Larque on the Wing

by Nancy Springer

Going through a messy mid-life crisis, forty-year-old wife and mother Larque Harootunian gets carried away with her latest doppelganger--herself at age ten--who helps transform her into a young, strong, courageous, and gay man. Reprint.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Ebooks, Magical Realism, Magic, Science Fiction Fantasy

281 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

BIO -- NANCY SPRINGER


Nancy Springer has passed the fifty-book milestone, having written that many novels for adults, young adults and children, in genres including mythic fantasy, contemporary fiction, magical realism, horror, and mystery -- although she did not realize she wrote mystery until she won the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America two years in succession. DARK LIE, recently released from NAL, is her first venture into mass-market psychological suspense.
Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Nancy Springer moved with her family to Gettysburg, of Civil War fame, when she was thirteen. She spent the next forty-six years in Pennsylvania, raising two children (Jonathan, now 38, and Nora, 34), writing, horseback riding, fishing, and birdwatching. In 2007 she surprised her friends and herself by moving with her second husband to an isolated area of the Florida panhandle, where the birdwatching is spectacular and where, when fishing, she occasionally catches an alligator.

Reviews

[DivaDiane SM · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been meaning to read this book for upwards of 25 years. I came by the re-issue as an ARC a few years ago and only now got around to reading it. On the surface it is a very strange book, but once you get settled in it starts to make sense. Larque has a unique “talent” (in quotes because I’m not - and neither is Larque - sure that it is one). She creates living breathing alter-egos of herself and virtually anyone she’s close to. Her mother also has one: if she doesn’t like something or someone, she can blink them into a version more palatable or into oblivion, whichever works. These abilities wreak havoc on them, especially on Larque, so much so that she has a pretty dramatic mid-life crisis. And that’s all I’ll say about the plot of the book.

Deep down this book is about identity and recognizing oneself in all our glorious contradictions. We all are multifaceted and there are parts we may not want to look at or recognize and let live. This book shows us how dangerous that can be and how beautiful we are if we accept and nourish those sides of ourselves.

Also, it’s funny, absurd, glib and irreverent. But otherwise it would be heartbreaking.

[Jennifer (bunnyreads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a strange exploration of self. A unique take on mid-aged identity crisis, gender exploration, and finding/learning to love all parts of yourself. I can see why it won a Tiptree award. Though, it wasn’t quite my cup of tea… I really have a hard time with magical realism. It’s such a finicky sub-genre for me in terms of taste.

So, while I found it easy to relate to Larque and can admire the content- bringing forth subjects that I can imagine rolled a few graves back in the early nineties, I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it. Maybe it hits a little too close to home, in the looking back on your life and wondering where things took that left turn category. I don’t know. But, I’m glad I read it, and I think mostly it just worked for me more in it’s content, than in it’s delivery.

[Trin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways, this book spoke to me more personally and profoundly than any I've read in a long time. It's the story of Larque, a mother and wife in her 40s who's having an unusual midlife crisis—one that involves the manifestation of a version of herself at age 10 and the transformation of her current self into a man. The book won a Tiptree Award, and even without knowing what it was up against that year, I'm 100% positive it deserved it—the book is practically overflowing with excellent insights into sex and gender. There are parts of this book that had me dogearing pages and wanting to add exclamation marks to the margins—an almost unheard of reaction in me. One paragraph in particular:

"And if Shadow was gay—then he was like her. Dimly, with her burning heart more than her mind, she began to understand why she had always liked gay men. They suffered, were persecuted, they were outsiders in a world where studbuck male heteros held all the power, they did not count, they were Other—the way women were."

I mean—yes. Yes. That's it exactly, isn't it? That's the essence of so much of my life and who I am, right there, and it's shocking and amazing to see it in print. That alone makes this a very valuable and important book for me.

However, it works better for me as a philosophical or ideological text than it does as a novel. To begin with, it's magical realism, and I always have—much to my eternal disappointment—a bit of trouble with magical realism. When strange shit is happening, I want characters to react to it like it's strange shit—but magical realism characters are always so damn accepting! There were also some things about the prose, the course of the plot, and the characterization that didn't quite gel for me—I think I relate to Springer's ideas much more strongly than I do to her writing.

Still, I am DELIGHTED to have read this. It's not a book whose story sang to me—not a Neverwhere or a Great Gatsby or a Golden Compass or any number of others, both classic and "crass"; however, for those moments where it was like a mirror held up to life, my life...I can't quite get over that, or even fully believe that such a book actually exists. You should read it too, just so I know I wasn't imagining things.

[Ria Bridges · Rating 4 out of 5]

Larque on the Wing is a book more notable for the thoughts it provokes in the reader than the story it actually tells. To say that it’s a story about a middle-aged woman coming to grips with different aspects or herself and eventually stands up to her mother, or that it’s about people who can physically affect the world by drawing out and making physical the more hidden and personal sides of people… Well, these descriptions are true, and I can’t deny that, but the best parts are the random observations, the things between the lines that make you pause and bring deeper thoughts to the surface of your mind and make you really wonder about yourself and others. It’s a a very personal tale, one that will read a little bit differently for everyone, I suspect, and that’s what makes it so good. The story itself wasn’t as good as what it made me think about.

Larque is, at the beginning of the book, a fairly typical middle-aged woman. Married to a good but not the most enlightened man. Raised and raising kids. Paints for a living, but only stuff that will sell, bland stuff that goes well with unoriginal interior decorating schemes. It pays the bills, but it’s not the greatest outlet for creative urges. The biggest thing that sets her apart from others is her ability to create doppelgangers, manifestations of aspects or herself or others. It’s random, and largely situational, and a temporary thing, the doppelgangers fading after time or just going away. That is, until Sky appears, a copy of Larque from when she was a child, wild and brash and full of dreams. Sky won’t just fade. Sky runs roughshod over Larque’s life, and is the catalyst for a journey of self-discovery that changes not only Larque but the people closest to her.

Larque on the Wing has a great exploration of gender throughout is pages, after Larque meets Shadow, a man who can reshape people to cause an outward manifestation of internal desires and traits. I think anyone who has struggled with gender or body issues will read this and yearn to meet someone like Shadow, someone who can reshape their outsides to match their insides. The qualities inside Larque that she most wanted expressed, the things she wished herself to be more of or less of, culminated in her changing to a rather handsome young man, much to the annoyance of her husband and children. Larque, on the other hand, has a blast, experiencing her new sense of self, how the world treats her differently, the ups and downs to being either male or female. It’s interesting because no matter the sex of the body that Larque (or Lark, as she called herself when presenting as male) was inhabiting, she was always very much herself. The sex of the body didn’t matter. Being male didn’t make her attracted to women, so she seemed very much like a gay man, the whole while still being very definitely Larque.

It’s this sort of thing that I’m refering to when I say the book makes you stop and think about things, about gender and sexuality and presentation and the very essence of self and the disconnect between mind and body. You can’t read Larque on the Wing without being very aware of all of these things and how they play off each other. It’s all connected, and there’s no way that’s better than all the others; they all come with tradeoffs and downsides. Considering that this book was originally written around 2 decades ago, I have to say that this kind of exploration of social norms when it comes to gender and sexuality is impressive. The 90s weren’t times particularly associated with repression, but neither were they exactly associated with the kind of reflection in this book, the kind that you’re far more likely to see in conversations today than then.

But aside from the exploration of gender is the exploration of the very self, the divides that we give ourselves to keep our desires separate from our mundane lives, the way we comparmentalize and suppress but some things never truly go away. Sky is the embodiment of Larque’s childhood, the dreams of years past that never get fulfilled because we grow up and realise that we have to put aside old yearnings in favour of a steady paycheque and more comfortable living. So many characters have the ability to reshape people in accordance with desire. Shadow, as I mentioned, can change a person’s body to bring out physicaly manifestations of inner traits. Larque’s mother can “blink,” which is reshaping others in accordance with her own will, forcibly removing and changing anything that doesn’t fit with what she wants to see. Got an unruly child who won’t listen? Just blink and turn them into a perfect sweetheart, obedient and kind and soft-spoken. Oftentimes she doesn’t even see the things that don’t fit into her idealized worldview. Most of us, at one time or another, have experienced a less literal version of this, a family member or coworker who refuses to acknowledge a certain aspect of us because they find it awkward or don’t agree with it. Imagine if they had the power to just blink that away, affect who you were to remove that aspect of you they don’t like, even if it involves you suffering for it, or even creating an entirely new and separate version of you because they like it better.

This is a very mundane story with extraordinary elements. The final showdown involves Larque accepting the different parts of her own personality and being happier for it, and standing up to the emotionally neglectful mother who refused to accept anything but perfection. As a story, the mundanity of it wasn’t actually that interesting to me. I was far more interested in those extraordinary elements, and the perspectives they offered and the thoughts they provoked. But you can’t have one without the other in this book; it’s all part of the same package, and there’s definitely a place for stories of personal acceptance. The interpersonal relationships may not have appealed to me personally, but the rest of the book definitely did, and I took away a few lessons that were good ones to learn.

I’m not sure if Larque on the Wing is a book with much reread value. The odd combination of “I love this” and “I can take it or leave it” means that the story is simple enough to not really need a reread to get something else out of, even while I enjoyed reading it. But it’s definitely a book that emcourages discussion and brings to light issues faced by many, giving a voice to certain aspects of life that many people prefer to leave in the dark still, and it shows the damage done by those who do want to ignore the truth of a person because it’s inconvenient for them to accept. It’s definitely worth reading once, though, and I’m glad I did so. I can see why this won the Tiptree award, and I think it would be a shame for this book to go overlooked just because it’s an older one. Many thanks to Open Road Media for shining the spotlight, once again, on older books that are still well worth paying attention to, that stand the test of time, and bring forward new accessible perspectives on touchy issues.

(Book received in exchange for an honest review.)

[Icy-Cobwebs-Crossing-SpaceTime · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gloriously delectable literary "implosion," a novel with as many meanings as a seven-layer cake, LARQUE ON THE WING" is superb. Who is LARQUE? 40-year-old menopausal, midlife cris-ing, wife, mother, daughter, craft artist, breadwinner, self-sufficient...but LARQUE is also grubby, mouthy, 10-year old loner Sky; and Lark, adolescent good-looking male; and Virtuous Woman, picture-perfect, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth, cynosure of her Mother's eye. LARQUE is also: long-time creator of thought forms she calls doppelgangers (Tibetan mysticism terms them "tulpas"), serious artist-in-waiting...and a Self, in search of its identity. How can one woman be all this? Read LARQUE ON THE WING and you'll see.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I put this book under both "fantasy" and "realistic fiction" because much of it is so much a slice-of-ordinary-life in the 1980s. Yes, it is dated--references to AIDS as a death sentence, fashionable decorating colors, cars, and pay phones. But much of it is timeless: a woman's mid-life crisis, family life, what love means in a long-standing marriage, mother-daughter tensions (hoo boy, have we got that!!) and...right, it is a fantasy too.

Our heroine can "doppelganger" people--draw out a younger or different aspect of that person's self. One day she somehow does it to herself--and throws her life and those around her into turmoil of an original and fascinating kind. There's gender-bending, gay male characters, a confused spouse, magic mixed with the ordinary, and many twists and turns.

Ms. Springer's writing style is plain-spoken while making wise choices in wording with only occasional false notes. I'd recommend this readers hankering for something *different,* particularly people over 30 and people who like their fantasy set in a present reality, populated by small-time artists and gay cowboys rather than dragons and fairies.

[Stephen Poltz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to categorize. I suppose it qualifies as magical realism, although I’m not an expert on that genre. At the very least, it’s a fantasy about a woman with some magical abilities. It won the Tiptree award which honors SF/F books which deal with gender issues. It’s highly deserving. This is perhaps one of the most creative ways of exploring gender issues that I’ve read in a long time.

Come visit my blog for the full review…
http://itstartedwiththehugos.blogspot...

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remembered loving this book way back when it was new-ish. But I didn't remember anything else about it. So I decided to re-read it (extremely rare for me). I still barely remembered it, and I still, or again, loved it.

Larque is a middle-aged woman who lives in small-town middle America with her husband and three pre-teen and teen sons. She works from home making paintings to be sold to tourists. She does it well, but doesn't consider it art. Her long-time oddity is that she unintentionally (or not) makes what she calls doppelgangers. When she looks at a person or animal and notices something about it, a version of it appears with that aspect. (Sometimes it's nudity, which doesn't go over well in the small town.) The doppelgangers generally disappear after a while. Her mother also has a talent, which she is hardly conscious of, of blinking at someone and thus making that person conform to her idea of what they should be. Which has affected Larque all her life and is rather scary.

One day, a 10-year old version of Larque appears, snotty, wild, and contemptuous of how tame and conventional Lark has become. Sky (Larque's actual name is Skylark) is one of Larque's inadvertent doppelgangers. But she's more solid, more real than the others. She has wants and needs, and though she can be obnoxious, over the days, Larque warms up to her. She obviously is an aspect of Larque that Larque needs to deal with, to incorporate back into herself.

Meanwhile, there's a whole other story, of a gay guy, Shadow, who has powers to mold people into what they want to be, but can't remember his past He and his partner, Argent, live on a magical street that is in town, but not always in the same place and not accessible to most people.

Lark (as Larque starts calling herself) and Sky find the street. Magic ensues: physical and psychological transformations, with accompanying conflict, love, adventure; this book has it all.

This is at least as much magical realism as it is fantasy. The magic in the book is literal, but it's also metaphorical. Lark needs to find out who she is and how to be true to herself. Springer explores gender, homophobia, love, marriage, cowboys, gypsies, proper use of talents, and much more.

The book is easy to read, light and funny in many places, serious and funny in others. Lark is not everywoman; she's a quirky individual who, when she remembers her childhood, likes to play cowboy and explore muddy creeks. There's so much more to the story; every little detail is absorbing, and things come together nicely by the end. Springer's writing is a joy to read. She has a strong feminist viewpoint, also visible in her later Rowan Hood and Enola Holmes books. And she has an open, curious, and whimsical attitude. I can't overstate her ability to take words and turn them into something insightful, delightful, and very odd.

The night after finishing the book, I had a dream where I was getting on an airplane. I didn't have my boarding pass, but that was okay, because I knew my passport card was in my wallet. Then I saw that I didn't have my purse. My family was already on the plane. I thought, you know what, I don't even really want to go, and turned around and went down the boarding stairs. The dream had two simultaneous endings: in one, just I left; in the other, my family and everyone else on the plane decided they didn't want to go either, and also left the plane, a few at a time. This was all related to the book. It can be hard to figure out who you are and what you want to do, and you probably have to abandon plans (and habits, beliefs, etc.) that don't take you in those directions. Your new plans, and your new/genuine identity, may not be so clear, but they are your own.

[William Leight · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Larque on the Wing" might be best regarded as an illustration of just how much the politics of sexuality have changed in the last quarter-century. In particular, it's hard to imagine writing a book today in which gay men are represented as archetypal outsiders in permanent rebellion against straight society. It also seems quite unlikely that Larque's transformation into a gay man and then back to a woman could be written the same way today, with Springer completely ignoring questions of gender identity: masculinity is desirable for Larque essentially because a patriarchal society favors men. As a result, there's never really any question as to whether Larque will turn back into a woman or return to her husband and family. Indeed, while in 1994 the gender changes and gay lovers probably made the book seem quite radical, reading it today it's clear that this radicalism is at most a patina over a fundamentally conservative core. The book starts with a middle-class woman feeling trapped in her role as a wife and mother, and ends with the same woman in the same role, only no longer feeling trapped. And why not? Largely because she has finally succeeded in defeating her mother, who is represented as the figure most responsible for her oppression. As feminist science fiction goes, this isn't exactly Joanna Russ.

Of course, politics can only take you so far when it comes to novels: I've never much cared for Joanna Russ. But "Larque on the Wing" didn't appeal to me for reasons beyond its strangely retrograde politics. This is partly because the idea of connecting with your inner child in the way described here, in which the fact that Larque never accomplished the things she dreamed of as a kid is presented as a reason for her present-day malaise, always struck me as fairly silly: most of the things anyone dreams of doing as a kid are either utterly unachievable or, for obvious reasons, quite disconnected from the concerns of the adult world. The example here, in which Larque's inner child Lark is upset because Larque never became a cowboy, is typical: the desire to be a cowboy clearly has very little to do with the actual cowboy lifestyle and instead arises from the cowboy's depiction as an avatar of freedom. But the permanently 10-year-old Lark can't be expected to understand this: as a result, the episode serves, at best, as a reminder that Larque feels trapped in her current life, something which she already knew. At worst, filtering everything through a 10-year-old's perceptions allows Larque to avoid having to confront her actual problems and instead focus on the fake problem of why she isn't a cowboy.

To be fair, there are some good parts to the book. The conflict between Larque and her mother is well thought out: in particular, the way that Larque's mother's determination to only see what she wants to see is turned into a dangerous magical power is quite clever. And Springer does have a sense of humor, which is always appreciated, although much of that comes through her informal, almost conversational style, which can be very good if it's done well but here often comes off as annoying. However, if you're looking for a Tiptree Award-winning work from 1994 to read, you are far better off with Le Guin's "The Matter of Seggri".

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3111114.html

I confess I had never heard of Nancy Springer before reading this novel, which shared the 1995 James Tiptree Jr Award with "The Matter of Seggri". It turns out that she is much better known for her YA novels about Sherlock Holmes' smarter younger sister. I found Larque on the Wing a complete delight. The viewpoint character, Larque Harootunian, undergoes a mid-life crisis similar to that in Doris Lessing's The Summer Before the Dark, with the important difference that she is able to create doppelgangers of people she interacts with more or less by accident, and that her conservative mother is able to blink away undesirable characteristics of the people she interacts with. Larque reinvents herself as a young gay chap, to the dismay of her husband, and everyone needs to do some readjusting. The tone is comic but the foundations are hard. One of those cases where the awards system identified a good novel that might not otherwise have got much recognition from the genre.

[Crystal Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was packaged in a set of books that won the Tiptree award, and I took a look at it after reading the one I read the set for.
I understand Larque. I tried explaining the story to my husband and failed miserably because the whole story is a bit of a dreamscape. It's a story about a woman having a mid-life crisis in which she realizes some part of herself is starving and another part of herself isn't a woman at all. The remainder was very thoroughly shaped by her mother's inability to handle anything that isn't her estimation of perfect. I think if the story were written about a woman today going through this, the ending may have been different, but for the time period it seems to have gone the best for Larque.
Anyway, neat story dealing with gender and sexuality issues, though a bit behind what a similar story would look like set in today's times. This story feels like it was set in the 90's? So imagine accordingly if you pick it up.
When I went through my personal version of this journey I found a different ending myself, but that's all I'm ready to say right now.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

not a book for karens

Larque harootunian is a middleAged mother and hobbyist-painter living in Pennsylvania. One day skinny nose-picking 10 year old girl shows up, demanding that Larque stop painting “moo cows” in designer colors; that she fulfill promises she made to herself years ago to be a truth-teller, to fight the bad guys, and ride the open range like a cowboy.

Larque has a magical ability to manifest things she imagines as “doppelgängers “. To make them physical. Her mother has the power to “blink” things away that she doesn’t want to see, which includes Argent and Shadow, two lovers who live on Popular Street, a kind of magical gay district in the town.

The story is very queer-friendly so if the reader hates books that are too “woke” thay probably will hate this one too. I loved it because it’s not just gay-friendly, it’s trans-friendly too. As a transwoman myself I enjoyed the positive representation of people who feel like theyRe Other.

Not a book for Karens or for Tucker Carlson. Enjoy! It’s a unique read.

[Stefanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, and extra .5 mostly for the interesting (though definitely mid-90s relevant) exploration of femininity and the gay male experience, and the alignments between them.

On a story level, some things wrap up rather quickly toward the end, and it also feels as if it’s leading into a sequel, though apparently doesn’t? So that was a bit disappointing. But this book felt like one you’d read and discuss in a women’s studies or feminism class, and there’s plenty there for that. I didn’t agree or identify with all the ideas brought up, but it all felt worth exploring. I highlighted a bunch! So a good read, though I expect this book will land with more meaning among women readers 35+.

[Pontiki · Rating 2 out of 5]

As is evident, I stopped 3/4 of the way through this book. It’s bizarre, which I like in some of my reading, but it’s also kind of dumb.

I like Popular Street, another dimension, I like the deeper themes about homophobia and the battle within of Larque. Her transgenderism is interesting too.

What I don’t get is the weird cowboy stuff, the wacky blinking of her mother, and the Stepford persons of her and her husband. I don’t get her husband or brother, who seem to waste lots of time aimlessly, though they’re supposed to be funny.

So, I stopped when I got bored, went back because I was close to done, and was still unsatisfied.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about identity, about who you are, and who you want to be, and how your sense of self is transformed by others. This makes it sound like it will be thought provoking rather than fun, but I was very entertained. I was genuinely horrified by bad things that happened, laughed out loud other times, and found the climax satisfying.

[Elle VanGilder · Rating 3 out of 5]

rip larque, you would have loved genderfuckery in 2024

i jumped back and forth between really loving this book and feeling more ambivalent towards it. very silly but also very sentimental and sad, all that good stuff. the story itself Hit, but some of the little things within it had me going hmmm…

[Sue Chant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tiptree winner 1994

[Helen Fleischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gobbled it up all too quickly.

[Jessica Lerbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read this many years ago and mostly forgotten it, but it meant a lot more to me now, re-reading

[Dawn Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Larque on the Wing by Nancy Springer

251 Pages
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Release Date: December 23, 2014

Fiction (Adult), Sci Fi, Fantasy

Larque is an artist living with her husband Hoot, her three sons, and dog. She has the ability to create doppelgangers but the latest one is different. This little girl is dirty with a snotty nose and an attitude. She is Skylark at ten years old. She makes Larque realize that she is not living the dreams she had as a child. She wanted to be a cowboy, have courage, and fight the bad guys. Instead, Larque paints cows and countryside settings. Skaylark takes off and Larque goes after her. She finds another part of town, full of mystical places. In order to be true to herself, she must find Skylark and make amends.

The book has a steady pace, the characters are developed, and it is written in the third person point of view. The author has a captivating writing style. She made me realize that we all have three parts within ourselves and we must embrace all of them to be true to ourselves. If you like grown-up books with adult themes and a mystical twist, you will enjoy this book.

[Verushka · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a teaser I posted recently (http://editingeverything.com/) that seems to encapsulate this book: “And if Shadow was gay—then he was like her. Dimly, with her burning heart more than her mind, she began to understand why she had always liked gay men. They suffered, were persecuted, they were outsiders in a world where studbuck male heteros held all the power, they did not count, they were Other—the way women were.”

Larque on the Wing is an original, weird, thought-provoking read, but I am not sure if I enjoyed it.

I did keep reading it, yes, because it’s a strong commentary on society’s expectations of women – this is Larque’s mid-life crisis, where we’re privy to what her hopes and dreams were as a child, and she, like us, see that she’s left those dreams long behind.

The book was written years ago, and it’s set in a contemporary society, though it’s one in which magic is an accepted reality. Larque herself has the ability to manifest doppelgangers and her mother has the ability to “blink” anything away she does not like, or “blink” something or someone into something more palatable to her tastes. Magical realism is not altogether a strange genre to me – given my love for fantasy and sci-fi, it’s elements are familiar, and in that sense, this book is quite fun. Imagine going into a store – like a tattoo parlour – and magically changing yourself into whatever you want to be. In Larque’s case a guy, with detachable male and female body parts.

When we meet Larque, she’s a 40-something painter, happily married and successful or rather on the surface she is. And we’re immediately introduced to Skylark – an annoying, early-teen version of herself. Reminded of her past dreams through Skylark, Larque finds herself unable to paint, and so begins her search for who she wants to be now, and away from the expectations of motherhood and being a wife.

This leads her to Shadow, who magically transforms people into who they most want to be. And, Larque wants to be a young, attractive man. On the outside, that’s what everyone sees, but she’s still Larque on the inside. Magical realism, remember? These things are commonplace in this world, and Larque is excited and thrilled at her transformation, even if her husband and sons aren’t. But this young man isn’t the only version of her we see – there’s the Virtuous Larque, who comes into being because of her mother’s ability and desire for the “right” kind of daughter.

The book follows Larque in her desire to save Skylark, but it’s how it delves into the expectations we have of ourself and others that stuck with me. It’s up to Larque to decide which is the life she wants.

This feels like a half-review because understanding everything that Springer is saying, coupled with the magical realism, requires a second read I think. It’s not going to be for everyone, and it’s going to make you wonder about the expectations you (and everyone else) has of you.

[Althea Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very different from most of Springer's books, which tend toward classic fairy-tale fantasy. This one is more reminiscent of Margaret Atwood, with a thematic agenda of feminism, sexual relations and aging. The "fantasy" elements are more surreal than actual fantasy.
The protagonist, Lark, has always had a strange habit of summoning up what she calls doppelgangers – physical manifestations caused by her unbidden thoughts. As the story begins, she has created one that seems to be a particularly unpleasant incarnation of herself as a child. Lark comes to realize that not only does she not like this child who is herself, but she also dislikes her current self – overweight, married, and boring, not having lived up to everything that the child Lark had hoped for. Through encounters with a handsome and mystical gay man who also has powers of transformation – and with her mother, who has her own supernatural gift of denial – Lark goes through various transformations of identity and gender while coming to terms with her life as a middle-aged woman.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a galley copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Larque on the Wing is the story of a woman trying to rediscover who she is after a life lived to please others. Larque is the middle-aged mother, and breadwinner in her family. She has always believed that she was happy with her life, until a doppelganger of her younger self arrives and tries to show her how far she strayed from the path she wanted to be walking. Larque rejects this younger self and loses the elements in her life that her child-self allowed, namely her art.

Filled with fantastical elements [doppelgangers, magical streets, a mother who can 'blink' anyone into being who she wants them to be], and explorations of gender identity and the male and female elements within us all, this book is an interesting take on the mid-life crisis.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly odd and wonderful fantasy about a middle-aged woman finding herself and what makes her happy. In a genre that is quite sparse on older women as protagonists, this book is something of a forgotten gem. Larque has the power to draw out parts of other's inner selves and in the course of an identity crisis splits herself into 3 parts: a young gay man, a 10 year old child and a version of herself, shaped by her homophobic mother's vision of what her daughter should be. The gay characters are drawn very sympathetically and realistically, particularly given the time period, and the gender/sexuality analysis is pretty interesting. Not all of it holds up, but an excellent read overall and well worth tracking down. Definitely due for a reprint/new ebook edition.

[William Bentrim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is either a magic oriented self identity exploration or a mental illness fueled fantasy. Larque is a young, middle age mother and wife who looks for her inner self and finds something.

There is a lot of social commentary regarding sexual identity and resultant societal dictated roles. There is minimal action and maximum social spelunking. Larque meets her long lost father, the perpetrator of said loss and the reader meets Larques family and their idiosyncrasies.

This book is probably used in someone's sociology classes or perhaps abberant psychology, hard t make a decision on that.

Web site: http://www.nancyspringer.com/

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Larque is a middle-age mother and painter having a crisis. She creates people out of nothing but her thoughts. When she creates a ten year version of herself, it leads herself on a journey for her lost dreams. It makes her stronger and she comes back as a male!

The story is thought provoking and good. It is a unique novel.

Disclaimer: I received an arc of this book free from the author/publisher from Netgalley. I was not obliged to write a favorable review, or even any review at all. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.

[Jimbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly I am a fan of Nancy Springer and Larque on the Wing is another mismatched story of not-necessarily common folk, and yet so recognizable in more ways than not. Springer has a way with writing fascinating stories that are not the usual stories of family, but are told and feel as if you are in your hometown talking about people you know - even if they are people you have never met and may never meet. They feel like friends and family because of how she spins a tale and makes it so normal to not be normal. This is definitely worth the read.

[Kallierose · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it a little hard to get into this book. The ideas and the whole mysticism bit seemed a little too unbelievable. I got about 2/3 of the way through before I gave up. I just didn't really care what happened to the characters and on the whole felt the main character was far too self-absorbed. Also the whole doppelgänger thing was just too easily accepted and never questioned by the husband. Haven't these people ever heard of therapy?

[Princessjay · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting exploration of feminism, gender and sexuality.

If a woman is turned magically into a young man and forms a relationship with a gay man while mostly retaining her personality... what kind of relationship is it? And when she turns back into a woman, would he, could he, still love her? Do labels matter?

And much besides.

Worth a read!

[Darla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another Fem Sci. An odd one, I like this author but found this one a little harder to enjoy. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoyed Orlando by Virginia Woolf. Same stuff but lighter with a lot more color.