Flight A Novel by Lynn Steger Strong

 Book Excerpt:

"Arresting and powerful, Flight examines the possibility and pain of fierce love and hope in our time of looming existential threats." — Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers.

"Suspenseful, dazzling and moving." — Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind 

It's December twenty-second, and siblings Henry, Kate, and Martin have converged with their spouses at Henry's house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother's Florida house. Over the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals while also trying to decide what to do with their mother's house, their sole inheritance. Finally, as tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help. 

With the urgency and artfulness that cemented her previous novel Want as "a defining novel of our age" (Vulture), Strong once again turns her attention to the structural and systemic failings that are haunting Americans, but also to how family, friends, and strangers can support each other through the gaps. Flight is a novel of family, ambition, precarity, art, and desire, one that forms a decisive next step from a brilliant chronicler of our time."

Title: Flight
Author: Steger Strong
Publisher: Mariner Books
Reviewed By: Arlena Dean
Rating: Four
Review:
"Flight" by Lynn Steger Strong

My Assessment:

"Fight" was quite a read that this author presents to the reader that looks at family struggles and how the chaos of life can bring about different emotions and drama in characters as it did in this particular family.

We find three couples gathering at Christmas at one of the sibling's homes in New York [Alice and Henry]; both artists, but he is obsessed with climate, and Alice is also a social worker. This was the first time this group had been together since their matriarch died. Martin and Tess [Professor & Lawyer] come from Manhattan with two kids. Then there is Josh [that's another story], and Kate [was a housewife and mother from Richmond who misses her mom by keeping up with the family recipes and photos. But how will the subject go with the siblings and sisters-in-law converse about their mother's home that is located in Florida...their only inheritance...and no will? What havoc will come from this particular subject...fighting over the house? What will happen when Alice's case being a caseworker of Maddie, come into play when that situation comes about when the child is taken away from her mother, Quinn?

Be prepared for a lot to go on in this familiar family that will have one shaking their head quite a few times from the read, and they deal with 'grief, inheritance, emotional, children's issues, drama, and a house that needs to be disposed of soon.' Be ready for many names thrown around, so you will have to keep up with it all!

The reader must pick up 'Flight' and see how this story will unfold. It will be a heck of a good story.

Thanks to Mariner Books and Netgalley for the ARC.