Scan barcode
aamccartan's review
3.0
This would (as the original recommender said to me) make a very interesting book to teach. It was not as clean or as tight as The Absolutely True Diary, but still very good. There were some parts I liked a lot better than others (the writing felt more powerful in them than in the rest), but overall a very good book.
lovegirl30's review
4.0
I found myself not really caring for this Alexie novel. Flight has a fantastic narrative voice and addresses some many themes. Those are trauma, forgiveness, revenge, and violence. This isn't abnormal for Sherman Alexie, it just wasn't as good as I expected. Sherman Alexie uses his humor and writing skill to hilariously explore complex themes.
This book has some major issues. It actually is sort of rife with them. They really turned me off of this book. I am tired of Alexie's constant need to make every Native American have a drinking problem. It is very stereotypical. As someone who lives around a bunch of tribes and has Native friends, so that isn't a problem with every single person. He is so defensive about this he makes it a truth rather than a horrible stereotype.
Another issue is every single girl is only mentioned or discussed in her sexual appeal. I understand that the narrator is a fifteen-year-old boy but it got old for me. I just don't like the view that women are sex objects that are one dimensional, while men have all the fun in these novels.
The ending of this book was so cheesy and too neat. I found it too has been wrapped in too neat of a bow. Our main character finally trusted again after finding an adopted home with a white cop. I disliked that a huge amount of this book is a mixed kid trying to figure out how to be Native, but the ending doesn't match that with him basically hating on his identity.
Don't even get me started on the 9-11 paranoia.
In summary, I am not a huge fan of this book, but I am a huge fan of Alexie. I disliked this one but I do believe it is worth reading though. I just think this book took on too many political and emotional themes.
This book has some major issues. It actually is sort of rife with them. They really turned me off of this book. I am tired of Alexie's constant need to make every Native American have a drinking problem. It is very stereotypical. As someone who lives around a bunch of tribes and has Native friends, so that isn't a problem with every single person. He is so defensive about this he makes it a truth rather than a horrible stereotype.
Another issue is every single girl is only mentioned or discussed in her sexual appeal. I understand that the narrator is a fifteen-year-old boy but it got old for me. I just don't like the view that women are sex objects that are one dimensional, while men have all the fun in these novels.
The ending of this book was so cheesy and too neat. I found it too has been wrapped in too neat of a bow. Our main character finally trusted again after finding an adopted home with a white cop. I disliked that a huge amount of this book is a mixed kid trying to figure out how to be Native, but the ending doesn't match that with him basically hating on his identity.
Don't even get me started on the 9-11 paranoia.
In summary, I am not a huge fan of this book, but I am a huge fan of Alexie. I disliked this one but I do believe it is worth reading though. I just think this book took on too many political and emotional themes.
froydis's review
5.0
Incredibly powerful book. This is the first Sherman Alexie I've read, but it certainly won't be the last. A profound and moving examination of the nature of hate, love, identity and self-acceptance. I highly recommend this book!
kristinjones28's review
3.0
This is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read. I can genuinely say that I didn’t see any of the twists or turns coming. For a minute I thought it was a total plane wreck (pun intended), but I’m very glad I finished reading it. The end turned out to be quite delightful.
felixray's review
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
vdarcangelo's review
3.0
This review originally appeared in the BOULDER CAMERA
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_13079928
In award-winning books such as "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," "Indian Killer" and "Reservation Blues," author Sherman Alexie has tackled issues of displacement, racism, sexual identity and the challenges of being a Native American in modern America. But never has he captured the zeitgeist as well as he has with his new novel, "Flight," which he'll sign tonight at the Boulder Book Store.
Alexie, 40, is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who grew up on a reservation in Wellpinit, Wash. He currently lives in Seattle and has authored nearly 20 books, primarily writing poetry and short fiction, though he has written three novels and two screenplays.
"Flight" is Alexie's first novel in more than 10 years, and it deals with the themes of anger, disenfranchisement and senseless violence masquerading as revenge, like that witnessed on the Virginia Tech campus on April 16. In light of recent events, Alexie's newest work of fiction is a parable that almost reads like prophecy.
The book's protagonist is an angry 15-year-old foster-home runaway who goes by Zits because of the prodigious acne that scars his face. After befriending and being tutored by a militant, well-read gutterpunk named Justice, Zits arms himself in preparation for a shooting spree at a bank.
But just as the slaughter begins, Zits somehow exits his own body and occupies that of another, and with that his body-hopping, time-traveling journey has begun. Throughout the book he enters the bodies of numerous people at various points in history: He experiences the war between Indians and whites from both sides of the battle; he inherits the body of an FBI agent on an Indian reservation; and in the book's most poignant twist, he awakes as a drunk, homeless man with a final lesson to teach.
The lesson is that life is sacred, and Alexie says he wrote "Flight" as his response to the messages his two children have been getting from the news and from their classmates regarding the war in Iraq.
"How do you explain violence to your children?" Alexie says.
While the events at Virginia Tech and similar school slayings are "horrible," they're not surprising, he says, especially in light of the daily images and messages coming out of Iraq.
"It's sort of the culmination of war's influence on daily life," Alexie says. "This kid, this shooter (at Virginia Tech), heard our politicians justifying extreme violence for years. The amorality of politicians is a lot more influential than the amorality of rap music or the Second Amendment."
At the time he began writing "Flight," Alexie — one of America's most heralded young authors, whose breakthrough book "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" was the basis for the film "Smoke Signals" — was working on a young adult novel, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," due for release in September. It was during this process that the character of Zits bubbled to the surface.
"It was a struggle to find a young adult voice," Alexie says. "This rowdier voice kept popping up."
Eventually, he needed to give wings to this "rowdier" voice, and in some ways he considers the result a rewrite of a classic American novel, Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five." Like Vonnegut's tome, "Flight" involves time travel and explores the enduring trauma of violence and the self-perpetuating nature of anger. ("Anger is never added to anger," Alexie writes. "It multiplies."). Ironically, the day after the book's Canadian release, on April 11, Vonnegut passed away in his Manhattan home.
But it was less the themes and more the style of Vonnegut's work that inspired Alexie, who is known for his direct, yet poetic use of language that relies more on action than setting.
"His simplicity of style always influenced me," he says. "Vonnegut was always in the moment that mattered. He didn't allow lyricism to distract him from his art. Lyricism can get in the way of a great novel."
The quick-paced, no-frills language of "Flight" keeps the reader in the moment, whether that be in a bank in Seattle moments before a disenfranchised youth is about to open fire or in an Indian war camp as a teenager is being forced to take revenge by disfiguring a juvenile enemy combatant.
But whatever the era, the sentiment of "Flight" is symptomatic of current events. The New Yorker once named Alexie one of its 20 Writers for the 21st Century, and it's likely that some of his literary output will last 100 years or more. But for now, with "Flight," Alexie is firmly entrenched in the moment.
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_13079928
In award-winning books such as "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," "Indian Killer" and "Reservation Blues," author Sherman Alexie has tackled issues of displacement, racism, sexual identity and the challenges of being a Native American in modern America. But never has he captured the zeitgeist as well as he has with his new novel, "Flight," which he'll sign tonight at the Boulder Book Store.
Alexie, 40, is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who grew up on a reservation in Wellpinit, Wash. He currently lives in Seattle and has authored nearly 20 books, primarily writing poetry and short fiction, though he has written three novels and two screenplays.
"Flight" is Alexie's first novel in more than 10 years, and it deals with the themes of anger, disenfranchisement and senseless violence masquerading as revenge, like that witnessed on the Virginia Tech campus on April 16. In light of recent events, Alexie's newest work of fiction is a parable that almost reads like prophecy.
The book's protagonist is an angry 15-year-old foster-home runaway who goes by Zits because of the prodigious acne that scars his face. After befriending and being tutored by a militant, well-read gutterpunk named Justice, Zits arms himself in preparation for a shooting spree at a bank.
But just as the slaughter begins, Zits somehow exits his own body and occupies that of another, and with that his body-hopping, time-traveling journey has begun. Throughout the book he enters the bodies of numerous people at various points in history: He experiences the war between Indians and whites from both sides of the battle; he inherits the body of an FBI agent on an Indian reservation; and in the book's most poignant twist, he awakes as a drunk, homeless man with a final lesson to teach.
The lesson is that life is sacred, and Alexie says he wrote "Flight" as his response to the messages his two children have been getting from the news and from their classmates regarding the war in Iraq.
"How do you explain violence to your children?" Alexie says.
While the events at Virginia Tech and similar school slayings are "horrible," they're not surprising, he says, especially in light of the daily images and messages coming out of Iraq.
"It's sort of the culmination of war's influence on daily life," Alexie says. "This kid, this shooter (at Virginia Tech), heard our politicians justifying extreme violence for years. The amorality of politicians is a lot more influential than the amorality of rap music or the Second Amendment."
At the time he began writing "Flight," Alexie — one of America's most heralded young authors, whose breakthrough book "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" was the basis for the film "Smoke Signals" — was working on a young adult novel, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," due for release in September. It was during this process that the character of Zits bubbled to the surface.
"It was a struggle to find a young adult voice," Alexie says. "This rowdier voice kept popping up."
Eventually, he needed to give wings to this "rowdier" voice, and in some ways he considers the result a rewrite of a classic American novel, Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five." Like Vonnegut's tome, "Flight" involves time travel and explores the enduring trauma of violence and the self-perpetuating nature of anger. ("Anger is never added to anger," Alexie writes. "It multiplies."). Ironically, the day after the book's Canadian release, on April 11, Vonnegut passed away in his Manhattan home.
But it was less the themes and more the style of Vonnegut's work that inspired Alexie, who is known for his direct, yet poetic use of language that relies more on action than setting.
"His simplicity of style always influenced me," he says. "Vonnegut was always in the moment that mattered. He didn't allow lyricism to distract him from his art. Lyricism can get in the way of a great novel."
The quick-paced, no-frills language of "Flight" keeps the reader in the moment, whether that be in a bank in Seattle moments before a disenfranchised youth is about to open fire or in an Indian war camp as a teenager is being forced to take revenge by disfiguring a juvenile enemy combatant.
But whatever the era, the sentiment of "Flight" is symptomatic of current events. The New Yorker once named Alexie one of its 20 Writers for the 21st Century, and it's likely that some of his literary output will last 100 years or more. But for now, with "Flight," Alexie is firmly entrenched in the moment.
_mariaalice_'s review
4.0
This book is so good.
I related so much to Zits! He's just a boy that doesn't know how to deal with his emotions
it's an amazing book, I really recommend it
I related so much to Zits! He's just a boy that doesn't know how to deal with his emotions
it's an amazing book, I really recommend it
sandylovesbooks's review
5.0
In the library where I checked this book out had it in adult fiction but it probably should have been in the ya section. I guess because it has some bad words in it.
I so loved this book. It's about Zits who is such an Indian kid and very angry, just wanting someone to accept him. It's emotional and rewarding and you really feel for Zits.
A couple of thoughts I had while reading this book:
page 128 - "Flight is supposed to be beautiful. It's supposed to be pure." I thought this said so much.
page 133 - Zits/Zits dad was wearing a shirt that said "Fighting terrorism since 1492".
(I've been trying to insert a picture of the meme for the tshirt he was wearing. Just go to google and type that in and you can see the memes.)
I so loved this book. It's about Zits who is such an Indian kid and very angry, just wanting someone to accept him. It's emotional and rewarding and you really feel for Zits.
A couple of thoughts I had while reading this book:
page 128 - "Flight is supposed to be beautiful. It's supposed to be pure." I thought this said so much.
page 133 - Zits/Zits dad was wearing a shirt that said "Fighting terrorism since 1492".
(I've been trying to insert a picture of the meme for the tshirt he was wearing. Just go to google and type that in and you can see the memes.)
missprint_'s review
4.0
Published in 2007, "Flight" is one of Sherman Alexie's more recent novels. His critically acclaimed YA debut "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" came out a few months after "Flight's" publication. Together these novels illustrate how teen narrators can comfortably inhabit both adult and young adult novels. More about that later.
The book starts with a simple request from the narrator: "Call me Zits. Everybody calls me Zits." In other words, the narrator has no name. Given the structure of the novel, this choice actually works. Throughout the story, Zits is rarely called by any kind of name that would be termed as his own. The opening line also tells readers everything they need to know about Zits. Specifically that this fifteen-year-old half-Irish, half-Indian kid doesn't think enough of himself to bother using his own name. Worse, Zits is pretty sure no one else thinks much better of him.
Orphaned at six and in foster care since he was ten, Zits has slipped through the cracks and is truly a lost soul. After an unceremonious exit from his twentieth foster home and his latest stint in the kid jail in Seattle's Central District, Zits starts to think that maybe he doesn't really need a family. Maybe what he needs is some kind of revenge.
But things don't go as planned. Instead of punishing the white people who are abstractly responsible for his present situation, Zits finds himself on a time-traveling, body-shifting quest for redemption and understanding.
Zits' first "stop" is inside the body of a white FBI agent during the civil rights era in Red River, Idaho. From there he moves to the Indian camp at the center of Custer's Last Stand, then a nineteenth century soldier, a modern pilot with his own variety of demons and, finally, Zits finds himself in a body more familiar than he'd like to admit.
As many other reviewers are quick to point out, "Flight" is Alexie's first novel in ten years. Unlike previous works, where characters and plots intersected (even in his short stories), this novel remains disjointed. It's the kind of book that could easily be seen as a grouping of short stories. Except that each segment follows Zits' spiritual evolution. For this reason, the novel is obviously much more character driven than plot driven. But Alexie makes it work.
I consider flight to be adult fiction. Zits is a teen, so it could be YA, but that fact is largely irrelevant to the main machinations of the novel--which is why it's an adult book but "True Diary" whose narrator is close to Zits' age is a YA book.
Finally, a word on the ending of the novel: It's optimistic. There is some talk that the ending is too up, that things come together a bit too easily. In terms of the plot that could be true although I'm more of a mind that the ending was already in the works from the beginning (the fact that "The wounded always recognize the wounded" and other events support me in this claim).
Some have claimed that the happy ending might be reason to suggest that "Flight" is a YA book because only a book written for teens would have such an abrupt ending. That's bogus. This is an adult book that teens can enjoy and the ending doesn't change that. After reading this novel it becomes clear that Zits has been through a lot. Way more than any fifteen-year-old should have to take. For Alexie to end the novel in any other way would have been a slap in the face both for Zits and the readers invested in his fate.
"Flight" is a really quick read (I finished it in a day) and entertaining throughout. The novel doesn't have the depth of character found in "[b:Reservation Blues|6159|Reservation Blues|Sherman Alexie|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1398195783s/6159.jpg|1781]" or "True Diary" but the story remains different enough from Alexie's usual work to make "Flight" a refreshing departure nonetheless.
You can find this review and more on my blog Miss Print
The book starts with a simple request from the narrator: "Call me Zits. Everybody calls me Zits." In other words, the narrator has no name. Given the structure of the novel, this choice actually works. Throughout the story, Zits is rarely called by any kind of name that would be termed as his own. The opening line also tells readers everything they need to know about Zits. Specifically that this fifteen-year-old half-Irish, half-Indian kid doesn't think enough of himself to bother using his own name. Worse, Zits is pretty sure no one else thinks much better of him.
Orphaned at six and in foster care since he was ten, Zits has slipped through the cracks and is truly a lost soul. After an unceremonious exit from his twentieth foster home and his latest stint in the kid jail in Seattle's Central District, Zits starts to think that maybe he doesn't really need a family. Maybe what he needs is some kind of revenge.
But things don't go as planned. Instead of punishing the white people who are abstractly responsible for his present situation, Zits finds himself on a time-traveling, body-shifting quest for redemption and understanding.
Zits' first "stop" is inside the body of a white FBI agent during the civil rights era in Red River, Idaho. From there he moves to the Indian camp at the center of Custer's Last Stand, then a nineteenth century soldier, a modern pilot with his own variety of demons and, finally, Zits finds himself in a body more familiar than he'd like to admit.
As many other reviewers are quick to point out, "Flight" is Alexie's first novel in ten years. Unlike previous works, where characters and plots intersected (even in his short stories), this novel remains disjointed. It's the kind of book that could easily be seen as a grouping of short stories. Except that each segment follows Zits' spiritual evolution. For this reason, the novel is obviously much more character driven than plot driven. But Alexie makes it work.
I consider flight to be adult fiction. Zits is a teen, so it could be YA, but that fact is largely irrelevant to the main machinations of the novel--which is why it's an adult book but "True Diary" whose narrator is close to Zits' age is a YA book.
Finally, a word on the ending of the novel: It's optimistic. There is some talk that the ending is too up, that things come together a bit too easily. In terms of the plot that could be true although I'm more of a mind that the ending was already in the works from the beginning (the fact that "The wounded always recognize the wounded" and other events support me in this claim).
Some have claimed that the happy ending might be reason to suggest that "Flight" is a YA book because only a book written for teens would have such an abrupt ending. That's bogus. This is an adult book that teens can enjoy and the ending doesn't change that. After reading this novel it becomes clear that Zits has been through a lot. Way more than any fifteen-year-old should have to take. For Alexie to end the novel in any other way would have been a slap in the face both for Zits and the readers invested in his fate.
"Flight" is a really quick read (I finished it in a day) and entertaining throughout. The novel doesn't have the depth of character found in "[b:Reservation Blues|6159|Reservation Blues|Sherman Alexie|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1398195783s/6159.jpg|1781]" or "True Diary" but the story remains different enough from Alexie's usual work to make "Flight" a refreshing departure nonetheless.
You can find this review and more on my blog Miss Print