About the Book
'Suspenseful, dazzling and moving' Rumaan Alam
'Arresting and powerful' Lily King
'Breathtakingly propulsive and insightful' Leslie Jamison
It’s 22 December and Henry, Kate and Martin are gathering with their partners and children at Henry and Alice’s house in upstate New York. It's the first Christmas since their mother passed and without her ever-present advice and gentle nudges to connect with each other when they need it most, the siblings have grown distant.
Their differences are all too apparent, from the lives they have forged for themselves to what they each want to do with their sole inheritance: their mother’s house. As they try and fail and try again to create new picture-perfect memories, tensions and old resentments rise, but they are forced to unite when a local family calls for help.
Compassionate and wise, Flight explores the meaning of family and home, and the gift of being together.
Praise for Lynn Steger Strong
‘Furious, aching and razor sharp’ Emma Cline
‘A deeply intelligent and sneakily moving novel about having the ground fall away beneath your feet. Strong ingeniously undercuts conventional wisdom about what it means to be a success in this world’ Jenny Offill
‘A defining novel of our age of left-behind families... as if Anne Helen Peterson's viral burnout article and John Steinbeck's oeuvre had a baby’ Vulture
‘Elizabeth's anxious, raw voice ties these threads together, coalescing into a story about the price women pay for craving what's just out of reach’ Time magazine
‘Through Elizabeth's experiences and in her propulsive voice, the novel explores race, class, privilege, coincidence, family, friendship and love’ Guardian
‘A smart, sharp novel’ Elle
‘Strong strips away at the imbalance of advantages that ultimately injure us all and the collisions that never cease. Yet, in this stunning novel, she never loses sight of the irrepressible desire to love, connect and forgive one another’ Observer
About the Author :
Lynn Steger Strong is the author of the novels Hold Still, Want, and the forthcoming Flight. Her non-fiction and criticism has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, the LA Times, the New Republic, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Columbia University.
Review :
‘Lynn Steger Strong is a master of family life, a wise chronicler of economic struggles real and imagined, of dreams versus responsibilities, and of nuances in relationships of all kinds. Arresting and powerful, Flight examines the possibility and pain of fierce love and hope in our time of looming existential threats’ Lily King, author of Writers and Lovers
‘A fateful few days in the life of two families becomes in Lynn Steger Strong’s hands a clear-eyed examination of our current moment. Flight probes deeply into grief and its aftershocks, what binds us to one another, the meaning of art itself. It's a book whose fleet movements belie its ambition. Suspenseful, dazzling and moving’ Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
‘A gorgeous novel, both intimate and expansive. Flight is packed full of wisdom about family, marriage, class, climate, love and loss. Lynn Steger Strong is a master of creating characters so funny, flawed and true that they feel like people you know. I couldn’t put it down’ J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Friends and Strangers
‘Breathtakingly propulsive and insightful, Flight gripped me from the very first page and didn’t let go. It asked my heart to pay better, closer attention to the world, because it pays such exquisite attention to the world: from botched gingerbread houses to cigarette breaks, every scene bristles and pulses with nuance. Strong is a writer who makes me feel reconfigured, more sharply attuned to the business of being alive; as if I have nerve endings that didn’t exist before reading her. Flight is a story about how we lose and find each other again – and how this finding is never done, because we are, all of us, many selves at once’ Leslie Jamison, author of The Recovering and Make it Scream, Make it Burn
‘With razor-sharp pacing and luminous prose, Lynn Steger Strong aims her keen eye on the complexities of siblings, marriage, motherhood and grief. Flight is a wonderfully alive look at the ways we try – defiantly and sometimes perilously – to love one another. You will want to gulp this book down in one sitting, but I urge you to slow down because its charms should be savored’ Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of Good Company
‘With deft, discerning prose, Strong writes beautifully about mothers and the struggles, fears, and joys of motherhood... A quiet domestic novel that soars’ Kirkus Reviews
‘A compelling portrait of how love and resentment are often twin sides of the same coin. Flight is its own portrait of struggle and strife, and yet a smooth and utterly compelling read’ Vogue
‘Strong’s writing soars effortlessly… True reconciliation, safety, stability, fulfillment: These are destinations along a flight path forever uncertain — though shot through, like this novel, with moments of transcendence’ Los Angeles Times
‘Strong is adept as characterizing this loss in all its manifestations, and in rendering the challenges inherent in three families trying to celebrate together… Once again, Strong demonstrates her talents for perception and nuance’ Publishers Weekly
'Part of the sense of life in the book comes from Strong’s distinctive prose style — compressed, telegraphic and gestural, one in which the sharp noticing of what might otherwise seem like ordinary details about a character or an exchange takes on a resonating depth' New York Times
'Strong is an exacting observer of families and their idiosyncrasies, in the mode of Anne Tyler and Jonathan Franzen... Strong keeps Flight in motion with twists of language and revelation' Washington Post
‘Three siblings face their first Christmas without a mother in this moving novel about grief and family. As they attempt to navigate the new dynamic and perform familiar festive rituals, old resentments and tensions between them are revealed and it takes an emergency in the local community to pull them together’ Good Housekeeping
'Flight doesn’t just juggle the interior lives of six protagonists with great dexterity; it also carefully delineates who these people are to each other, and where anger and jealousy might clip the wings of their better angels... Tightly plotted and vividly rendered' USA Today
'With compassion and a deep sense of understanding, Flight explores the nature of belonging, and what it means to truly be part of a community' Buzzfeed
‘Intricate and moving... reminiscent of Anne Tyler, that great chronicler of American families’ Irish Times
'Consoling and unsettling… Add enforced cheer, choreographed feasting and stifling expectations – not to mention the swirl of memories that it all triggers – and you’ve a combustible combination' Observer
