Flights

A thirteen-year-old hatches a plan of escape, solace, and utter independence through a dream of flight that’s both literal and figurative in this engrossing novel by National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard

As beset by the world as any thirteen-year-old—and maybe a little more so—Biddy Siebert does his best to negotiate both the intimacies and isolations of his world and his own maddening and slightly comical idiosyncrasies. His ferocious younger sister hates everyone, including him; his sprawling Italian family, when it comes to emotional matters, has the touch of a blacksmith; and his Catholic school education provides a ready framework against which he can measure himself as continually falling short of the ideal. As his grades slip and his family begins to come apart, Biddy searches for a focus and finds one during a trip in a family friend’s private plane: To rise above his troubles, he’s going to have to learn to fly.
 
Biddy resolves to steal the plane, having taught himself as a pilot through manuals and observation, and as he moves through the progressions of his plan, he slowly develops the confidence and independence he’s going to need later in life. In this compassionate and honest portrait of the challenges, missteps, and small successes of adolescence, Biddy is an unforgettable character whose problems might seem common but whose solutions are often extraordinary.

“A splendidly imagined novel about growing up, impressive in its simplicity and thrilling in its compassion.”  — The New York Times Book Review 

“Subtle, brilliant, beautifully wrought… with a wise and unforced insight into the shifting politics of family life… This novel needs to be savored moment by moment for its artistic cunning and sheer inventive wisdom.”   — The Washington Post Book World 

“Biddy’s struggles touch the buried childhood heart in all of us… A deft dismantling of the American psyche.”   — Newsday 

“Beautifully composed and written… Biddy is a wonderful character and Jim Shepard explains through him so much about the trauma of growing up that I urge Flights upon anyone who wants to understand.”  — The Boston Globe 

“Extraordinary… a soaring first novel — comic, compassionate, as rare in vision as the obsession with flying that lies at its heart… Jim Shepard is clearly a writer that is contributing to the state of the art.”   — John Hawkes 

“Poignant and powerful… A novel to put beside Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.”   — The San Francisco Chronicle  

“Wonderful… The hero of this fine first novel is one of the most endearing adolescents you’ll ever encounter.”  — The Philadelphia Enquirer 

“Exhilarating…This skillfully written and often moving first novel may call to mind two other memorable debuts: Ordinary People and Birdy.  — Publisher’s Weekly