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Flying in Place
by Susan Palwick
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Tor Books (1992-05)
ISBN: 0312851839
EAN: 9780312851835
Dewy Decimal #: 813.54
Hardcover: 179 pages
Edition: 1st
SKU: 0806220015
Condition: Used: Like New
Comments: 1 inch tear in DJ Like new used condition. May have been read and may have slight corner bumping or cover or spine creases, but overall like new condition.
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Customer Reviews
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an emotionally gripping and completely different read
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-05-19
This was an excellent weekend read. It kept me interested the entire time and by the end..i was hanging on every word.
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Flying in Place
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-05-17
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Susan Palwick's story, "Flying in Place", is (at its core) about child abuse and the cage of loneliness it creates - it is about the desperate need for escape and one little girl's attempt to find it. A common theme? Yes. A common story? An average talent? No.
For one thing, Palwick throws the paranormal aspect into the mix. Ginny, Emma's long-dead sister, becomes her new-found source of solace; not only a treasured playmate, but Emma's most trusted confidant. And while Ginny's secret is one that might be fairly obvious to some readers, Palwick does an excellent job of concealing it right up to that crucial moment of hideous unveiling. But this is not the reason that I gave the book five stars (though it didn't hurt any). What I really enjoyed about "Flying in Place" were Palwick's characterizations and the novel's powerful conclusion ...
Emma's voice is most definitely Palwick's crowning achievement. It is emotionally raw and painfully - furiously - authentic. Palwick exquisitely captures the mired thoughts and feelings of a loyal, yet naive twelve year old caught in a desperately frightening situation. When you are in the pages of this book, you ARE Emma. You feel everything that she feels to a bone-chilling, crystalline perfection.
And, the conclusion of Palwick's story is refreshingly favorable. It doesn't bring about a purifying redemption - not for anyone involved in Emma's tragic situation. And I loved that about this book. I loved that it didn't have a fairy tale ending. Instead, Emma and the reader are left with the splayed and unraveled ends of a brutal tragedy; with the inexcusable destruction and gradual adaptation that parties involved in abuse must ultimately face.
Overall, "Flying in Place" is a sincere testament to the innocent strength of children, the incredible resilience of the human heart, and the astonishing ability of one's soul to thrive in the total absence of light.
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deep thought provoking drama
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-05-08
5 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
In Wisconsin, everyone in the small town thinks highly of surgeon Dr. Stewart Gray, who dines with the elite. However, the much adulated Dr. Gray hides a dark side from public view. Every night after his wife an English teacher falls asleep he visits his twelve years old daughter Emma to have his sexual way with her. Uncomfortable and with no place to escape, Emma flies away in her mind though her body remains in place. On her mental trips she begins meeting her sister Ginny who at ten years old died long before Emma was born.
Emma becomes more withdrawn with every nocturnal visit as her only friend is her sibling's spirit. School nurse Halloran notices the bruises on Emma's body and the negative trends of withdrawal and grades collapsing; she soon concludes that the epitome of upper crust society Stewart was assaulting his child. Still it is hard to prove until Emma's Aunt Donna arrives; she knows the real Dr. Stewart Gray not the image and believes history is repeating itself.
FLYING IN PLACE is a deep thought provoking reprint of an insightful very dark early 1990s tale. The key characters are purposely left as two dimensional. This approach enables the reader to decide whether the two sisters are actually flying together or just a defense mechanism of the preadolescent, but also restricts the cast as women are courageous or victims and men nice or sinful. Black and white with no gray, FLYING IN PLACE grips the reader from the moment the mask falls off of Stewart and never eases the emotional shock until Donna confronts him.
Harriet Klausner
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ORIGINAL AND DEVASTATING
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-10-29
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
Another author I never heard of (before or since), a book I never heard of, picked up off a book rack at the checkout of a local general store. Read the first 30 pages one night. Started the next night...and was up till 4AM finishing it! Absolutley could not put it down. I still tell people about it to this day, and I read it in 1992! Original, with real-life characters, it uses the "supernatural" not as it is used in ghost stories or horror, but as a backdrop that reveals the real-life events slowly unfolding, brilliantly and movingly telling of events of the past repeated in the present. Not an upbeat ending, but not downbeat, either. More about acceptance and cautious hope for the future, but laced with a touching sadness. To this day, absolutely one of the most memorable and devastating books I have ever read.
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Fascinating!
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-04-29
3 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Just a fascinating book that just accelerates in interest like a runaway locomotive. Very original and captivating.
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