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Skybound: One Woman's Journey in Flight
In her mid-30s Rebecca Loncraine was diagnosed with breast cancer. Two years later, and after months of gruelling treatment, she flew in a glider for the first time. In that engineless plane, soaring 3000 feet over the landscape of her childhood with only the rising thermals to take her higher and the birds to lead the way, she fell in love. If illness meant Rebecca had lost touch with the world around her, gliding showed her a way to learn to live again.
And so Rebecca travelled from the Black Mountains in Wales to New Zealand's Southern Alps and the Nepalese Himalayas to chase her newfound passion: her need to fly with the birds, to push herself to the boundary of her own fear. Skybound is the story of that obsession and of Rebecca's incredible journey from the ground, into the sky and back again.
Taking in the history of unpowered flight, and with extraordinary descriptions of flying in some of the world's most dangerous and dramatic locations, this is a nature memoir with a unique perspective; it is about the land we know and the sky we know so little of, it is about memory and self-discovery.
Just as she finished writing Skybound Rebecca became ill again. She died in September 2016. And yet, Skybound is still a book about learning to live again: deeply moving, thrilling and euphoric, this is a book for anyone who has ever looked up and wanted to take flight.
And so Rebecca travelled from the Black Mountains in Wales to New Zealand's Southern Alps and the Nepalese Himalayas to chase her newfound passion: her need to fly with the birds, to push herself to the boundary of her own fear. Skybound is the story of that obsession and of Rebecca's incredible journey from the ground, into the sky and back again.
Taking in the history of unpowered flight, and with extraordinary descriptions of flying in some of the world's most dangerous and dramatic locations, this is a nature memoir with a unique perspective; it is about the land we know and the sky we know so little of, it is about memory and self-discovery.
Just as she finished writing Skybound Rebecca became ill again. She died in September 2016. And yet, Skybound is still a book about learning to live again: deeply moving, thrilling and euphoric, this is a book for anyone who has ever looked up and wanted to take flight.
336 pages, Paperback
Published April 18, 2019
9 people are currently reading
138 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 14, 2018
(4.5) In 2016 it was When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi; in 2017 it was The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs. And now Skybound. Each year seems to bring one exquisite posthumous memoir about facing a death from cancer with dignity. For Rebecca Loncraine, after treatment for breast cancer in her early thirties, taking flying lessons in an unpowered glider was her way of rediscovering joy and experiencing freedom by facing her fears in the sky.
She was a freelance writer based on her parents’ farm in the Black Mountains of Wales, an area that’s familiar to me from trips to Hay-on-Wye and from my reading of Bruce Chatwin’s On the Black Hill. The history and geography of the region, as revealed from the air, weave through the book, as do childhood memories and recollections of chemotherapy. Loncraine discovered a particular love for flying alongside birds: the red kites in Wales, and later vultures in Nepal. The most remarkable passages of the book are the exhilarating descriptions of being thousands of feet up in the air and the reflections on why humans are drawn to flight and what it does for our bodies and spirits. She learned from a British Airways pilot that 500,000 people are airborne at any one moment! We take for granted what should still be acknowledged as a miraculous feat.
This hobby-turned-obsession was not without its inconveniences and dangers. Even when it’s warm at ground level it’s frigid at 13,000 feet, so you have to bundle up. Meanwhile, the strength of the sun means you keep guzzling water and have to wear either a urine-collecting device or adult diapers. The earliest attempts at unpowered flight were generally fatal, and when Loncraine went to New Zealand for a bonus season of flying to replace the Welsh winter, one of her fellow flyers died in a crash. Her instructor told her she’d become fearless, even reckless. But when she met one of the pioneers of gliding, then in his nineties, in New Zealand he spoke an aphorism that perfectly captures the role flying played for Loncraine: “The antidote to fear is fascination.”
There’s a brief afterword by Loncraine’s mother, Trisha. Her daughter had virtually finished this manuscript when the cancer returned, and underwent another 14 grueling months of treatment before her death in September 2016. This is a simply wonderful book; what a shame that we won’t get another.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
She was a freelance writer based on her parents’ farm in the Black Mountains of Wales, an area that’s familiar to me from trips to Hay-on-Wye and from my reading of Bruce Chatwin’s On the Black Hill. The history and geography of the region, as revealed from the air, weave through the book, as do childhood memories and recollections of chemotherapy. Loncraine discovered a particular love for flying alongside birds: the red kites in Wales, and later vultures in Nepal. The most remarkable passages of the book are the exhilarating descriptions of being thousands of feet up in the air and the reflections on why humans are drawn to flight and what it does for our bodies and spirits. She learned from a British Airways pilot that 500,000 people are airborne at any one moment! We take for granted what should still be acknowledged as a miraculous feat.
“There’s no road in the sky. Each individual glider pilot finds a new pathless way through the air, a unique scribble. We locate a bit of ridge lift, here; fly out to a thermal, there; we wind and manoeuvre over the curving land. We never take the same route twice, so flight offers me a new perspective each time I fly.”
“Influenced by the ancient seam of human thought that associates the sky with the imagination, weaving and circling in the sky begins to feel like sailing through the realm of the subconscious itself.”
This hobby-turned-obsession was not without its inconveniences and dangers. Even when it’s warm at ground level it’s frigid at 13,000 feet, so you have to bundle up. Meanwhile, the strength of the sun means you keep guzzling water and have to wear either a urine-collecting device or adult diapers. The earliest attempts at unpowered flight were generally fatal, and when Loncraine went to New Zealand for a bonus season of flying to replace the Welsh winter, one of her fellow flyers died in a crash. Her instructor told her she’d become fearless, even reckless. But when she met one of the pioneers of gliding, then in his nineties, in New Zealand he spoke an aphorism that perfectly captures the role flying played for Loncraine: “The antidote to fear is fascination.”
There’s a brief afterword by Loncraine’s mother, Trisha. Her daughter had virtually finished this manuscript when the cancer returned, and underwent another 14 grueling months of treatment before her death in September 2016. This is a simply wonderful book; what a shame that we won’t get another.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
April 7, 2018
If Robert McFarlane and W G Sebald had gone up together in a glider, Skybound. A Journey in Flight, a lyrical recounting of glider flights and fascinating asides on flying and life, would have been the result. It is a glorious recounting of observing the landscape of the Black Mountains from the air, and anecdotes associated with flight, as well as a celebration of what it is to appreciate living, when its opposite looms in the not so distant future.
Rebecca Loncraine began writing this book as she was recovering from cancer. Life had been less than fair to her, particularly as her condition meant she was too ill to write and had to return home to recover and begin all over again. She did this by facing her fear of flying and going up in a glider, until it was a passion which became a way of life.
So, Skybound is not a book complaining about misfortune, but about reinventing yourself, with the author’s condition being discussed but more as a way of meditation and coming to terms with what would eventually be a fatal condition. Gliding is very different to powered flying, particularly as you are so much more in touch with the caprices of the air currents and wind.
The author describes in detail how she used flight to reach into herself, linking the world she observed below and the sensation of flying to explore her inner landscape in a way she never had before. In doing that it also acts as a meditation for the reader to consider themselves and how they fit in with and interact with their world.
Loncraine describes gliding like moving through an ocean, where the land is the sea bed and the sky as something that has volume. The means that those of us moored to the ground need to consider it in three dimensions, rather than a flat plane onto which things like hills and buildings intrude. Considering the world this way creates a whole new perspective in terms of writing.
I walk a great deal locally, in an area which might not be considered as dramatic as Loncraine’s Black Mountains. But I have found myself thinking about the scenery I pass through and how it might look from different perspectives, as well as how I might describe it in a way that is as engaging as Loncraine’s writing. That is a big ask for any writer because Rebecca Loncraine has big shoes to fill. Her descriptions are so exquisite and lacking in purple prose that, had she lived, I have no doubt her work would have been much sought after. However, my sense of being able to write about my surroundings has been taken to a whole new level through reading Skybound.
Skybound is definitely a bed time book and one that will take unlimited re-readings. Yes, you might run the risk of starting it, and (as I did) finding you should have gone to sleep some hours before. But although the reading of it is joyous and stimulating, it is at the same time capable of calming and soothing the most restless of minds, ensuring peaceful rest when you finally heed the call of slumber. Skybound is a book to carry around with you all the time and draw on when you are feeling low and in need of a lift that takes you completely out of yourself.
Skybound. A Journey in Flight was courtesy of Pan Macmillan via NetGalley.
Rebecca Loncraine began writing this book as she was recovering from cancer. Life had been less than fair to her, particularly as her condition meant she was too ill to write and had to return home to recover and begin all over again. She did this by facing her fear of flying and going up in a glider, until it was a passion which became a way of life.
So, Skybound is not a book complaining about misfortune, but about reinventing yourself, with the author’s condition being discussed but more as a way of meditation and coming to terms with what would eventually be a fatal condition. Gliding is very different to powered flying, particularly as you are so much more in touch with the caprices of the air currents and wind.
The author describes in detail how she used flight to reach into herself, linking the world she observed below and the sensation of flying to explore her inner landscape in a way she never had before. In doing that it also acts as a meditation for the reader to consider themselves and how they fit in with and interact with their world.
Loncraine describes gliding like moving through an ocean, where the land is the sea bed and the sky as something that has volume. The means that those of us moored to the ground need to consider it in three dimensions, rather than a flat plane onto which things like hills and buildings intrude. Considering the world this way creates a whole new perspective in terms of writing.
I walk a great deal locally, in an area which might not be considered as dramatic as Loncraine’s Black Mountains. But I have found myself thinking about the scenery I pass through and how it might look from different perspectives, as well as how I might describe it in a way that is as engaging as Loncraine’s writing. That is a big ask for any writer because Rebecca Loncraine has big shoes to fill. Her descriptions are so exquisite and lacking in purple prose that, had she lived, I have no doubt her work would have been much sought after. However, my sense of being able to write about my surroundings has been taken to a whole new level through reading Skybound.
Skybound is definitely a bed time book and one that will take unlimited re-readings. Yes, you might run the risk of starting it, and (as I did) finding you should have gone to sleep some hours before. But although the reading of it is joyous and stimulating, it is at the same time capable of calming and soothing the most restless of minds, ensuring peaceful rest when you finally heed the call of slumber. Skybound is a book to carry around with you all the time and draw on when you are feeling low and in need of a lift that takes you completely out of yourself.
Skybound. A Journey in Flight was courtesy of Pan Macmillan via NetGalley.
January 14, 2020
Not a book about flying nor about fliers, not a book about a person "I did this, I did that!" But rather a book about the indomitable human spirit and dealing with adversity. The author after a major personal trauma faces one of her greater fears and embarks on a voyage of self discovery. The fears are relevant, the experiences are relevant, and the joy of life is also to the fore. Can we overcome life's battles? Pretty much so even if the outcomes are not what are desired. Having said that I found this book with it's descriptive prose on gliding, with the attendant technical aspects therein, one of the best books on flying since Ernest K Gann's "Fate is the Hunter" whilst the backstory ranks with Peter Matthiesen's "The Snow Leopard" Seldom do I find a book that moves me so much. Well worth it's five stars!
Recommended reading!
Recommended reading!
June 11, 2019
Using the soaring highs of gliding as a metaphor for improving health and a zest for life, this is a hugely uplifting tale, which I mistakenly bought having misread the synopsis – I thought it was about flying a glider from Wales to New Zealand. And I am delighted to have discovered it as this is so much more of a read than a discovery for the love of un-powered flight and oneness with nature.
Beautifully written, and brimming with wonderful descriptions and optimism, this is a fabulous and life-affirming story (despite the ultimate cruelty of the sub-plot).
It is a book of hope, a lyrical read, and an emotional roller-coaster.
Don’t delay - read it today.
Beautifully written, and brimming with wonderful descriptions and optimism, this is a fabulous and life-affirming story (despite the ultimate cruelty of the sub-plot).
It is a book of hope, a lyrical read, and an emotional roller-coaster.
Don’t delay - read it today.
February 1, 2019
Beautiful and literally uplifting. Rebecca writes superbly about the process of gliding and its transformative power for her recovery. I loved the passage about her getting lost in the mountain in the fog. I was uplifted by her sheer joy at getting better and cartwheeling up the gliding field.
I was moved to tears sitting with her watching the birds at the feeder outside her window. Her father had placed it there for her to watch when that was all she was able to do.
Moving snd unspeakably sad.
I was moved to tears sitting with her watching the birds at the feeder outside her window. Her father had placed it there for her to watch when that was all she was able to do.
Moving snd unspeakably sad.
February 12, 2020
A wonderful book! Such a beautifully woven tapestry of recovery from cancer, birds, flying, gliding, facing fear, inner awakening ... I hope in the moments of her death she began to feel lifted in the best flight ever. I live in New Zealand but I saw our mountainous country from a totally new perspective in Rebecca’s gliding experiences here.
November 17, 2018
Loved it, courageous, literally uplifting and fantastic to follow her journey as she discovers the joys of gliding and follows her passion all over the world. Very impressive woman and it’s so sad that she is ultimately defeated by circumstances.
November 10, 2019
The passion and integrity in this unique and personal account of gliding took my breath away. I now can’t look at the sky in the same way without wondering what’s flying above - I would highly recommend this to anyone who’s ever dreamed of learning something new.
January 27, 2020
A journey in flight, courage and adversity. No bird soars on a calm wind. Rebecca’s way of dealing with her breast cancer diagnosis and illness.
April 9, 2020
A beautiful story, almost more like poetry! Rebecca was centered and very mindful, of nature and her surroundings. Now that I'm finished, I will miss her!
February 21, 2025
Was a privilege to learn about how Rebecca faced adversity by filling her life with the greatest of adventures.
April 14, 2020
One of the best books I’ve read in recent years, Skybound describes a journey back from serious illness facing the author’s fears through another great challenge; that of learning to fly. With lyrical descriptions of gliding high above the mountains of Wales and New Zealand, and of her childhood upbringing on a hill farm in the Black Mountains, there is a wonderful attention to detail.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews