This was a long book, telling an epic story of the life of one woman. Through many other characters we experience the struggles she has and the book ends in an exciting flight around the earth, flying over both the north and south poles.
In any epic novel you are going to spend a lot of time with the characters, and unfortunately early on I found that I didn’t like the main character, Marian. Many of her struggles and challenges seemed meant as a way to show the disadvantages for women in her era, and some situations and characters seemed forced. For me Marian (and her modern day version(?) Hadley) seemed mopey – listlessly moving towards her destiny as a pilot.
The backstory was deep here, and I enjoyed the sense of scale in the beginning and ending of the novel. The middle of the book was pretty slow for me, and I think the author could have written a tighter story. Oddly enough sex plays a major role with most of the characters, and sometimes it seems like it is brought up unnecessarily as a sort of brute motivation impulse. I thought a little deeper dive into why people are behaving and moving towards their goals might have been in order.
Having said that, I did enjoy the storytelling and loved the parts of the story involving the flying of planes. Contained in this book are some short descriptions of real female aviators from those days, and I think in the future I’ll pick up some biographies of them to learn more.
Overall this was a good book that could have been great with some judicious editing.
Next I’m reading Dirt by Bill Buford.
