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Turbulence: A Novel
Resumen
From the acclaimed, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of All That Man Is, a stunning, virtuosic novel about twelve people, mostly strangers, and the surprising ripple effect each one has on the life of the next as they cross paths while in transit around the world.
A woman strikes up a conversation with the man sitting next to her on a plane after some turbulence. He returns home to tragic news that has also impacted another stranger, a shaken pilot on his way to another continent who seeks comfort from a journalist he meets that night. Her life shifts subtly as well, before she heads to the airport on an assignment that will shift more lives in turn.
In this wondrous, profoundly moving novel, Szalay's diverse protagonists circumnavigate the planet in twelve flights, from London to Madrid, from Dakar to Sao Paulo, to Toronto, to Delhi, to Doha, en route to see lovers or estranged siblings, aging parents, baby grandchildren, or nobody at all. Along the way, they experience the full range of human emotions from loneliness to love and, knowingly or otherwise, change each other in one brief, electrifying interaction after the next.
Written with magic and economy and beautifully exploring the delicate, crisscrossed nature of relationships today, Turbulence is a dazzling portrait of the interconnectedness of the modern world.
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Reseñas
TURBULENCE by David SzalayThis very short book is a collection of very loosely connected vignettes. Each tells of an incident in the life of the “main” character, a person who has interacted in some way with the main character of the preceding story. Although each vignette poses a problem or life changing incident,, there are no conclusions and there is no background information. While each story is compelling in the moment, each is also dissatisfying in the lack of resolution. The writing is clear, the characters are distinct, the stories disparate. Ultimately, the novel is unsatisfying. It would serve a literature class well, but as a read for enjoyment – choose something else.3 of 5 stars
After discovering author, David Szalay a couple of years ago, I was very excited to read his latest book, Turbulence.Twelve chapters are cleverly titled with departure and arrival airport codes. The first chapter lays the ground work of relating a story as to why the character has traveled to their destination. Each proceeding chapter builds on the story preceding it. Usually, a character has traveled by plane to get to a destination for a specific reason but once at their destination they are faced with tragedy, deception, infidelity and sadness making the stories a bit depressing. We see through the well written stories that, on every continent, humans share the same struggle, We are not so different after all.I was hoping the story would bring the characters full circle but instead we return to the airport where the book began which, in a sense, infers there will be more stories with each go round the globe.Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for allowing me to read this e-ARC.
Good but really short. I enjoyed the connections between the stories but was left wanting to know a lot more about the various characters. Job well done on making me care about these people in such a short time.
One of my favourite books in 2016 was All That Man Is by David Szalay (which, I understand is pronounced ‘Shollay’). This was a collection of thematically linked stories focusing on a series of men, all of whom found themselves alone and a long way from their respective homes, and their musings on their situation. I recognise that that synopsis might serve to make it sound pretty dire - it was actually marvellous, written with a hypnotic charm. All That Man Is was a great critical and commercial success, and made it on to the Booker Prize Shortlist.In this latest book, Szalay has taken the format of thematically linked stories to a higher level. There are twelve stories, all identified by a combination of the three letter codes for international airports, each focusing on a peripheral character from the previous tale. This is a clever idea, but I suspect that in setting such a rigid format, Szalay imposed too great a burden on himself. While some individual stories show a moving insight into the challenges of some relationships, the format denies Szalay the space adequately to explore them.In the end, this book represented a triumph of form over substance, and was a great disappointment.
Turbulence, David Szalay, author; Gabra Zackman, narratorThis tiny novel packs a big punch. It begins with the story of a woman who is visiting her son who has been suffering with, and is being treated for, Prostate Cancer. His prognosis is unknown, but he is not optimistic. As the story reveals itself, using a brief anecdote in each of the lives of the 12 different characters, its purpose becomes known. Although they all, at first, seem to be from disparate and disconnected lives, connected by happenstance, in the end, the reader will see them knitted together, for the story comes full circle and returns to the place it began. The message in each character’s life is subtle and seems to make the point, not only that every life has uncertainty in it, but also that each life is fragile. However, it also intimates that life does go on, albeit in a different way for each of the characters. The main point is, that there is, indeed, turbulence in each life, and each of them must overcome their own crisis of character independently.There were two negatives in the narrative for me. One was what appeared to be a contrived insertion of a current day phrase used by Progressives, "toxic masculinity". It was unexpectedly uttered from the mouth of a character whom I would not have thought had ever heard of the phrase, considering her life and background. The other was the ending, which left me hanging. In conclusion, however, after thinking about it, I realized that although no character’s part in the story was fully completed, the reader would probably be left with the feeling that their lives would continue to go on after the final page was turned. After all, isn’t that what we all hope for not matter what we face in life?