Strap in for an epic journey, following a female aviator (inspired by Amelia Earheart) who disappears while attempting to become the first person to fly a circle around the Earth, intersecting both poles.
The novel soars through a landscape rich with complex characters and intimate perspectives on historical events, spanning the turbulent years from the nineteen twenties to the modern day. The aviator, Marian Graves, is a single-minded force of nature, who refuses to allow the conventions of her time to restrict her. We accompany her through a childhood in rural Montana, dressing as a boy and smuggling alcohol during Prohibition, to her service as one of the first female pilots in England during the second world war, and finally, on her fateful journey over Antarctica.
At some point she would have found the edge of her own courage. There is nothing for it but to adjust, be humbled. So she is not exactly who she had thought. So what. She will be someone different.
The novel charts other stories too: that of Marian’s parents, her twin brother, Jamie, and their childhood friend, Celeb, as well as intermittently swerving into the present day where a Hollywood actress playing Marian in a movie about her life, pieces together clues about what might have become of her.
Marian remains the powerful engine of the book however, the perfect heroine for a novel grappling with the vertiginously widening scale of the twentieth century. With the backdrop of globe-trotting exploration, technological breakthroughs, and war, the restless hunger which drives Marian’s desire to fly (to keep moving, to escape), is equally fraught with a suicidal need to push boundaries and to toy with its own destruction. Perhaps this is why, for a story so full of life—its characters exploding with will and desire—the book is also a reconnaissance of loss; a confrontation with emptiness, death and disappearance; with the unchartable that lurks at the edges of what we know.
An exquisitely written and lovingly-rendered story, impressively researched and adroitly pitched for the concerns of a modern day audience, it is definitely worth the read. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, and the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and received glowing praise from critics.
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Paperback from Better World Books £4.26
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