Flight Lessons

Rating:
Summary: Better the first time around . . .
Review: I listened to the ABRIDGED audio version of this story twice. It was much more interesting upon the first reading and didn't hold my attention all that well the 2nd time around. It tells the story of Anna, a young woman, who returns "home" reluctantly when she catches her lover in bed with another woman. Anna and her aunt were once close but betrayal and bad feelings have kept them at a distance. Anna is talked into going to work at the family restaurant and discovers new friends, a new love interest (in a reclusive, scarred man) and puts her past to rest. This is a very character oriented story with little action.

Rating:
Summary: The Prodigal daughter
Review: The Oscar Wilde quote, "After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations" that Patrica Gaffney prefaces her book with, is an accurate description of the issues she explores in Flight Lessons. In a twist to the biblical prodigal son, Anna returns to her hometown on the Chesapeake bay at the age of 36 and after a disasterous end to a romantic relationship. Anna is a complex, and often quite exasperating character. She is balanced in the book by her aunt Rose, now 60 and the owner of a faltering Italian restaurant. Anna is welcomed home and agrees to manage the restaurant for the summer but is not ready to forgive and forget the family issues that caused her to leave. Rose is a more appealing character, particularly in regard to her relationship with Theo, a crusty Bay waterman, now sidelined with a degenerative disease. All of the characters are finely drawn, Frankie, the talented but troubled new chef at the restaurant, Eddie, the handsome but unreliable bartender and Carmen,the unmarried, overweight long time chef who is resentful of the new chef and the changes Anna wants to make to save the restaurant.The close up look at running a small family restaurant was particularly interesting and the bits of information about birds and bird photography, the avocation of Mason, another character were engrossing. (I will now try to catch a bird yawnings, soemthing I never knew they did) More than a love story, the book is honest and insightful as it explore the complicated dynamics of family and the ways individuals address their own family history. Anna's apparent dysfunction and inabilty to sustain relationships seems as much due to her own unforgiving nature as the tough issues she dealt with as a child and young woman. Our desire to paint family members as either black or white, good or bad is illuminated as Anna addresses her memories of her mother and father as well as Rose. More than a good summer read, the book has enough interest to make your reading list in any season.

Rating:
Summary: YAWN!!!!!
Review: Two years ago, I read Patricia Gaffney's The Saving Graces while on vacaton at the shore. It ended up being the best book I read that entire summer. When I saw that this author had a new book coming out for this summer, I bought it immediately with the intention of saving it for my vacation in the hope that I'd, once again, find another summer favorite in Gaffney's new offering. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. Even though Lavyrle Spencer has retired, I had the feeling that I was reading one of her stories -- albeit a very poor rendition of one.

The setting is the Eastern Shore of Maryland but the reader never really gets the feeling that they are anywhere near the water, even though one of the characters lives on a boat. Anna Fiore has returned to her childhood home to help her Aunt Rose bring some life back into the failing family restaurant. This would all be well and good except for the fact that Anna really doesn't want to be there (or so she says) and fights her aunt and friends constantly by continually making sure they understand this is a "temporary" arrangement. By this time, I was wishing that Anna would leave already instead of waiting around while everyone begs her to stay. The reader will learn why she is so antagonistic towards her aunt and what the grudge is that she still holds against her -- some twenty years later.

I've often been involved in discussions as to whether one can truly enjoy a book if they can't stand the characters. I find this very hard to do and this book is a perfect example of my contention. It is filled with surly, self-serving, phobia filled, sickly, beseeching and bad-tempered individuals who supposedly will all come together in a common goal. If the saying that "opposites attract" is true, then this book is right on target with its character development even though the combinations stretch one's imagination to the limit at times.

My last criticism is in the title and the cover. I feel that this cover, of a white picket fence set in the sand dunes, is meant to give summer readers that "beachy" feeling they are looking for. It's deceptive because it is not a "beachy" feeling kind of book. And, what's up with the title FLIGHT LESSONS?? -- it's really not indicative at all of the story. The proper cover should have been that of a restaurant and the title perhaps "Cooking Lessons" but that might have been too boring (like this book). Well, whatever lesson was to be learned, I must have missed it.

This three star rating, by the way, is on the low end of the scale almost leaning towards two stars.