Aloft

Rating:
Summary: Emperor's New Clothes
Review: I really don't know where to begin. The clumsy writing? The unconvincing characterizations? The fact that this upper middle class Korean-American has not one jot of insight into the Italian American experience?

Maybe Mr. Lee talked to an Italian-American once. His underlying agenda seems to be -- these immigrants have it easy, they are assimilated. Well guess what? Italians don't assimilate. They certainly don't change their names, like the lead character here -- they have too much ethnic pride, and in a place like the New York metropolitan area, where there are millions of Italians, there is no need. That is just one glaring example of Mr. Lee's inability to understand ethnic groups other than his own.

Mr. Lee, who spent most of his adult life in creative writing programs, could have done a little research into the landscaping and contracting businesses that were supposed to have been the protagonist's life work. He presents them as a walk in the park, something the narrator inherited after his own father established them. Well, anyone can tell you that owning and running such a business is and always has been absolute hell. There is no reflection of the reality of work life here.

There is not one spark of storytelling magic. He hits all the diversity notes in an unrealistic and groaningly PC way -- Korean dead wife, Puerto Rican girlfriend -- without contextualizing these cross-ethnic experiences in a way appropriate to a sixty-year old man.

Because of all these misfires, I could not believe the narrator, or a single line of the book. The suburban scene he describes in laundry-list yawning detail has been done before and better by many other writers -- there's nothing new here.

The universal kudos heaped on this book just seems to be a reflection of the "minority mafia" dominating so-called literary fiction. No one has the guts to say that the critic's darling of yesterday, writing his own ethic group's story, is incapable of writing convincingly outside of his own experience. It is a case of the emperor's new clothes -- no one has the guts to say that this writer is lame.

Rating:
Summary: Am I Missing Something?
Review: I was so looking forward to this book: A Gesture Life had simply me knocked me over, and I was a Chang-rae Lee fan for life. So I bought Native Speaker, and wasn't as impressed as the critics had been, but that was okay because A Gesture Life had made up for it. After hearing the reviews and NPR shows about Aloft, I was thrilled when I finally got it. So what's the problem?

The book is patently unreadable. The prose makes no sense, the dialogue is stilted and banal, and the story line is impossible to follow. What a disappointment. The one line that rings true in the book is on page 74, when Lee is describing the mediocre writing skill of his character's son-in-law: "He's the sort of writer who can put together a nice-sounding sentence or two, and does it with feeling, but never quite gets to the point". That says it all for me.

Rating:
Summary: Why did anybody like this book?
Review: I, too, read "Aloft" based on reviews and articles in the New York Times. And now, I admit, I feel, for lack of a better word, victimized. This is a novel that's already been written many times over...and also much, much better.

First, I've known many Italian-Americans from Long Island, and not one of them talks or speaks or, I daresay, thinks like the narrator of "Aloft." (And that, by the way, is saying something POSITIVE about Ital-Americans from Long Island.) The narration is so trite and cliched it's almost painful to read. Attemps at sarcastic humor fall flat; it's like listening to a comedian with poor timing. There is precious little story here; so little of it that for me to even briefly write what happens would be in itself boring! Yes, that's how bad it is.

"Aloft" is like an imitation of an imitation...or better yet, it's like receiving a fax of a photocopy. The narration is disingenuous and unrealistic and it's as if Mr. Lee set out to write "a John Updike-like novel set in the suburbs." Somewhere along the way -- well, it was as soon as he started writing -- he lost an original voice.

But the bone I have to pick is not with Chang-rae Lee; it's with the Times. How could they POSSIBLY have thought this book had any merit? That is what is so confounding and also so infuriating. Are they themselves so removed from reality (by this I mean REAL reality, the way people truly live and truly are, NOT the way that novels present them as living) that they take this for real?! Do they think this is an accurate portrait of the way the world is? If that's so, that is a crying shame. One wonders if book reviewers read too many books instead of living lives and meeting real, honest-to-God humans. "Aloft" is not one iota more an accurate description of life in the suburbs or in America than watching the same game of checkers being played.

One more thing. The dialogue. This too is a sham. Read several pages of dialogue in this book and then, the next day at work or at home or wherever, listen to strangers or friends talking. It will not sound anything like this, I guarantee you. Thank God, but Americans do not sound so hackneyed. Now, turn on a TV program (a drama or even a sit-com) and listen: THIS is what it will sound like.

Rating:
Summary: From Up Here Everything Looks Perfect
Review: In "Aloft" Change-rae Lee has written a novel of family relationships and lack of communication. He has won numerous awards for his writing. The "New Yorker" selected Chang-rae Lee as one of the twenty best writers under forty.

Gerry Battle, father to Theresa and Jack, son of Pop and lover of Rita has avoided conflict, emotion, and any interaction that did not specifically relate to him his entire life.
This has gone unnoticed by him- he has just not observed any of the issues that are relevant to his family and in the end to himself. He tells the story of his life, giving the basic information of how he helped to build his family's construction business, the story of his marriage to Daisy, and his relationship with Rita. Gerry feels the best, the most free when he is flying his plane, not for his love of flying, but to get him out of the house. After his retirement, he sat around the house and made a mess- annoying Rita who went off to work every day. Finally out of desperation, she gave him a gift certificate for flying lessons. This awakened in Gerry a new love, an independence, he did not have to report to anyone or talk to anyone. Interestingly enough, Gerry, shows more emotion and love to the couple who own the plane that he buys, than he does with his family. A one time meeting, but he understands they are giving him an important part of their life. Something stirs inside of him.

After twenty years, Rita has finally had enough. There is something missing - Gerry does not give of himself - the emotion she needs is not there. She leaves Gerry. Into this morass enters Theresa and her boyfriend, Paul- they have announced their engagement. Gerry does not know that Theresa is pregnant and very ill. Jack has pushed the family business into bankruptcy, and Pop is not at all happy in the retirement settlement. Rita is gone, and Gerry is now faced with all the family problems. Will Gerry rise to the occasion; can he filter his emotions to meet the needs of his family?

This story is an example of today's generation. The lack of emotional connection, and the need to accomplish, leaving the children to grow up as best they can with all of the gadgets and toys at their disposal. The story of Gerry and his family leads us to examine our own relationships and our own family. Hopefully, we are able to disclose our feelings and needs with our loved ones, so we do not need to face our battles alone. Recommend heartily. prisrob

Rating:
Summary: Lofty achievement
Review: In "Aloft", once you have got used to the very lengthy sentences you are rewarded with superb descriptions, each word judiciously chosen. Lee is up there with Cheever, Russo and Updike as a chronicler of the problems and challenges, sadnesses and small pleasures encountered by today's Everyman. I am only annoyed that I have just discovered this superb author. "Aloft" is definitely one of my books of the year (a confident claim, made in mid January). I am now about to purchase and read his other works.

Rating:
Summary: Early Retiree Grows Up
Review: In this nuanced saga of a Long Island family, the Battles, Chang-Rae Lee gives us not only the development of a man in late mid-life, but a snapshot of suburban culture in the early 21st century.

When I finished Aloft, I gave the book a hug, so dear had its narrator, Jerry Battle, and his family become to me, character flaws included. Lee has all the observational powers and literary acumen of a Jonathan Franzen or a young John Updike, but he's kinder, even when he's judging the parenting and philandering of his aged father or the post-modernist chatter of his daughter and her husband or the materialism of his daughter-in-law. He's not even crazy about his grandchildren, yet they don't come across as monsters.

The piloting of his small plane across Long Island (but only in good weather, no risks for him) and the distance it brings is an excellent metaphor for the way he has lived his life until this story begins. But as the woman who cared for his children when his wife died dumps him, and his daughter comes home pregnant and ill, and his son's over-reaching development of the family business becomes apparent, Jerry Battle has to stop delegating and live his life.

I was astonished that a young writer like Lee brought such empathy to a character close to my own age. This is a great book to give your grown children-or your parents.

Rating:
Summary: "There's no point in flying if you can't fly alone."
Review: Jerome Battle, a self-described "average American guido," has managed to live most of his sixty years "above it all," never quite engaging with those around him or becoming emotionally intimate. On weekends he is aloft in his small plane, his "private box seat in the world and completely outside of it, too," flying alone around Long Island, observing the apparent orderliness of the landscape without the "pedestrian sea-level flotsam" of everyday life. Unfortunately, Jerry also lives his personal life the way he flies his plane, as if he's seeing it from a great distance. Numerous personal catastrophes, enough to unhinge a man more sensitive to his surroundings, are now occurring around and to Jerry and his family, but Jerry's long experience in avoidance allows him to remain disengaged from these events. Slowly, inexorably, the author develops the family's crises until they finally force themselves onto Jerry's personal radar screen, and he realizes that "I cannot stay at altitude much longer, even though I have fuel to burn."

By focusing on character, especially that of Jerry, rather than plot, and telling the story from Jerry's point of view, author Lee has created enormous challenges for himself. He must engage the reader's interest in a man who is not really interested in much of anything--a man who does not see family emergencies as the dramatic and heart-wrenching events that they would be to other people and who has no real interest in changing. So successful is the depiction of Jerry's phlegmatic point of view that the reader, too, may not see these events as very compelling or dramatic until Jerry himself starts to respond to them. Yet Lee's novel succeeds in its characterization. His depictions of Jerry and his family strike chords of recognition as he explores the universal questions of how we become the people we are and how we affect the generations which follow.

Beautifully written, and full of penetrating observations and felicitous turns of phrase, the novel is a sensitive and often painful exploration of the human condition, filled with characters who are utterly isolated at key turning points in their lives. Subtle in its development, and rich in imagery and obvious symbolism (Sir Harold Clarkson-Ickes's attempt to fly a balloon around the world, the Discovery Channel's story of the defeat of a lion king), this quietly complex novel by a prodigiously gifted author offers evidence that even a man as determined as Jerry Battle to remain above the fray must ultimately connect with the earth. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful story about an imperfect but loving family
Review: Jerry Battle is almost 60 and semi-retired from Battle Brothers Brick and Mortar, a company his father, who is living unhappily in a retirement home, took great pride in. He works part-time at Parade Travel and lives the good life in Huntington Village, a wealthy (and mostly white) area on Long Island that is a far cry from his Italian roots in nearby Whitestone. He has spent his entire life skating around relationships --- his first wife Daisy drowned in their backyard pool, and his long-time girlfriend, Rita, leaves him after taking care of his children and waiting over 10 years for Jerry to pop the question. Kelly, Jerry's co-worker at Parade Travel, dates him briefly and is similarly exasperated with him.

His children also don't seem to know what to do with him. His son, Jack, is a solid guy who is married to an All-American blonde named Eunice, has two children and lives in a ridiculously over-decorated house they can't quite afford. Jack is running the family business into the ground but neglects to discuss this with Jerry directly. Theresa, who is by far a more colorful and interesting character, is Jerry's daughter. She is an overeducated professor, also cursed with thinking too much, and is engaged to Paul, an Asian-American poet who has a serious case of writer's block. Theresa calls her father by his first name and adamantly refuses treatment when she finds out she is simultaneously pregnant and has cancer.

All of this is compounded by the fact that Jerry unintentionally befriends strangers --- such as the couple who sell him his airplane --- but is removed from those he loves the most. Truth be told, everyone thinks Jerry is lazy and aloof. He ruminates about all the neighbors he was cordial with, all the girls he ran around with in his youth and anyone else who might have passed his way in 60-odd years of living. Yet Jerry feels he doesn't have real friends and tries desperately to get back together with Rita.

The novel starts off slowly. There are a lot of unnecessary details about minor characters and it's initially hard to feel sympathy for the protagonist. Once the conflicts of the story are presented and Jerry decides to take some action for once, the pace quickly picks up and doesn't dissipate. Though the story is plot-heavy and meanders right up until the last page (pg. 343), it is immensely readable. Whether it's a lunch celebrating Paul and Theresa's engagement or Jerry remembering his childhood, the details are so vivid and plentiful that the reader will relate to the Battles immensely, even if they've never met anyone like them.

This could have easily been a novel about illness, but Lee is nothing if not ambitious. The author of two previous, critically acclaimed novels about Asian-Americans, Lee tackles race from the perspective of privilege. Daisy was Asian, Jerry's children are half-Asian, Paul is Asian and Jerry has a co-worker whom he calls "the resident Hispanic." But by and large, everyone is white and, true to his character, Jerry thinks about race a lot and shares those thoughts with the reader. Not that Jerry focuses only on people of color. He is equally baffled by women, including Kelly, who hails from the South. Through reminiscences and dialogue, Jerry analyzes the way men treat women without delving into a decisive diatribe.

Chang-rae Lee could have easily (and understandably, depending on your perspective) written a story about how badly white men treat the rest of the world. In interviews, Lee has been quoted as saying that he identifies with his protagonist despite the racial and age differences (Lee is in his 30s). It shows. Lee has written a wonderful story about an imperfect family who love each other at the end of the day.

--- Reviewed by Jane Van Ingen

Rating:
Summary: Colossal talent! A must read. A must buy.
Review: Not since I read John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy have I been so bowled over by a piece of writing. And Mr. Lee is so young. What he will achieve in the next 50 years is unimagineable.

Rating:
Summary: Long time
Review: Not since McCrae's "The Bark of the Dogwood" have I so been affected by a subtle yet powerful novel. But this is exactly what happened with Chang-Rae Lee's "Aloft." His third novel, Lee has hit the proverbial nail on the head when it comes to drawing characters. Jerry is the perfect middle-aged man, complete with all the baggage that comes with that territory, and this, accompanied by the other elements that Lee gives us about the family, make for a riveting book.