A review by lilias
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

challenging funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

Flights balances the mapping of the human body, via polymer preservation, with the mapping of the world. Author Olga Tokarczuk ends up posing more questions than giving answers, as it seems to be of human nature to always ask questions, especially about ourselves. 

I knew this book would be about travel, and as someone who, for a decade, only had vivid dreams involving public transportation, including airports and airplanes as settings, I expected an expansion of my thinking about travel as a metaphor. But that’s what get tor starting this book with preconceived notions. 

I loved Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and I only loved sections of Flights, maybe half of the book. The other half I could have done without. The narrator’s musings, for example, for the most part, weren’t very interesting to me. But the short stories scattered about were wonderful. And I loved the final installment of the narrator as she boards a plane.