"Motherhood, modern life and sibling strife are shrewdly dissected in this poignant portrait of a family’s first Christmas after losing their matriarch."
To tell an intimate, multi-themed tale of modern America in little over 200 pages is quite something, and that’s exactly what Lynn Steger Strong has done with Flight. Exploring loss, motherhood, marriage, and the weariness, frustration and anger that can come in the wake of feeling a chasm between hopes, actuality and responsibility, this wears its fierce power in readable style.
Henry, Kate and Martin are about to experience their first Christmas since losing their mother. Alongside tension around the “what are we going to do with Mom’s house?” question, day-to-day strains snag as the siblings and their spouses struggle to get on through their very different ways of doing things, not least when it comes to parenting, and their different financial statuses.
Electric with flaws, the characters feel incredibly real, not least because their words ring with authentic frustrations. Add to this sharply observed scenes of family life, a desperate race-against-time to help a local family, and the siblings’ smouldering grief, and Flight’s potency gathers to a stirring crescendo.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
It's 22 December and siblings Henry, Kate and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry's house in upstate New York. This is their first Christmas since their mother passed. Without her once ever-present advice and gentle nudges to connect with each other when they need it most, they've grown distant. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals while also trying to decide what to do with their sole inheritance, their mother's house.
As each tries and fails and tries again to figure out how to reconcile their various needs and impulses around the house, they must also see whether they can and will remain a family without their matriarch. They are all feeling the strain but when a local child goes missing they are forced to come together, and all of them will cross a line.
Flight features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, General Fiction, Romance / Relationship Stories, Fiction, Book Club Recommendations, Recommendations
Flight is available in Paperback, Hardback
Flight was written by Lynn Steger Strong and published by Simon & Schuster Ltd
Flight has 320 pages
£13.49
.jpg)
-129x200.jpg)