Le Dernier exploit de Poxl West

by Daniel Torday, Pierre Brévignon (Translator)

Un récit éblouissant sur la transmission, l'épopée familiale, le deuil et l'amour.

Après avoir échappé aux nazis en Tchécoslovaquie au début de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le jeune Poxl West fuit aux Pays-Bas où il leur dame le pion une nouvelle fois et où il tombe éperdument amoureux de la belle Françoise. Pourtant, un beau jour, il tourne les talons et gagne la Grande-Bretagne. Réfugié à Londres, il n'a qu'un seul but : devenir pilote. Après avoir sauvé de nombreuses vies pendant le
Blitz et croiser la route de la jeune Glynnis, il intègre enfin la Royal Air Force. Bientôt, il participe à de périlleux bombardements aériens sur l'Allemagne. Véritable destinée de personnage de roman, la vie de Poxl est émaillée de rebondissements et péripéties.

Aujourd'hui retraité aux États-Unis, il fascine son neveu, Eli Goldstein, en lui racontant ses actes de bravoure, aventures et romances. Il en rassemble les meilleurs épisodes dans son autobiographie
Skylock qui devient un best-seller dès sa parution. Eli ne cesse de lire et de relire les épisodes de la vie trépidante de cet oncle qui incarne pour lui la quintessence.de la virilité. Pourtant, un jour, le mythe s'écroule : un journaliste du
New York Times a enquêté sur Poxl et met en question la véracité de ses exploits. Poxl West aurait-il pu s'arranger avec la réalité et trahir ses lecteurs en commençant par Eli ?

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, War, World War II, Historical, Jewish, Mystery

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 17, 2015

About the author

Daniel Torday is a two-time National Jewish Book Book Award recipient and winner of the 2017 Sami Rohr Choice Award for THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST. Torday's work has appeared in Conjunctions, The New York Times, Paris Review Daily, Tin House, and on NPR, and has been honored in both the Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays series. He is the Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College.

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Jewish teenager, Elijah, reveres the older man who is his Uncle Poxl. This man has time for him, takes him to museums, discusses art and literature with him and tells him stories of his life during the war. This is the bare bones of the story but this is a story within a story and telling more would ruin this book for future readers.

There is something so tender in the way this is written, the characters so likable. The art of storytelling, the interpretation of memory, experiences and regrets, the importance of relationships and the detriment of fame, are what I kept thinking about after finishing this book. It is difficult for me to explain why I liked this book as much as I did. It is a quiet book, a book full of regret and some deceit and yet it made me realize how fragile relationships are, how we need to take better care of and appreciate them. Poxl's war experiences are his own, but memories and relationships are universal, this book made me think and that is a good thing and enough of a thing for one book to do. Good and poignant read.

ARC from NetGalley.

[Robin Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the joy of reading this pre-publication and trust me, this is a book you want to read. More in a bit as I sort through what is and what isn't a spoiler, but for now just Hooray!!

[Carlos Peguer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Os pongo en situación: este libro es una novela que intercala dos historias. La primera, en una época un poco más moderna, nos cuenta la historia de Eli y la admiración que siente por su tío Poxl West, que recientemente ha publicado un libro superventas sobre su experiencia como piloto de la RAF durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Y como ya os imaginaréis, la otra línea argumental es el susodicho libro.

Casi al principio, poco después de la publicación del libro del tío Poxl, un estudiante universitario pregunta durante una de las presentaciones algo parecido a "¿De verdad era necesaria otra novela así?" Y aquí tenéis mi respuesta: no.

Mira que yo he leído pocas novelas históricas, pero esta es sumamente parecida a todas ellas. La historia trágica de un checo que quería matar nazis, que tiene unos cuantos amoríos de los que tiene que separarse por culpa de la guerra y por los que se atormenta cada cinco líneas. HOW ORIGINAL.

Se me ha hecho un libro insoportable, como ya os podéis imaginar. Me ha aburrido hasta la médula, me ha parecido repetitivo y cansino, y he estado tentado de dejarlo unas mil millones de veces. El sentimentalismo no resultaba realista y quizás demasiado forzado en algunas situaciones. No sé, a lo mejor es que este libro no es para mí. Lo único que me ha gustado un poquito más ha sido el final, pero para nada salvaba el resto del libro.

En fin: un libro nada recomendable, al menos por lo que a mí respecta.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joan Jett once sang that “Everybody needs a hero,” which is certainly the truth for fifteen-year-old Eli Goldstein, who is searching for a touchstone to transcend his Jewish consciousness, in 1980s Boston. His hippie-ish rabbi in Hebrew school has tried to turn him on to the kabbalah, but Eli worships his surrogate Uncle Poxl, a flamboyant and charismatic scholar, and a bomber pilot in WW II. During museum, opera, and symphony outings, Poxl taught Eli to appreciate the finer nuances of art; over sundaes at Cabot’s, Eli became the “constant listener” of Poxl’s manuscript pages of his (as yet) unpublished memoir, Skylock, about his time with the British RAF. Uncle Poxl became Eli’s mentor and first demonstrable Jewish hero.

However, Poxl’s story as Jewish witness to the War is also a confession of betrayal to the women he loved the most, including his mother, who he left behind in Eastern Europe during the Anschluss. Knowing his mother was sent to a concentration camp “was like imagining every star in the sky blotted out by some small boy with a pin whose touch extinguishes each light.” His bombing missions over Germany, we read, “had wrested fate from the inevitable bearing down of history.” Hence, Poxl’s revenge on the Nazis.

Poxl West, aka Leopold Weisberg, is a Czechoslovakian émigré who became a bomber pilot for the British RAF during WW II, leaving more than one lover behind in his wake. Once his memoir was published, he became an overnight literary sensation, but he also cut a dashing Errol Flynn-ish figure as a bomber pilot over Nazi Germany and lover of tragic women. The memoir is included in full, told in alternating sections with Eli’s story. Eli is now an adult, looking back on his adolescent years, and trying to come to terms with his own perceptions of memory, history, and betrayal. Poxl never sent the signed copies of his memoir to Eli as promised, which was just the first in a series of disappointments.

Eli’s narration provides an examination of the core of narration itself, and a searching depiction of love, told by way of a story within a story, two narratives in counterpoint to each other, but both accounts yearning to legitimize the transformation of personal odysseys. And how do we reconcile historical fact with personal truth? As Eli recalls, listening to his uncle read the memoir out loud to him, “It was as if he was crafting his great account before my eyes, and I don’t know that I’ve been so close to history since.”

I have only a few complaints, which register as minor against the scope of the novel’s merit. The memoir itself, outside of the second narrative, doesn’t strike me as a book that would become an overnight sensation in the 1980s. It may be a moving addition to the many Holocaust memoirs that have preceded it, but it doesn’t exactly break new ground, at least not proportional to its colossal success. Also, Skylock was considered too sexually graphic, which puzzled me. It was actually rather tame for the 1980s. And, Torday gets a little heavy-handed with clichés at times, but it is eclipsed by the bounty of painterly and poetic images.

Torday combines the structure of the novel with its theme, which rests on a twist that both undermines and underscores the memoir. As Poxl was recounting of the love of his life, a prostitute and singer of harmonies: “There was something to the act of harmonizing itself that smacked of precision: two voices doing two different things, diverging so they might come together as one, greater than either alone.” And that’s exactly what Torday does with this accomplished novel.

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to St Martin's Press and Netgalley for an opportunity to read an advance copy of The Last Flight of Poxl West. It's a narrative within a narrative. Eli recounts the story of his relationship with his "uncle" Poxl, a family friend who wrote a memoir about his experience as a Jewish fighter pilot during WWII. Eli idolizes Poxl and his stories. Interspersed with Eli's narrative is Poxl's memoir of his time during the war and just after. I really liked Eli's narrative and parts of Poxl's memoir. Torday is a good writer, and Eli is a compelling recognizable teenager as recounted from the perspective of Eli as an adult. Poxl's story of his trajectory from Prague to England via Rotterdam just before the war is also really well done. I must confess that I struggled a bit with the middle parts of Poxl's story -- especially the parts about his training and his flights during the war. Without giving anything away, this aspect of Poxl's memoir is crucial to the whole book, but I could have done without some of the lengthy detail. It's a small criticism. This is a very good debut. I will be looking for Torday's next book.

[Barb]

I was excited to read this novel. The story of a Jewish WWII RAF pilot who goes on to publish his memoirs more than forty years after the war, sounded interesting. Poxl West, born Leopold Weisberg, tells a story within a story, as we read his memoir as well as his nephew's narrative set in 1986 as Poxl's book is published.

I was eager to be taken back in time and learn about Poxl's experiences during the war but half way through I realized the past didn't come alive for me, I wasn't engaged by the characters and I didn't care what happened to them. This story fell somewhat flat for me. I wasn't moved by the emotions the characters were reported to feel. I was also disappointed because I expected the relationship between the uncle and the nephew to be more important than it was through the first half of the book. The book jacket makes certain assertions that indicate their relationship is central to the story. But it didn't come across on the page that way.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because he last eighty pages or so of this novel are so good, I regretted that I didn't find the first 200 pages more compelling. I was never convinced that the mock memoir that lies at the heart of this novel (occupying 70-80% of the pages) could really have caused the stir among the reading public that occurs in the novel. However, as the novel comes to a close, we alternate more frequently between Poxl West's memoir which is centered around World War II, and the 1980's story of Poxl's nephew who must come to terms with Poxl being different from the hero he has imagined. The interplay between these two eras is the heart of the story, and as a result this book is a true rarity - a novel with lackluster exposition and a near perfect resolution.

[Sylvia Abrams · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last Flight if Poxl West is a troubling story. Told as a memoir within a novel, the plot revolves around the flawed hero, Leopoldo Weisberg,, aka Poxl West. The narrator of the novel is Elijah, Poxl's young nephew. I liked the sections in the voice of Eli. They rang true as the young boy who idolized his uncle matures into a man who realizes his uncle's flaws. Less successful, in my view, is the memoir. Why Poxl found Francoise to be his true love was not convincing at all. Her tawdry character was not at all appealing and the author did not succeed in conveying why she was such a magnet to Poxl. The war sections were quite compelling and very believable. The writing style was lovely. Nevertheless,, this book tries to do too much.

[Alana Cheshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

***Received through a Goodreads Giveaway***

An extraordinary novel that explores glory, redemption, and our omnipresent need as humans to tell the stories we tell. This is a war story that isn't predominately about war; rather, the fighting is the backdrop of Poxl's story, not the thesis of it. The result is an intriguing narrative that is unafraid to stray from our typically black-and-white hindsight impressions of WWII, and makes a compelling distinction between what is true and what is honest. I predict this will be one of the most talked-of books of 2015!

[Bela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reseña completa aquí: http://leerenlaluna.blogspot.com.es/2...

Lo tiene todo: amor, guerra, venganza, inspiración. El autor escribe de maravilla y utiliza referencias que demuestran su cultura.
Son dos tramas que están enlazadas entre sí y se van combinando a lo largo del libro.
Lo recomiendo abiertamente.

[Jessica J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fine, but a little underwhelming. Maybe just because I figured out where it was going about a third of the way through? I dunno. A longer review to come.

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This freshman novel from Torday recently came up on my radar and I was shocked to see a blurb from George Saunders on the front, Phil Klay, Karen Russell and Mary Gaitskill on the back. I know why. We had the same opinion. It’s incredible. Torday has crafted one heck of a story. This isn’t the kind of book you just read; it’s the kind of book you think about long after finishing.

“Maybe war stories are easier to tell than simple tragedies. Or harder. I don’t know. I guess in the end it was easier for your uncle to tell the stories from back then—Nazis killed his kin and so he tried to kill them back. That might not even have been how it was, but he could remember it that way.”

Fish tales are exaggerations or reinterpretations of reality. “It was this big,” says the man, hands spreading half a body width apart, only to gradually stretch the length over time, eventually with arms outstretched shoulder width apart, naming the large mouth bass Goliath or Xerxes or Shaq.

I knew people in the Army that didn’t do as much as they wanted to do. Didn’t do as much as they claimed or said they did. I knew people that thought they could do better, but didn’t get the chance, and I knew people that got Silver Stars, Bronze Stars, V-devices. Heroes and slugs. Pogues and paladins.

There are a lot of people I know that didn’t serve in any of the past generational situations where war was imminent and available. Either by avoidance or rejection all together, others conjured or bolstered a rash or stigmatic limp, lazily eyeing their flat feet, or oddly ticking heart to get out of camo and combat.

This novel is an important addition to the war canon. A philosophical question, a Shakespearean dissertation of truth and untruth. What’s worse: fictionalizing your war experience or dramatizing your medical condition to avoid war? While this isn’t necessarily the crux of the novel - nor am I intending to polemically divide readers - it suffices to say this book blurs reality and experiences with aspirational fantasy and raises questions of narcissistic egomania. Poxl’s imposter syndrome manifests itself into a memoir of disreality. We call this stolen valor. Claiming something you didn’t earn. This is not only the crux of an era of Poxl’s life, but a stumbling block for his adopted family, as well. Eli, an admiring youngster whom shares the back and forth narration with Poxl, is forever challenged by decisions Poxl makes regarding writing his past. Its tragedy and tenderness, acceptance and denial, love and regret. While war, ultimately, is an event that divides: love can antithetically be an event of forgiveness.

[Avery (ThePagemaster) · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was an ok WW2 book. Nothing really bad about it, honestly. I just wasn't as invested as I thought I'd be, or hoped to be. I did like the format of the book: the present day with Elijah, recounting the events, stories, and his undying admiration of his Uncle Poxl West; and then to Poxl's memoir being told, which is the story itself that we're reading. But, like I said, I didn't read anything that had me emotionally invested, even though there are some deep moments in here. It's not a bad book either. And I read it fairly swiftly.

[Wendy Cosin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Flight of Poxl West alternates between two related stories - a World War II “memoir” and a story about a relationship between young Elijah Goldstein and his uncle Poxl. This structure breaks up the story nicely and provides needed perspective to the memoir sections, which make up most of the novel. In summary, The Last Flight of Poxl West is a good story and extremely well-written, with characters that experience deep emotions and complex moral issues.


Eli, a Jewish teenager in Boston, whose grandparents immigrated from Europe, whose parents are modestly successful professionals, loves and idealizes his Uncle Poxl, who is “a writer and an artist and a war hero”. The extent of Eli’s hero worship is shown when Poxl reads from his memoir: “And when he finally gave us what we wanted - and that audience wanted so much from Poxl West, the first Jew so many of us had heard of who had not only survived the Nazi threat but had combated it, literally - and narrated what happened the night he crawled into the cockpit of a Lancaster bonber, when he piloted a plane so that his bomb aimer could drop blockbuster bombs that created a firestorm that destroyed almost every building in Hamburg, it was as if every villain in God’s unholy world had been burned in the caldron of fire my uncle Poxl had lit.” That’s a lot to live up to, and Eli’s first person narrative is about his projections and disappointments, as well as the importance of stories. Eli is a likeable and believable character.


Poxl’s memoir tells of his departure from pre-war Czechoslovakia, his romantic adventures in Rotterdam and London, and achievement of his dream to fly for the RAF against the Nazi’s. It is very well-written. I felt completely absorbed in Poxl’s experiences during the war and his feelings about his mother and the women he loved. I was most interested in the details about living in London during the bombings and his experiences in the RAF. My only criticism of the book is that I found the romantic longings a bit over-the-top, but since it is the story of a young man I can accept it for what it is.

[Patti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eli is a teenager who adores his uncle, Poxl West, who is not really a relative but is more of a grandfather figure to Eli. When Poxl writes a memoir of his experiences during WWII, Eli is miffed that he never receives his signed copy, but still he reads the book several times and uses it as a basis for school assignments. This novel contains the entire text of Poxl’s memoir, and this book-within-a-book is the real meat of this novel. Poxl, a Jew, flees Czechoslovakia for the Netherlands as a young man, at the behest of his father, but Poxl’s real impetus is the shock of seeing his mother with her lover. Virtually the same thing happens in the Netherlands, where he escapes to England after seeing his prostitute girlfriend Francoise with another man. He occupies himself in London as a civilian rescuer during the blitz but never gives up on his dream to become an RAF pilot. Except for the twist near the end, which did not seem all that original to me, this novel didn’t really turn me on that much. The twist does justify the book-within-a-book structure, though, and creates an unfortunate dilemma for Eli, while shedding more light on Poxl than even his own memoir does. As for the memoir itself, Poxl’s incessant hand-wringing over his abandonment of Francoise becomes tiresome after a while, although I thought his abrupt departure from Czechoslovakia was much more lamentable. Other characters seem to disappear almost as fast as they are introduced, and the turbulent times are certainly responsible for some of this. Still, I never established any sort of bond with any of the characters, even though they weren’t despicable or villainous. I would have liked to have felt more invested in either Eli’s or Poxl’s story.

[Oswego Public Library District]

This debut novel by David Torday employs a story-within-a-story plot device to dramatic effect. Beginning with the narration of Elijah Goldstein, a fifteen-year-old student, it recounts his relationship with his uncle Leopold Weisberg, known as Poxl West. Poxl introduces him to cultural life around Boston --opera, symphony, literature and art. As Elijah learns more about Poxl’s early life and exploits during World War II, his feelings progress from love and admiration to hero worship. He also develops a more mature understanding of the Jewish experience as Poxl tries out his war story during their cultural encounters.

The heart of the book is Poxl’s memoir, which begins with his childhood in pre-war Czechoslovakia and ends with his courageous actions as an immigrant RAF bomber pilot based in England. The scenes relating to the London blitz vividly portray a sense of place. The dramatic arc of Poxl’s life allows the reader to experience an extreme sense of loss and heartbreak. The author has achieved an engaging historical novel with a strong sense of place and heart-wrenching emotion. -BS

To place a hold, click here The Last Flight of Poxl West .

If you like this book, you might try The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book! It begins in the perspective of a 15-year-old Jewish teenager, Elijah Goldstein, growing up in Boston in the '80s, who idolizes his Uncle Poxl, a Czech Jew who was an RAF pilot in WWII. The novel then switches to Poxl's recently released war memoir and moves back and forth between the viewpoints as it goes on. I loved the interplay of the two very distinct voices of Eli and Poxl, with both of them strong enough to engage you equally. At first, I thought I wouldn't like the memoir segments, but Torday's writing is so beautiful he really draws you in. There's a twist about three-quarters of the way through the book that deepens the complexity of the relationship between the two characters as well. I won't go into it, because I believe anything that happens that far into a book should be a secret until you get there! I'd look out for certain synopses of this book because I've noticed some of them give it away. Even so, it's still worth the read thanks to Torday's wonderful storytelling. I really didn't think this would be my type of book, but obviously it was. I recommend! Check out more on www.iwantmichikosjob.com.

[Christopher Roblodowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would like to thank Bookbrowse for this beautiful book. The focus of the story is a novel written by the protagonist's uncle, Poxl West. The fact that Poxl West is not his real uncle is revealed in the very first paragraph. It is in some ways a foreshadowing of things to come in Daniel Torday's brilliant examination of the memoir novel. The novel alternates between chapters narrating what is happening with the characters in the story, and chapters of Poxl’s memoir. This approach really worked for me as it allows us to examine a story from multiple perspectives. The novel encourages the reader to determine what the real story of Poxl West’s life is, what is important and what is not. One can see this as a love story. Another individual might see this as a war story. For me, it was an engrossing, funny, sad, well told story. And I recommend it to anyone who loves to read good stories.

[Hella Comat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, the main reason I was interested in this book was because it had an airplane on the cover.... It's two stories told simultaneously. One is about a young Jewish boy who is taken under the wing of his uncle, who he adores. The other story is the text of a book the uncle wrote of his coming of age during WWII. The facts about living in London during the invasion of Britain were horrific - people living in subways and caves and the huge amount of destruction. Of course it was the same in Germany a few years later. Inevitably, as the boy becomes a teen, he finds that not everything about the past is as his uncle has described.

[Freda Witt · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only gave it a one star because it doesn't have a no star. This was supposed to be heartwarming? This is nothing heartwarming about it. There are no likable characters, no story line that I could see.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard not to spoil this book, so if you ask me, I'm just going to respond by asking why you haven't read it already. It's truly senseless not to.

[Daniel Weaver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't pull me in

[Carol Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable captivating read, and like Eli discovers, it doesn’t really matter if it’s fact or truth or memory- it’s about love and loss.

[A Reader's Heaven · Rating 3 out of 5]

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

Poxl West fled the Nazis’ onslaught in Czechoslovakia. He escaped their clutches again in Holland. He pulled Londoners from the Blitz’s rubble. He wooed intoxicating, unconventional beauties. He rained fire on Germany from his RAF bomber.
Poxl West is the epitome of manhood and something of an idol to his teenage nephew, Eli Goldstein, who reveres him as a brave, singular, Jewish war hero. Poxl fills Eli’s head with electric accounts of his derring-do, adventures and romances, as he collects the best episodes from his storied life into a memoir.
He publishes that memoir, Skylock, to great acclaim, and its success takes him on the road, and out of Eli’s life. With his uncle gone, Eli throws himself into reading his opus and becomes fixated on all things Poxl.
But as he delves deeper into Poxl’s history, Eli begins to see that the life of the fearless superman he’s adored has been much darker than he let on, and filled with unimaginable loss from which he may have not recovered. As the truth about Poxl emerges, it forces Eli to face irreconcilable facts about the war he’s romanticized and the vision of the man he's held so dear.

This is a book-within-a-book. An interesting approach to telling this story but one that worked...for the most part. A bestselling memoir, a proud nephew, and a missing uncle...

The hero of this story, if you will, is Poxl West, Jewish air bomber during WW2. He writes a memoir in his later years, which he dedicates to his young nephew, Eli. With the success of the memoir, Poxl heads out on tour and leaves Eli to come to terms with the incidents that are recounted in the memoir - not things that Eli loved his uncle for.

Unfortunately for me, I found the first 100 pages or so to be quite tedious. Once I engaged with the dual narratives, I quite enjoyed it. However, less of the memoir and more of Eli would have been a far different book - and one I would have preferred to read. I just think the memoir was just too much and really dragged the pacing of the story down.

I would, however, happily recommend this book as it takes a tired idea (stories of World War 2) and threw a new spin on it and, for that alone, I think this should be at least looked at!


Paul
ARH

[Alexander Yates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Came late to this novel from my friend and former classmate Dan, but holy shit is it ever a joy to spend some sustained hours in the company of his mind and sentences. I had not known, going in, how much of this novel would be invested in Elijah, who I had assumed would be more of a framing device. But to my reading, this is his story (not that it must be a binary choice). It brought back memories of time spent with my Jewish grandmother who leapt off a train in France before marrying an American army engineer in the UK and moving to Astoria, and her long-term vaguely-romantic (that "vaguely" is only there because of youthful cowardice on my part--I didn't ask and wish I had) friend Ray who lived a few doors down in her retirement village and was a ball turret gunner in the war. He'd tease her mercilessly over scrambled eggs as she blushed delightedly. 60 years prior, they'd both brushed up against hell and come out whole. They're both gone now. This book made me miss them.

[Robert Lurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Last Flight of Poxl West is a novel about loss, adventure and the frailties of memory. Set both in Europe during WW II and in Boston in the 1980's, the protagonists, a Jewish man who has escaped the tendrils of the Holocaust by escaping from Czechoslovakia to Rotterdam to London to the US, runs away a series of complex relationships including his family and several women. His "nephew" worships his now aging "uncle" until he discovers that the memories of one's trauma filled past are true, partly true and untrue all at the same time. Poxl is a complex man who was pilot during WW II, a lover of the art and poetry (you will love his constant references to Shakespeare) who is trying to resolve the decisions made as a young man. The book was a little bit of a slow starter, but really took off after about 50 pages. It is about Holocaust, but not about the Holocaust.

[Scottnshana · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do you do when you find out that your adolescent hero is a) kind of a fraud and b) has invented his personal history of half-truths to cover up a life of regrets and missed opportunities to be loved? You c) realize that you represent one of those missed opportunities and cope with a) and b) the best you can as a functioning adult. "Poxl" is good history fiction, with fallible human characters folded inside it. It is about loss, it is about lust, and it is about attempting to define oneself via family and faith. It is a testament to Torday's craft that though it is a collection of disappointments, where a principal character keeps letting the people nearest him down, I did not want it to end. A good novel.

[Shelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was an interesting and well written book about a close family friend, a Jew from Czechoslavakia writing his memoir of his experience as a pilot with the RAF during WWII. the book alternates between the manuscript of the memoir and the realtionship of the young boy who views Poxl as a surrogate grandfather.
The memoir (book within a book) tells a touching story as does the alternating chapters. Still i sometimes found the book dragged and especially in the first third.
I would recommend it and try not to have to put it down so often as i did.

[Robin K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about a book. The narrative of The Last Flight of Poxl West alternates between (1) a young man‘s account of his relationship with a book called Skylock and its author Poxl West, and (2) excerpts of Skylock itself, a tale of Poxl West’s experiences in WW II. I myself preferred the sections of Skylock to the young man’s impressions. Nevertheless, as a whole, the author movingly explores how loss and trauma affects not only the person who experiences it but those close to him or her.

[Kristi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young boy loves and admires his Uncle Poxl. He glories in his stories of flying Lancaster bombers for the RAF during WWII. Poxl, a Czech Jew who survived the holocaust, is an entrancing story teller. The issue of the book becomes one of the nature of truth. Was Poxl's book memoir or fiction??? If someone tells an "untruth" does it deny the reality of the story or cause all loss of respect?? Are some actions simply unforgivable??? Interesting story of the horrors of WWII and the relationships of family we love. Kristi & Abby Tabby