FLIGHT by SHERMAN ALEXIE

Black Cat, 2007

A BOOK REVIEW
by LAUREL FULLER

Everyone has had moments that they wish they could turn back and do over, mistakes they’ve made, or just things they would do a little differently if given the chance. The hero in Sherman Alexie’s latest, Flight, makes one of the most grievous mistakes a person can make in his or her lifetime: he shoots and kills a bank full of innocent people without motive or reason. The rest of the novel takes him on a journey through the lives others, forced to face the same dilemma over and over: to kill, or not to kill?

I had an opportunity to meet Mr. Alexie prior to his keynote speech at the Roper Theater in Norfolk, VA, to ask him about writing and the writer’s life. I was concerned about employing that “write what you know” rule, because as a horror-fantasy writer, my own fiction usually deals with situations that I don’t run across in my daily life. He told me to focus on the characters; that rule isn’t all-encompassing, he said, and a writer should always use what he or she knows about people in order to make the stories and situations they wind up in credible.

Flight deals with time travel, body-switching, and possession – all situations very few, if any, of us have ever dealt with personally. But because it’s done through the eyes of a young man trying to find himself, it’s easy to understand and relate to. More than that, it’s a rare insight into the mind of a would-be killer who gets a second chance. Real life does not offer second chances, only opportunities to understand what’s come before. Sherman Alexie's Flight is one of those opportunities.


Laurel Fuller is a graduate of the University of Richmond with a B.A. in English. She is a struggling science fiction and horror writer and is currently living in Virginia Beach.


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