A review by dlberglund
Flight by Sherman Alexie

5.0

This book took longer than I expected to draw me in, but once it did, I was hooked. The narrator is a 15 year old boy (which I didn't realize when I picked it up...I just thought ooh! A Sherman Alexie novel is on sale!!) living in Seattle. His absent father is Indian, but he was raised by his white mom until he was 6 and she died. Then he bounces around to dozens of homes, running away and getting kicked out. The book shifts after he meets the slightly older Justice, while in jail. Justice changes the narrator's perspective and brings him to the pivotal moment in the narrator's life. At that moment, the book switches to magical realism. The narrator is zapped out of his body into the bodies of a series of people in other times and places. This is when the book had me hooked. I loved his journey through other people's pivotal moments, and loved the struggle between what the person's body wanted to do and what the narrator brought to the experience.
This was a very fast read for me, and I'd highly recommend it.