Rating: 
Summary: Romantic and fanciful
Review: *The God in Flight* is not bad as in itself-- but anyone looking for historical quality displayed in *At Swim, Two Boys,* won't find it here. Its style is somewhat between historical fiction and a flighty romance novel... it tends to be VERY unrealistic most of the time, and the "fate/destiny" factor of Klinarios' ideal-waif just cheapens the entire storyline. Simion himself is a weepy, ambivalent character with a loose set of morals... his character didn't quite appeal to me-- although Andrew, the local playboy, is an easily lovable character. :) Overall, though, it's an entertaining read, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. The overall effect is very hyperbole-- roses and candlelight, lace and satin, jealous lovers, passionate sex (with flowery descriptions) and the power of destiny. >_< If it were a story about love between a man and a woman, it wouldn't be any more original than half the bodice-rippers out there.
Rating: 
Summary: brilliant
Review: A few years I ago I saw this book in a dutch bookstore. It looked beautiful with that magnificent cover and I started to read the first words, and it took me off right away. Ever since that time a few things happened: 1) it changed my life 2) it lies beside my bed, so that I sometimes can read passages of the book again 3) I haven't read a better book ever since this one. It's really very very good!
Rating: 
Summary: Good idea, but Agiri doesn't deliver.
Review: Agiri's story, which begins in West Virginia and migrates to New Haven--with occasional excursions to other places--starts from a good idea (the ultimate in Victorian restrictions: male-male relationships), but then doesn't go further. Agiri seems to have traded quality for quantity, and while her story is enjoyable and relaxing in a boring Sunday-afternoon kind of way, we never see her characters developed: they each have their own "history," but their development in the story (if any) is plainly linear. The story seems to move slowly and with no clear direction, but ironically it still remains highly predictable. This is not a novel which Forster, as one of the reviews on the book's jacket claims, would have written. Agiri's attempt was noble, and her details of a Victorian New England are well-based, but she fails to grab all the elements she's amassed and deliver a good product.
Rating:
Summary: This is the best book of the Decade!
Review: All I can say about this book is, that it is possibly the greatest book of the decade. I have never been moved by a book so much since; and I do reaqd quite a bit. Please Please Please read this book. Don't let it dissappear from shelves.let your local bookstore know you want it in stock, and then buy it for all of your friends and family for Christmas. For anyone who likes real romance. this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: an all time favorite
Review: Easily one of my favorite books. The author's use of language is fluid and the characters are well developed. If the plot moves a bit slowly at times it is compensated by lush detail and a romantic conculsion.
Rating:
Summary: an all time favorite
Review: Eighteen years is a long time to labor on a novel. Possibly too long; by its completion, two different people will have worked on it. Which might explain some of the odd lapses in narrative, and emotional disconnects in Argiri's magnum opus. Yet what a beautiful, beautiful book! Written in sumptuous Victorian style, reminiscent of Wharton or James, Argiri tells the tale of a 19th Century illicit love affair between Klionarios, an ascetic Yale art professor, and Simion Satterwhite, a precocious scholarship student who embodies Klionarios's artistic vision. THE GOD IN FLIGHT is filled with lovely, long sensuous passages, such as when the traumatized Simion wakens in the professor's house: "The table by his bed held a tray, upon which there were an ice bucket filled with melting snow around a pitcher of what proved to be orange juice, a glass, a bell, and a silver plate of grapes. He took two grapes and savored their sweet-tart astringency. This room was like some chamber of temptation in a fairy tale, so apt it was, so suited; it was as if someone who knew everything about colors and fabrics and furniture had climbed inside his head and found out what he would like best, even before he knew himself." No matter that the effects of Reconstruction and Emancipation are not addressed here. This is romance with a capital "R." A passionate and lyrical novel (though a bit silly), every winter I turn to its comforting literary conventions, just as surely as I return to flannel sheets and schnapps in my cocoa. But it is a strange novel, brushing over what should surely have been pivotal moments in the developing relationship of its protagonists, yet lingering lovingly on the thoughts of side characters. For me, there is really not enough plot, and the novel fails to adequately explore the central characters--and Argiri's characters are most definitely book people and not real people--but they are appealing and memorable nevertheless. The most dismaying aspect of THE GOD IN FLIGHT is the realization that if it took Argiri nearly twenty years to write this, how long will it take for her next novel?
Rating:
Summary: FLIGHT OF FANCY
Review: Eighteen years is a long time to labor on a novel. Possibly too long; by its completion, two different people will have worked on it. Which might explain some of the odd lapses in narrative, and emotional disconnects in Argiri's magnum opus. Yet what a beautiful, beautiful book! Written in sumptuous Victorian style, reminiscent of Wharton or James, Argiri tells the tale of a 19th Century illicit love affair between Klionarios, an ascetic Yale art professor, and Simion Satterwhite, a precocious scholarship student who embodies Klionarios's artistic vision. THE GOD IN FLIGHT is filled with lovely, long sensuous passages, such as when the traumatized Simion wakens in the professor's house: "The table by his bed held a tray, upon which there were an ice bucket filled with melting snow around a pitcher of what proved to be orange juice, a glass, a bell, and a silver plate of grapes. He took two grapes and savored their sweet-tart astringency. This room was like some chamber of temptation in a fairy tale, so apt it was, so suited; it was as if someone who knew everything about colors and fabrics and furniture had climbed inside his head and found out what he would like best, even before he knew himself." No matter that the effects of Reconstruction and Emancipation are not addressed here. This is romance with a capital "R." A passionate and lyrical novel (though a bit silly), every winter I turn to its comforting literary conventions, just as surely as I return to flannel sheets and schnapps in my cocoa. But it is a strange novel, brushing over what should surely have been pivotal moments in the developing relationship of its protagonists, yet lingering lovingly on the thoughts of side characters. For me, there is really not enough plot, and the novel fails to adequately explore the central characters--and Argiri's characters are most definitely book people and not real people--but they are appealing and memorable nevertheless. The most dismaying aspect of THE GOD IN FLIGHT is the realization that if it took Argiri nearly twenty years to write this, how long will it take for her next novel?
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully Rendered; A Joy From Start to Finish!
Review: I began this book late on Friday night and was still reading on Sunday morning. I cannot remember the last time I was this involved with a novel. (Perhaps when I first read Virginia Woolf.) I loved the characters, the story, the place, the time. Mostly, I adored the way the author payed homage to the great gay writers of the past, including a wonderful reference to Tennessee Williams' Belle Reve. This is a necessary book for any gay and lesbian bookshelf. It is perhaps the best gay fiction book I have ever read. Brava!
Rating:
Summary: The best book I have ever read. I couldn't put it down.
Review: I live in Australia and purchased this book in a hurry at a secondhand bookstore store on my way to the beach early one morning, because it looked different, and I thought the cover was nice. I dont read books much so didn't no anything about the story or the author. I went for a swim had a surf and started reading it and the next thing it was late afternoon nearly dark, I couldn't put it down, it is the best book I have ever read, it is a type of book that comes around only 1 or 2 a life time. It also is so real, so well written it is if you are in the midst of the drama. It is so true to life an incredible masterpiece I feel they should make a movie from it. I found it original and very interesting, it reflects keen insight into how much dark and dangerous psychic terrain two complex individuals and gay people must traverse to become truly one....An elegant paean to idealized love. The whole world the author creates seems absolutely real, it is a page-turning gay romance, a masterpiece....THE BEST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ. One that I will remember for the rest of my life.
Rating:
Summary: An involving and entertaining love story.
Review: I quite enjoyed Laura Argiri's story of the love between a professor and a student at Yale in the late 1800's. Though some of the secondary characters came across as one-dimensional, they did serve their purpose of providing an antagonistic element to Simion, the novel's protagonist, and Doriskos, his lover. Overall, this novel reminded me of the first time I read Mary Renault's novels about Alexander the Great - I felt immersed in the story to the point that it took me several days to get it out of my system. I highly recommend it.
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