About this item
Highlights
- Once in a while, a first novel arrives like a bolt of lightning, commanding attention with an explosion of power, grace, and light.
- About the Author: Susan Palwick teaches at the University of Nevada in Reno.
- 192 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Psychological
Description
About the Book
This debut novel by Palwick, a 1997 World Fantasy Award nominee for Best Novella ("GI Jesus"), is the story of Emma, a 12-year-old girl who is abused by her highly respected surgeon father. Emma's secret is too terrible to reveal, but too painful to endure much longer.Book Synopsis
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....
Review Quotes
"Packs a huge emotional wallop...Flying in Place is a brave and honest work, an impressive and important debut." --San Francisco Examiner on Flying in Place
"Chilling and finely tuned...Palwick avoids pat solutions, offering instead a deeply felt, deeply moving tale." --Publishers Weekly on Flying in Place "Rewarding...Palwick's characterization of Emma is superb, as truthful as that of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. Emma's compelling voice carries this book into the world of first-class storytelling." --Seattle Times on Flying in Place "A powerful and harrowing story about child abuse...Dramatizes its horrific theme with unflinching clarity and great dramatic power." --New York Newsday on Flying in Place "Simple, strong, and very powerful...a true page-turner...A book so achingly true you want to thank the author. A book like this, a story that can captivate us and raise our awareness, tells truths that need to be told." --Raleigh News & Observer on Flying in Place "Beyond its advantages as story and as storytelling, Flying in Place offers a very real portrayal of a very real vulnerability: not only the acute vulnerability of the betrayed, but also the residual fear that our society forces upon all girls and women. The portrayal is a subtle one, and all the more effective for that." --Voice of Youth Advocates on Flying in Place "The trauma of sexual abuse is described with beautiful, almost lyrical writing...The moving and compelling writing is sustained as the revelations unfold." --Library Journal on Flying in Place "By far the best novel I've read about abuse and childhood." --Feminist Bookstore NewsAbout the Author
Susan Palwick teaches at the University of Nevada in Reno. FLYING IN PLACE is her first novel.