Flight

by Victoria Glendinning

In this, the age of the Euro, it seems appropriate that Victoria Glendinning has chosen to write a novel about Europe and about people whose lives are no longer bound by physical borders. The characters in Flight are new wealthy professionals who think nothing of breakfast meetings in Paris, lunch in Cologne. But what effect has this opening up of nations had on these people's psyche, their cultural heritage? Have they lost some innate sense of belonging, or have they somehow morphed into citizens of the new world, comfortable in their cultural openness? Glendinning's characters jet across the continent desperately seeking answers to these and more fundamental questions of a secular how to be a good person, live a decent life, pursue ethical business practices, love one's family and friends. Martagon (his mother named him after a pink lily) is a highly respected engineer, known throughout the industry as a forward-thinking but deeply conscientious man. Having failed to get on an architecture course, he has spent his working life as an "artist engineer" justifying himself by pushing boundaries, working with the best, specialising in advanced use of glass. An only child whose father died young, Martagon has few friends and has never fallen in love. Until, quite unexpectedly, in the course of building a glass airport in the south of France, Marina enters his life. A minor French aristocrat, she is a vision of French elegance. Stunningly beautiful and clever too, Marina is proud of her cultural heritage and personal identity. Martagon is instantly captivated. Inevitably, things soon start to go wrong. Martagon¹s desire for Marina affects not only other areas of his personal life, but, more importantly, his hitherto exemplary professional life. Glendinning builds her plot towards a shocking end, but ultimately, while questioning the basic human need to 'belong", and the overwhelming power and destruction of passionate love, Flight doesn't quite pull it off. -- Carey Green

Genres: Fiction

258 pages, Hardcover

First published September 24, 2002

About the author

British biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. She is President of English PEN, a winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, was awarded a CBE in 1998 and is Vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature.

Glendinning read modern languages at Oxford and worked as a teacher and social worker before becoming an editorial assistant for the Times Literary Supplement in 1974.

She has been married three times, the second to Irish writer, lawyer and editor Terence de Vere White, who died of Parkinson's disease in 1994.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this very much. There was just the slightest touch of Ballardian dystopia in this exploration of stress and load-bearing, transparency and motion, in buildings and people and systems. Met Victoria the other evening at dinner, and spent yesterday evening with an assembly of illustrious architects, so it all seems to fit together in an interesting way.

[bob walenski · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit slow moving and predictable, the book was a short, easy read and had moments of insight into relationships and the way they start and inevitably end when infidelity is involved.
a good 2 day read.

[Jayne Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a bold attempt to make civil engineering sexy, this novel has a guy called Margtagon (Martagon??? Isn’t that some kind of gas?), designer of massive glass structures, getting involved with a French redhead. Before we get to that bit, though, there is a fair amount of corporate manoeuvring to plough though, and whilst one trusts the author that this stuff will prove important later on, it does go on a bit.

We are told this book is a romance, and indeed it is, though I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was about Marina the French redhead that was so attractive (I mean, she didn’t even have nice legs). I didn’t find her at all likeable, and that was a problem. At its heart, the plot is a fairly standard one of romance gone wrong, but the setting lends it a nice feeling of originality. There is a thoughtful quality to the writing, too, and it allowed itself time and space along the way to consider such topics as the European image of the UK, and pride in being British (and whether that's embarrassing).

What was excellent was the portrayal of the building industry at its flamboyant top end. The high flyers that populate it, the macho culture, and the potential for small errors to cost millions and cause embarrassing time delays. I used to work as a surveyor and remember it well.

[Jacqui · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book of love and loss and not knowing what you want until it's too late, the main character is very self-indulgent, a good read but not compelling.