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More About the Author
Product Description
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'Sherman Alexie...returns with his first adult novel in 10 years... well-written and heart-felt'
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'Flight is short and beautifully contained. An unusual and engaging story, perfectly evocative of the epochs it travels to'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A young teenage half-Indian, handed from one foster home to the next, involuntarily slips into the bodies of people in the past. What ensues is a journey through challenges to his and our views of what is right and what is wrong, wrapped up in unique settings and Native American history (at least for a European reader such as myself).
Alexie keeps his story right in balance - it never becomes a sermon, it never becomes moralistic, and the time-travelling into other people's bodies never becomes corny. The book is very short, probably for this very reason, but it pulled me right in.
The writing in the protagonist's voice cuts right to the core of his experiences, sometimes shockingly so (he is, after all, scarred by his abusive past). But this is a smart teenage boy, and as he reflects on the experiences of those people he temporarily "inhabits", he grows as a human being.
Just as a warning: if you're expecting to have your romantic notions about Native Americans met, don't read this book. Reality is more beautiful, and more challenging than that.
To others, I wholeheartedly recommend this book.
Alexie keeps his story right in balance - it never becomes a sermon, it never becomes moralistic, and the time-travelling into other people's bodies never becomes corny. The book is very short, probably for this very reason, but it pulled me right in.
The writing in the protagonist's voice cuts right to the core of his experiences, sometimes shockingly so (he is, after all, scarred by his abusive past). But this is a smart teenage boy, and as he reflects on the experiences of those people he temporarily "inhabits", he grows as a human being.
Just as a warning: if you're expecting to have your romantic notions about Native Americans met, don't read this book. Reality is more beautiful, and more challenging than that.
To others, I wholeheartedly recommend this book.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a book that takes off at a run and spins you along in its wake. I don't think it's a book for everyone - it got some quite mixed reviews - but I thought it was exceptional: witty, intense, fast-paced, and extremely thoughtful, with some very dark humour (the t-shirt saying, 'Fighting terrorism since 1492').
It starts with a teenaged boy - an angry, anti-social, abused teenaged boy - examining his acne in the mirror in yet another foster home. He's so spotty that he calls himself Zits: we only find out his real name at the very end of the book. His mother died when he was a young child and his Native American father never acknowledged him. He's been passed from pillar to post for a decade. He's a runaway, an arsonist, a spanner in the works. A few pages along, and he's about to commit mass murder in the lobby of a bank.
And then... he starts time travelling. First stop, an Indian reservation in the mid 1970s; second stop, Custer's Last Stand; third stop... and so it goes. Each time, he's in the head of one of the characters: he's an FBI man, an Indian child, a flying instructor and various others.
From all of this he learns about betrayal and revenge and, oddly enough, forgiveness. You might read this book and say the ending is just too neat to be credible, but it moved me and gripped me to the very last word.
It starts with a teenaged boy - an angry, anti-social, abused teenaged boy - examining his acne in the mirror in yet another foster home. He's so spotty that he calls himself Zits: we only find out his real name at the very end of the book. His mother died when he was a young child and his Native American father never acknowledged him. He's been passed from pillar to post for a decade. He's a runaway, an arsonist, a spanner in the works. A few pages along, and he's about to commit mass murder in the lobby of a bank.
And then... he starts time travelling. First stop, an Indian reservation in the mid 1970s; second stop, Custer's Last Stand; third stop... and so it goes. Each time, he's in the head of one of the characters: he's an FBI man, an Indian child, a flying instructor and various others.
From all of this he learns about betrayal and revenge and, oddly enough, forgiveness. You might read this book and say the ending is just too neat to be credible, but it moved me and gripped me to the very last word.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
After reading Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian I was looking forward to reading another of his books.
Flight is the story of, and is narrated by, Zits, a half white, half Native-American fifteen year old orphan with an acne problem and a tendency to move between foster-homes. After commiting an extreme act of violence as rebellion against his latest foster family, he finds himself on a trip back through time, stopping at a number of poignant times in the history of America. He sees the world through the eyes of people living at that time and finds out that history is much more than what we see in books.
I enjoyed this book. It actually packs more of an emotional punch than you'd expect at first. Despite the narrators problems, it's impossible not to like him. He's basically a messed up kid that just needs some care and I felt for him at times while reading.
This book also made me laugh quite a lot. I enjoyed Alexie's humour in Absolutely True Diary... and so was glad to see it was present here too.
The one thing I didn't like about this book, and the other in fact, is that Alexie seems to portray all Native Americans as drunks. Whilst I'm sure that some of them are, as with any walk of life, I'll take an educated guess that this is a huge mis-representation. This annoyed me a little.
Aside from that though, it was a fun read and I did actually learn a few things about American history.
Flight is the story of, and is narrated by, Zits, a half white, half Native-American fifteen year old orphan with an acne problem and a tendency to move between foster-homes. After commiting an extreme act of violence as rebellion against his latest foster family, he finds himself on a trip back through time, stopping at a number of poignant times in the history of America. He sees the world through the eyes of people living at that time and finds out that history is much more than what we see in books.
I enjoyed this book. It actually packs more of an emotional punch than you'd expect at first. Despite the narrators problems, it's impossible not to like him. He's basically a messed up kid that just needs some care and I felt for him at times while reading.
This book also made me laugh quite a lot. I enjoyed Alexie's humour in Absolutely True Diary... and so was glad to see it was present here too.
The one thing I didn't like about this book, and the other in fact, is that Alexie seems to portray all Native Americans as drunks. Whilst I'm sure that some of them are, as with any walk of life, I'll take an educated guess that this is a huge mis-representation. This annoyed me a little.
Aside from that though, it was a fun read and I did actually learn a few things about American history.
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