Aloft is set in the bland world of middle class Long Island. The protagonist Jerry Battle seems to be caught in a life crisis. He has coasted through life, much like the plane he loves to fly, but will only take up in perfect weather. Jerry has retired from the family landscaping business and now flies his plane and works part time at a travel agency. His son Jack has taken over the family business. Jerry admits that he is not a great man, being selfish and remote, needing attention so much so that his girlfriend of twenty years has left him months earlier. You learn that his Korean wife Daisy, who may have been manic depressive, died having mixed xanax and beer and swimming.

The plane represents Jerry’s detachment from his life. His relationship with his children Jack and Theresa is pretty shallow. He seems to coast through life as an observer. And it is intertesing to see how events can be interpreted by parent and child. At a dinner party thrown for Theresa and her fiance Paul, they discuss Jerry’s cooking abilities particularly right after the death of Daisy. Someone asks why he didn’t have Jack cook and the Theresa responds that Jerry was afraid it would feminize hm. “The fact of the matter was I didn’t want Jack to have to think of his dead mother every night, at least in a ritualized way, which in my thinking was sure to happen if he had to don an apron and fry up hamburgers. For a year or so after she dies he hardly said a word, he was just a kid with eyes, and as Theresa seemed the sturdier of the two in almost all respects, I made an executive decision to have him do other chores like repainting the back fence and rakingleaves and hosing out the garbarge cans, which he never once complained about, and I like to think it was the bracing physical activity that eventually snapped him out of it, though I probably mistaken on that one.”

Much of the dialogue seems unnatural, but Lee does make some great observations on the world, particularly on the mcmansions and spending habits of the upper middle class. To drive the book, Lee creates some events that are forcing Jerry out of his lifelong stupor. His girlfriend Rita has left him and is poised to marrry someone else. His father is fast slipping into old age. His daughter Theresa simultaneously finds out she is pregnant and has cancer. But they all seem like acts in a play, maybe showing how sterile modern suburban life can be. Some of the book feels forced, and you often find yourself wondering who is going to play certain characters in the movie. But there are some beautiful passages too: “And in the strangely comforting darkness I see not some instant flashign slide show of my finally examined and thus remorseful life but the simply framed picture of Theresa’s suggested grouping not in the least difficult to delimit or define, all our gentle players arrayed, with scant or even nothing of me in mind. I’ll go solo no more, no more.” Chang-Rae Lee’s portrait of the Battle family includes some wry and poignant observations that make rise above a melodramatic plot.

Here is a list of more reviews of this book if you are interested.

I know that a new editor has taken over at the NYT Book Review recently. It was a big deal on all the bookblogs. I did read the whole thing last week and I appreciate some of the new subtle changes he has made. There were several more fiction reviews, a nice piece on new erotic fiction by Emily Nussbaum, a nice take down of David Brooks, and just some good book choices. Included was a review of Kent Haruf’s Eventide, his follow up to . It was a good review in my opinion, agreeing with some of the things I had thought but articulated in a better way. But today, they have another review of Eventide, this time by Michiko Kakutani, everyone’s favorite cranky reviewer. What gives? Why give so much space to a mediocre book, especially one that you know many other newspapers and other Plainsongpublications are going to review? I seriously want an answer, so if anyone has an opinion, go ahead and give it. I personally would rather see them review more books, rather than review the same books twice. I remember they did the same with Joseph Wilson’s book The Politics of Truthas well.

Over at the Literary Saloon, they reviewed Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. They also post links to other reviews of the book as well, which is extremely helpful. While initially saying they think it his best book yet, they only gave it a B+ and this confuses me a bit. “We enjoyed his first two, but Mitchell has made strides: Cloud Atlas is considerably better, a more sustained effort where both the pieces and the whole work better.” Sounds like high praise to me, yet just the B+. Maybe they are more tough with the grades than I am.

Thanks to Bookslut for posting this article today. Actually, I don’t thank you at all, since the article turned my stomach with disgust. If it is true, and I do not see why I should doubt the veracity of the article, then we have a great deal of problems here. The article states that a teacher was fired and a student forced to destroy poems that are critical of the war in Iraq and the Bush administration. Uhm, hello? See, here I thought we were still living in the ‘land of the free’. But I guess it’s now the ‘land of free to write praise of us, but not criticize’. And it keeps changing. I am hoping that this is a case of an overeager principal or something, but I think deep down I know it’s just a reflection of what is happening here. Just makes my mood match the weather here in Boston—-grey and cold.

Robert Birnbaum has a really brilliant interview with Jim Shepard over at Identity Theory (a wonderful site by the way—full of in depth author interviews). As you may recall, I am a big fan of Shepard, having read Project X and Love and Hydrogen. I wish more people would read him.