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Dear American Airlines: A Novel, , Miles, Jonathan, Very Good, 6/2/2009 12:00:01
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Located in: Simi Valley, California, United States
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eBay item number:386630322152
Item specifics
- Condition
- ISBN
- 9780547237909
- Book Title
- Dear American Airlines : a Novel
- Item Length
- 8in
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Publication Year
- 2009
- Format
- Trade Paperback
- Language
- English
- Item Height
- 0.5in
- Genre
- Fiction
- Topic
- Family Life, Epistolary, Literary, Humorous / General
- Item Width
- 5.3in
- Item Weight
- 5.8 Oz
- Number of Pages
- 192 Pages
About this product
Product Information
Sometimes the planes don't fly on time. Bennie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughter's wedding when his flight is canceled. Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of O'Hare airport, he watches the clock tick and realizes that he will miss the ceremony. Frustrated, irate, and helpless, Bennie does the only thing he can: he starts to write a letter. But what begins as a hilariously excoriating demand for a refund soon becomes a lament for a life gone awry, for years misspent, talent wasted, and happiness lost. A man both sinned against and sinning, Bennie writes in a voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit, heart-on-sleeve emotion, and wide-ranging erudition, underlined by a consistent groundnote of regret for the actions of a lifetime -- and made all the more urgent by the fading hope that if he can just make it to the wedding, he might have a chance to do something right. A margarita blend of outrage, wicked humor, vulnerability, intelligence, and regret, Dear American Airlines gives new meaning to the term "airport novel" and announces the emergence of major new talent in American fiction.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
HarperCollins
ISBN-10
0547237901
ISBN-13
9780547237909
eBay Product ID (ePID)
71644601
Product Key Features
Book Title
Dear American Airlines : a Novel
Format
Trade Paperback
Language
English
Topic
Family Life, Epistolary, Literary, Humorous / General
Publication Year
2009
Genre
Fiction
Number of Pages
192 Pages
Dimensions
Item Length
8in
Item Height
0.5in
Item Width
5.3in
Item Weight
5.8 Oz
Additional Product Features
Reviews
[a] fine first novel...I normally don't like narratives marinated in alcohol and self-pity, but here it works because Benjamin isn't macho about his drinking, and because the tragic details are grounded by brutal honesty and leavened by humor., Dear American Airlines, Jonathan Miles' debut novel,begins as a scathing letter of complaint from a stranded traveler en route to his estranged daughter's wedding but quickly evolves in to a personal and surprisingly astute rant about life's challenges., This crisp yowl of a first novel from Miles, who covers books for Men's Journal and cocktails for the New York Times, finds despairing yet effusive litterateur Benjamin Ford midair in midlife crisis. Bennie is en route from New York, where he shares a cramped apartment with his stroke-disabled mother and her caretaker, to L.A., where he will attend his daughter Stella's wedding. He gets stranded at O'Hare when his connecting flight-along with all others-is unaccountably canceled. In the long, empty hours amid a marooned crowd, Bennie's demand for a refund quickly becomes a scathing yet oddly joyful reflection on his difficult life, and on the Polish novel he is translating. Bennie writes lightly of his dark years of drinking, of his failed marriages, about his mother's descent into suicidal madness and about her marriage to Bennie's father, a survivor of a Nazi labor camp. Bennie's father recited Polish poetry for solace during Bennie's childhood, inadvertently setting Bennie's life course; Bennie's command of language as he describes his fellow strandees and his riotous embrace of his own feelings will have readers rooting for him. By the time flights resume, Miles has masterfully taken Bennie from grim resignation to the dazzling exhilaration of the possible., Elizabeth Gilbert's first three books, Pilgrims, Stern Men, and the National Book Award nominee The Last American Man, received awards and acclaim, but her fourth, Eat, Pray, Love, a chronicle of her spiritual search and redemption following a difficult divorce, has put her on the bedside tables of millions of readers across the world. Her next book, Weddings and Evictions, a memoir about her unexpected journey into second marriage, will be published in 2009. I'm one of those readers who can't get enough of Martin Amis novels, since Amis--a savage misanthrope who sometimes writes, it seems, with a drill bit--is a guilty pleasure of mine from way back. So it's no wonder that I fell so hard for the bitter, hilarious, dark, twisted, and wonderfully written delights of Dear American Airlines--the most Amis-like novel I've ever read. Jonathan Miles is a first-time novelist (and--full disclosure--friend of mine) whose journalism I've long admired for its clear, humane prose. I never suspected that he had a book like this in him, and--frankly--now that I do know, I'm a little worried for his mental state (even as I'm totally impressed with his writing.)The novel relays the tale of Bennie Ford, a man who is marinating like a cocktail olive in the sour middle-aged juices of his own mistakes, but who has decided to redeem himself completely by attending the wedding of his estranged daughter. Now, as some of us have learned from painful personal experience, it's not always easy to redeem a lifetime of screw-ups in one weekend, but that doesn't deter Bennie from heading to the airport to fly off to what he has decided is the most important event in his life. (The fact that he doesn't seem to notice that the wedding should actually be the most important event in his DAUGHTER'S life, not his, is an early clue of his particular breed of hilarious narcissism.) But at the airport is where his troubles begin, as American Airlines cancels his flight and thus--as far as he is concerned--destroys his life. What follows is a complaint letter raised to the level of high narrative art. I have never before encountered a novel written in the form of a complaint letter, and we can safely assume there will never be another such after this one, just because Miles has created an inimitable story here--one which, despite all the dark wit of its narrator--leaves room in the sad margins for real heartbreak, real feeling, real life. (This is something Amis himself wasn't able to do until many years into his career.) This is the most entertaining first novel I've read in a long while, as well as a searing cautionary tale. Bring it to the airport with you next time you fly somewhere to change your life..., A flinty, funny, irreverent, and heartbreaking first novel. The writing reminded me of brilliant, early days Martin Amis--except with redemption and hope. It's not easy to write a book this good, but Jonathan Miles makes it seem effortless., "[Dear American Airlines] a heartfelt exploration of one man's psychic deterioration and the slim reed of hope to which, miraculously, he still clings...Miles has created a human being adrift, like all of us, in circumstances mostly not of his making and with no other choice but to try to muddle through." -- David Ulin, Los Angeles Times
Copyright Date
2009
Dewey Decimal
813/.6
Intended Audience
Trade
Dewey Edition
22
Item description from the seller
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eBay item number:386630322152
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Simi Valley, California, United States
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