife, Lianne. They struggle to find some love between them, never minding that their romance ended long before the attacks occurred. That is the quality of nostalgia shown through imagery; they want something from the past that wasn't even there because they cannot believe the present moment. This is also the struggle depicted in Lianne's patients who have Alzheimer's disease.
