Aloft

Rating:
Summary: A soaring novel
Review: 59-year-old Jerry Battle has retired from the family landscaping business and works as a travel agent. He loves to fly his private plane around the local area. Everything in his personal life is falling apart. His son has driven the business to the brink of bankruptcy and is over his head in debt thanks to his extravagant lifestyle. His daughter has just been diagnosed with cancer but refuses to follow her doctor's advice to terminate her pregnancy and undergo chemotherapy. His girlfriend has left him for another man. His father is unhappy and restless in a nursing home. Jerry feels powerless to help his family and frustrated that they are not confiding in him, yet he is continually accused of distancing himself from them. In fact, he seems to feel closer to strangers than to his own family. As his problems come to a head, Jerry finally realizes that he must come to terms with those things most important to him and take control of the course of his life.

Although Jerry is in the air only twice during the story, the metaphor of flight permeates the narrative. Jerry enjoys flying solo in order to escape "the Real" and its problems and to put his life in perspective. While aloft, things seem perfect to him; the disorder in his life disappears. He not only distances himself physically from others, but emotionally as well. In a lyrical yet realistic voice, Jerry pilots the reader through the turbulence in his life. He touches upon the death of his wife Daisy, who had psychological problems that he could not understand or deal with. He describes his rocky relationships with Rita, his live-in girlfriend who helped raise his children, and co-worker Kelly, a southern belle. Both women are eventually fed up with Jerry's aloofness and they take flight. He describes his dealings with his gruff Italian working-class father, who has always had two feet solidly on the ground.

Whether you like Jerry as a protagonist or not, you will recognize many universal themes in his narrative: multicultural relationships, family tradition, love and responsibility, and fears of illness, aging, and death. Every character is crafted with incredible detail that brings them to life. The family dynamics are well drawn. The plot is full of humor, irony, and many emotional ups and downs. Chang-rae Lee has written a soaring novel about a family in crisis.

Eileen Rieback

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good
Review: A well-paced and enjoyable read, but seemed to smack quite a bit of Updike's 'Rabbit' books; changing times, reflections on generations past....
A 'page turner' at points, overall a good read.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Sentences, Poor Book
Review: Aloft is a story of an aging baby boomer, who doesn't really care about anything or anyone. Lee, the author, goes in to great detail describing this state of non-commitment, which becomes quite irritating.
The long sentences, that fill the book, are filled with a wide range of words in the English language, mostly inappropriate in the way they are used, which I'm sure, is inconsequential to the author, as it gives a showcase for how articulate he thinks he is, but comes across as pure pretentious garble.
Just like another book about a fractured family that received critical acclaim, The Corrections, a family member develops cancer.
Now the man who cares about nothing must realize that life is precious, right?
No, not really.
He goes on and on about his prior wife, did she commit suicide or was it an accident?
By this point I really don't care.
After finishing the book, I feel that Mr. Lee would be much better being a "copywriter", not an "author"; as he has mastered the sentence, but is still a novice when it comes to the novel.
Huge disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Gripping
Review: Aloft is very gripping and moving. It deals with man heading towards the dusk of his life who is still somewhat unwilling to face the emotions of his life head on. Instead, he escapes. Even when love's leave him, he doesn't face it, he escapes. Even when his daughter (who is pregnant) could die, he doesn't face it, he escapes. I felt myself praying for him to just let go, just to feel something and simply be a part of what was happening to him, instead of running away from it. I read this book very quickly as it keeps you involved nearly every step of the way. I really enjoyed this book. I gave it four stars, instead of five, however, because part of me feels like this story has been done before. The writing is orginal and there are a lot of elements about the story that are unique in themselves, but still I couldn't help but feel like 'oh, this story again' Nonetheless, it is a story worth hearing again as it helps us as individuals cope with our everyday trial and tribulations. Might I advise that you also read Lucky Monkeys In The Sky (by Michele J. Geraldi.)Similar emotions are found in that book, similar 'running' away and incapability to deal with life's difficulties. I think her book is much more original than Aloft, though, as it deals with new problems, outrageous problems, that move you beyond what you thought words possibly could. Read Monkeys first, as soon as you can, because it is something you really should just read for your betterment, and then pick up Aloft and join a bookclub. Should be fun to discuss.

Rating:
Summary: Authors are remarkably sloppy
Review: As a retired guy who likes to fly small airplanes I was prepared to enjoy this novel about a retired guy who likes to fly a small airplane. The multi-generational family story is nicely crafted and the author, despite being a young person, writes convincingly about a 59-year-old man's concerns. It would have been nice if the author had taken the time to have a licensed pilot review the manuscript. The portions of the book that deal with actual flying bear no relationship to reality. The main character, supposedly a fair-weather pilot, proceeds into clouds off the Connecticut coast instead of simply landing at one of the numerous airports that dot the shore or turning around and spending the night in the Boston area. The author notes that these clouds are not thunderstorms and yet the little plane is nearly ripped apart by turbulence. The pilot of the stricken airplane calls the control tower of his intended destination for an instrument clearance, rather than the nearby Providence Approach, which owns the airspace in which he was flying. The tower controller in the book gives the main character a clearance that requires him to follow the Long Island Expressway, which would be a neat trick if you were stuck in the clouds (in the real world pilots on an instrument flight plan fly from one radio beacon to the next). The grand finale is an instrument approach to a runway covered in fog, a heroic emergency maneuver that you would never attempt if you had a working airplane and enough fuel to fly another few minutes to an airport where the runway was not covered in fog.

If you're not an airplane nerd, however, you'll probably enjoy the book.

Rating:
Summary: ALOFT
Review: Chang-Rae Lee has written an inspired novel that is eloquent in its lonely disengagement, which is what most of us experience, if we're honest, with our own heartbreaking families. I recommend this one for anyone who loved Jennifer Paddock's lyrical and similarly cathartic debut, A SECRET WORD.

Rating:
Summary: A Novel Told with Wit and Extraordinary Insight
Review: Chang-Rae Lee's third novel brilliantly evokes the angst of a man stunted by his own passivity. Jerry Battle, by his own account, is not a fighter. He flies his airplane in only the fairest weather, and usually does so solo since from that height, with no one making demands on him, "everything looks perfect." On the ground, though, his life is less than perfect. He would rather let the woman he loves live with another man than express his true feelings for her. He turns from the implications of his son's extravagance in running the family landscape business, and he prefers to keep his distance from his gruff father. If Jerry sees the signs of imminent destruction, he keeps them to himself, for to bring them to the fore would be to require action on his part. In fact, the last time in his life when he took charge of his personal life, he pushed his wife and the mother of his children to her early death. All in all, he'd rather not know about the crises embroiling his family. However, when his adult daughter breaks some distressing news, all his carefully constructed aloofness begins to crumble.

With wit and insight, Lee has created not only a memorable character, but an unforgettable novel. The interior nature of the first person narrative might disappoint readers looking for more pizzazz to the plot, but the intimacy created as Jerry leads the reader through his thoughts - on everything from his young wife's death to his father's "years of being a pigheaded domineering irascible bull in the china shop of life" to his tender. confused feelings for his son and daughter - makes up for the lack of action. The emotional depth Lee provides is stunningly full. Although the imagery can be heavy-handed with its references to flight and being grounded, Jerry's wry acknowledgment of these elements rescue them. The decadence of contemporary culture and the melting pot of Long Island provide strong foils to this novel essentially about a fifty-nine year old man coming of age.

Admittedly, this excellent novel is not for everyone. Its detailed examination of mundane but revelatory moments might get tedious for some. However, for those who like the quiet realism and intimacy of a man's struggle against his own nature, this will be one of the best novels of 2004.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Excellent book as all of Chang-Rae Lee's novels are. This novel is about an elderly man dealing with regrets from his past and embracing his future.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely not his best
Review: I bought this book for a long plane ride from Seattle to Berlin. The bookstore cashier raved about it, but when I asked him if he'd read it, he admitted that he hadn't, which goes to show you that once you are a famous writer, few people really bother to critique, or even read your work. Still, I admired Lee's Gesture Life enough to give this one a try. What a disappointment. The book is filled with basic writing flaws, the biggest being a lack of tension in the story. I'll try not to give the story away, but we learn something serious about Jerry's daughter and first wife. But Lee drops both aspects of the story, to ramble on and on about landscaping, past girlfriends, and co-workers. Perhaps he did this to show that avoidance is the way some people handle crises, but I found chunks of the book flat and forgetful. There are a couple of great moments, such as a chapter about Jerry's first wife, which was also published in The New Yorker. There is also a great scene involving a tennis match between two old rivals. But there aren't enough of these to outshine the dull passages.

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I have never been so bored whilst reading, if this hadn't been our bookclub choice I would never have finished it.If this in anyway is representational of Middle American life I'm glad I'm Australian.