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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
This was recommended to me and I found it a challenging but interesting read. It's not a linear read but a series of vignettes with some longer ones that are interspersed with other smaller ones. The unifying topic of travel and flight ties them all together.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I picked up a copy of Flights while wandering among the shelves of Foyles in London, and read almost half of it on the rest of that trip while travelling across Europe on trains, boats and planes. Upon returning I set it aside for some time and only finished it almost a full year after I started. One could conclude that the book is best enjoyed by travellers, as its bite-sized and atmospheric quality allows for reading in short bursts, but I admit my procrastination was also partly to blame.
Flights is ostensibly a book about travel, but unlike the typical travelogue, it is more interested in internal states of mind and how bodies move and transform through space and time. Much like a nomadic traveller, the book picks up and leaves a large variety of threads as it progresses and is structured as a collection of 116 fragments that range from a single sentence to over 30 pages: these contain short stories, snippets of reimagined history, thoughts, obscure facts, personal anecdotes and brief observations. This form could be compared to cabinets of curiosities or Wikipedia, both of which feature in the book. Though the English title is rather neutral, the book’s Polish title is far more suggestive. Bieguni is the name of a nineteenth century Russian Orthodox sect that believed that the Antichrist could only be escaped by being in constant motion and never settling down in one place. Similarly, the book oscillates between these two extremes.
Of the longer stories, there are largely two categories: One veers toward the slightly macabre as the stories share an interest in anatomy and the preservation of body parts: the real-life 17th century Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen who dissected his own amputated leg; the fictional Dr Blau who is obsessed with finding new methods of plastination; the pleas of a woman whose slave father’s body was taxidermied and displayed in a museum; the smuggling of Chopin’s heart from Paris to Warsaw. The other category of stories concern people in the present day who, in one way of another, decide to abruptly depart from the trajectories of their daily lives: Kunicki, whose wife and son disappear in the middle of a holiday on the Croatian island of Vis; a ferry operator who one day decides to take a different route; a mother who leaves the responsibilities of her family and survives in the Moscow metro, meeting one of the bieguni; a woman who embarks on a long trip to meet an old lover.
Surrounding these stories are the other smaller pieces, such as this one at the beginning on the narrator’s childhood encounter with the Oder river:
As a reader, I found the collection of fragments hit-and-miss, as I felt that some of them unnecessarily lengthened the book and also become too self-referential for my liking (for instance when the narrator talks about how she prefers to express her ideas like a “midwife, or of the tender of a garden whose only merit is at best sowing seed and later to fight tediously against weeds” through her stories, instead of “the simplicity of a lecture”). I also didn’t particularly enjoy the substantial space given to the study of anatomy and its history, though this is more of a personal preference. As other reviewers have pointed out, some of the fragments also make basic factual mistakes, for example that “we owe our short-term memory” to the hippocampus, when it is fact responsible for the creation of long-term memories. These might be minor details, but they put into question the other more obscure tidbits of information offered such as the ideas of travel psychology. Nevertheless, the prose is beautiful and at times reminiscent of Kundera with its philosophical allusions and novel perspectives on the elements of travel (e.g. airports, travel sizes, guidebooks, plastic bags). Best enjoyed while on the move.
3.5/5
Flights is ostensibly a book about travel, but unlike the typical travelogue, it is more interested in internal states of mind and how bodies move and transform through space and time. Much like a nomadic traveller, the book picks up and leaves a large variety of threads as it progresses and is structured as a collection of 116 fragments that range from a single sentence to over 30 pages: these contain short stories, snippets of reimagined history, thoughts, obscure facts, personal anecdotes and brief observations. This form could be compared to cabinets of curiosities or Wikipedia, both of which feature in the book. Though the English title is rather neutral, the book’s Polish title is far more suggestive. Bieguni is the name of a nineteenth century Russian Orthodox sect that believed that the Antichrist could only be escaped by being in constant motion and never settling down in one place. Similarly, the book oscillates between these two extremes.
Of the longer stories, there are largely two categories: One veers toward the slightly macabre as the stories share an interest in anatomy and the preservation of body parts: the real-life 17th century Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen who dissected his own amputated leg; the fictional Dr Blau who is obsessed with finding new methods of plastination; the pleas of a woman whose slave father’s body was taxidermied and displayed in a museum; the smuggling of Chopin’s heart from Paris to Warsaw. The other category of stories concern people in the present day who, in one way of another, decide to abruptly depart from the trajectories of their daily lives: Kunicki, whose wife and son disappear in the middle of a holiday on the Croatian island of Vis; a ferry operator who one day decides to take a different route; a mother who leaves the responsibilities of her family and survives in the Moscow metro, meeting one of the bieguni; a woman who embarks on a long trip to meet an old lover.
Surrounding these stories are the other smaller pieces, such as this one at the beginning on the narrator’s childhood encounter with the Oder river:
“To me, of course, the river paid no attention, caring only for itself, those changing, roving water into which – as I later learned – you can never step twice...Standing there on the embankment, staring into the current, I realised that – in spite of all the risks involved – a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to to last for all eternity.”The phrase about stepping into rivers is commonly attributed to Heraclitus, but it is an interpretation from Plato rather than a direct quote. Heraclitus’ own words are closer to the following: “On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow.” This results in a more nuanced meaning: that it is only through change that things can stay the same, as the last part of that extract suggests. If movement allows us to retain a sense of self and identity, the body is the vehicle that allows this movement, and it does this while also changing constantly at the cellular level. Tokarczuk makes connections between mapping the body and the world, and suggests through her curation of pieces that in order to fully appreciate travel, we also need to understand the finiteness and physicality of our own bodies, even as much of what we interact with in the world becomes more ethereal.
As a reader, I found the collection of fragments hit-and-miss, as I felt that some of them unnecessarily lengthened the book and also become too self-referential for my liking (for instance when the narrator talks about how she prefers to express her ideas like a “midwife, or of the tender of a garden whose only merit is at best sowing seed and later to fight tediously against weeds” through her stories, instead of “the simplicity of a lecture”). I also didn’t particularly enjoy the substantial space given to the study of anatomy and its history, though this is more of a personal preference. As other reviewers have pointed out, some of the fragments also make basic factual mistakes, for example that “we owe our short-term memory” to the hippocampus, when it is fact responsible for the creation of long-term memories. These might be minor details, but they put into question the other more obscure tidbits of information offered such as the ideas of travel psychology. Nevertheless, the prose is beautiful and at times reminiscent of Kundera with its philosophical allusions and novel perspectives on the elements of travel (e.g. airports, travel sizes, guidebooks, plastic bags). Best enjoyed while on the move.
3.5/5
adventurous
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
inspiring
medium-paced