Raymond Chandler once wrote in a letter, “It doesn’t matter a damn what a novel is about. The only fiction of any moment in any age is that which does magic with words.” Marek Waldorf does magic with words in The Short Fall, a multilevel debut novel about a paralyzed speechwriter’s relationship to his client, a charismatic presidential candidate named Vince Talbot and about his own relationship to the written word. The novel, filled with lively effusions of wit and unexpected humor, is at once a non-ideological fly-on-the-wall expose of how campaigns are run and a meditation on creative writing and embellishment. It’s an achronological story of recovery, one that emerges slowly like an image on a Polaroid photograph.