Flying in Place

by Susan Palwick

Paperback, 1993

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Tor Books (1993), Mass Market Paperback, 224 pages

Description

Once in a while, a first novel arrives like a bolt of lightning, commanding attention with an explosion of power, grace, and light. Flying in Place is such a book. As unflinching as The Lovely Bones, as startling as Beloved, it is a work to bear witness, with bravery and compassion, for the experience of millions of readers and their loved ones. Emma is twelve, a perfectly normal girl, in a perfectly normal home. With a perfectly normal father, who comes into her bedroom every night in the hours before dawn. Emma will do anything to escape. From the visits. From the bodies. From the breathing. Even go walking on the ceiling, which is where Emma meets Ginny, the sister who died before she was born. Ginny, who knows things. Ginny, who can fly.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member missysbooknook

Emma is a 12 year old overweight girl, being sexually abused by her father. She learns to get through the ordeals by "leaving her body". While she is doing this, she meets an older sister that passed away years before. This is a heartbreaking story of sadness, abuse and loss.

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LibraryThing member yargles

This book tackles a very difficult subject: a parent who molests his child. Everything about the subject is distasteful, yet Susan Palwick does a very good job of telling the story through 12 year old Emma, the victim of the abuse. What Emma does to protect herself from her father's behavior,

something over which she has no control, is written with such credibility it's easy to believe this story could actually happen.

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LibraryThing member justablondemoment

Totally blown away by this book. It left me speechless after the last page. Such a heart gripping look at a topic that makes normal people want to go postal. Highly recommend!!!

LibraryThing member karamazow

This book has been harvesting so much praise, that it almost becomes impossible to say something adverse. Still, I think the book is a bit overrated. The subject matter (sexual child abuse by a father) makes for cautious reading (and writing), but the subject is luckily developed without any

downright horror scenes, which is a boon. Victim 12-year old Emma learns to leave her body, in order that she does not have to consciously experience every rape. 'Outside' she meets her deceased sister, whose conversation at first is gibberish to Emma, but later on proves to be instrumental to the books' conclusion and solution. So far so good. It's original, readably written and the story is enchaining and moving.
What's not so good, though, is the cardboard character of almost all of the protagonists. The father is a cartoon: a cold and criminal brute with no other sides at all. The uncaring and hopelessly narrow-minded mother, a snob avant la lettre is only slightly better. The loud, ramshackle and ultimately kindhearted neighbours are prototypes of never-failing good people, with no negative sides, except their being so unkempt. These seem out of place in a novel with such a realistic tone.
Even Emma herself seems somewhat one-dimensional. I could not really relate to the way she as a 12-year old still thinks her mother will die if she betrays what her father does to her.
By far the best personage is her sister Ginny, residing in a twilight 'middle-ground', where she is compelled to appear to give Emma a clue. These passages are in their utter strangeness very convincing. The final turns of the story-line are excellent too.
The book succeeds on the score of the development of the story, the careful way of addressing such a grievous subject and the credible portrayal of her dead sister and the twilight zone she lives in.
The monochrome characters are a let-down, though...

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