- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition (Mar 1 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1594480702
- ISBN-13: 978-1594480706
- Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 13.3 x 2.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 318 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #481,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Lee's third novel (after Native Speaker and A Gesture Life) approaches the problems of race and belonging in America from a new angle—the perspective of Jerry Battle, the semiretired patriarch of a well-off (and mostly white) Long Island family. Sensitive but emotionally detached, Jerry escapes by flying solo in his small plane even as he ponders his responsibilities to his loved ones: his irascible father, Hank, stewing in a retirement home; his son, Jack, rashly expanding the family landscaping business; Jerry's graduate student daughter, Theresa, engaged to Asian-American writer Paul and pregnant but ominously secretive; and Jerry's long-time Puerto Rican girlfriend, Rita, who has grown tired of two decades of aloofness and left him for a wealthy lawyer. Jack and Theresa's mother was Jerry's Korean-American wife, Daisy, who drowned in the swimming pool after a struggle with mental illness when Jack and Theresa were children, and Theresa's angry postcolonial take on ethnicity and exploitation is met by Jerry's slightly bewildered efforts to understand his place in a new America. Jerry's efforts to win back Rita, Theresa's failing health and Hank's rebellion against his confinement push the meandering narrative along, but the novel's real substance comes from the rich, circuitous paths of Jerry's thoughts—about family history and contemporary culture—as his family draws closer in a period of escalating crisis. Lee's poetic prose sits well in the mouth of this aging Italian-American whose sentences turn unexpected corners. Though it sometimes seems that Lee may be trying to embody too many aspects of 21st-century American life in these individuals, Jerry's humble and skeptical voice and Lee's genuine compassion for his compromised characters makes for a truly moving story about a modern family.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
At 59, Jerry Battle takes great comfort in the orderliness of the aerial view as he flies his small plane above Long Island, where his Italian American family has run a landscape business for generations, and the fact is, Jerry is always somewhat airborne. He suppresses his feelings, avoids confrontation, and, although he's physically present for his still-virile elderly father and his adult children, he is always out of reach. But gravity is a relentless force, and over the course of just a few months, Jerry is pulled inexorably into a snarl of family catastrophes, reaping the consequences of his indifference toward the family business, his inability to come to terms with his wife's death, and his failure to ask the woman he loves, Rita, to marry him, even though she essentially raised his son, Jack, whose questionable financial shenanigans will destroy the family business, and his daughter, Theresa, whose progressive views evaporate in the face of her cruel fate: she's diagnosed with cancer at the same time she gets pregnant. Lee follows the stunning A Gesture Life (1999) with a brilliant and candid parsing of the dynamics of a family of mixed heritage--Jerry's wife was Korean, as is Theresa's intended, and Rita is Puerto Rican--while simultaneously offering a ribald look at male sexuality, a charming celebration of the solace of good food, and a sagacious and bitingly funny critique of our times. There is no escape, Lee reminds us, no rising above. We have no choice but to cope with fleshy, chaotic, and bittersweet life right here on earth. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
From up here, a half mile above the Earth, everything looks perfect to me. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
From up here, a half mile above the Earth, everything looks perfect to me. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Long time,
This review is from: Aloft (Hardcover)
Not since McCrae's "The Bark of the Dogwood" have I so been affected by a subtle yet powerful novel. But this is exactly what happened with Chang-Rae Lee's "Aloft." His third novel, Lee has hit the proverbial nail on the head when it comes to drawing characters. Jerry is the perfect middle-aged man, complete with all the baggage that comes with that territory, and this, accompanied by the other elements that Lee gives us about the family, make for a riveting book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Author handles material well,
By A Customer
This review is from: Aloft (Hardcover)
Chang-Rae Lee has got to be my favorite author now. When I first read the description of this book in the above section, I was put off. Don't be! It sounds convoluted and complicated but it's not! This is a fantastic book!Also read "A Gesture Life" and "The Bark of the Dogwood."
5.0 out of 5 stars
ALOFT,
By A Customer
This review is from: Aloft (Hardcover)
Chang-Rae Lee has written an inspired novel that is eloquent in its lonely disengagement, which is what most of us experience, if we're honest, with our own heartbreaking families. I recommend this one for anyone who loved Jennifer Paddock's lyrical and similarly cathartic debut, A SECRET WORD.
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