Flight: A Novel

Flight: A Novel
by Sherman Alexie

Flight: A Novel
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Book Summary Information

Author: Sherman Alexie
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-04-17
ISBN: 0802170374
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9780802170378
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of Flight: A Novel

Book Review: Odd Novel...But Funny and Beautiful Too
Summary: 5 Stars

I've recently become a fan of Sherman Alexie's work, but to be honest, I wasn't very interested in the premise of Flight--an outcast teenager who is considering an act of mass violence is suddenly cast back and forth through time. The grim subject matter seemed important, but unappealing, and even though I can get myself in the mood for a Vonnegutesque time-leaping plot, that's not my usual taste. But finally, my desires to experience every word written by Alexie and to acquire a really affordable audio book overcame me, and I gave Flight a go. I'm glad I did.

Flight is about a fifteen-year-old, half-Native American orphan named Zits who suffers from severe acne and who has been shipped his whole life between foster families. Though Zits is smart and funny, he's also an outcast and is overwhelmed by loneliness, purposelessness, self-hatred, self-destructiveness, despondency, and violent and irrational impulses. When he meets a young revolutionary zealot who seems to offer Zits friendship and purpose...and a chance to enact revenge on a society who's abandoned him, he feels compelled to start the zealot's revolution and lash out violently.

Just on the verge of doing so, however, Zits's consciousness is wrenched (without explanation) from time and place and becomes situated in the body of a man, an FBI officer working against Indian activists in the 1970s. Several chapters tell the story of Zits's experiences here before his consciousness is ripped again through history. He becomes, at turns in the novel, a cop, a young Native American at the Battle of Little Big Horn, an old Indian fighter in Kansas, a pilot, and others. In each new body, Zits remains Zits, with his mind all of his memories, and in each situation, Zits experiences or commits violence. And each of the moments that he experiences, a little like the scenes that the ghost in A Christmas Carol shows old Scrooge, offers him perspective on the responsibilities that humans have for one another, on the futility of violence, on the destructive cycles that over and over ruin human lives, and, of course, on the person he's become and the violence that he, back in his original body, is on the verge of committing.

So, even though the premise is a little strange, it's a tremendously meaningful novel. Each of the stories, and especially Zits's own which frames them all, is well-written--intense, emotionally engaging, and wise. The writing is consistently funny (I doubt Alexie could be anything but funny), and at times, such as the scene in which an Indian-fighter soldier deserts his troop in an effort to save a young Indian-boy's life, Alexie creates images of just striking beauty that pierces through the ugly, violent events being depicted. And ultimately, that's how I think of the novel: although it is an odd book, and although its subject matter is occasionally grim and sad, it's ultimately a funny, hopeful, beautiful, truthful, and important novel that I'll likely read again.

Summary of Flight: A Novel

The best-selling author of multiple award-winning books returns with his first novel in ten years, a powerful, fast and timely story of a troubled foster teenager — a boy who is not a “legal? Indian because he was never claimed by his father — who learns the true meaning of terror. About to commit a devastating act, the young man finds himself shot back through time on a shocking sojourn through moments of violence in American history. He resurfaces in the form of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, inhabits the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Big Horn, and then rides with an Indian tracker in the 19th Century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. When finally, blessedly, our young warrior comes to rest again in his own contemporary body, he is mightily transformed by all he?s seen. This is Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant — making us laugh while breaking our hearts. Simultaneously wrenching and deeply humorous, wholly contemporary yet steeped in American history, Flight is irrepressible, fearless, and again, groundbreaking Alexie.

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