Chang-Rae Lee, named by The New Yorker as one of its 20 writers for the 21st century, has confirmed his place in that company with Aloft, a masterful treatment of a man coming to terms with his own disaffection. In two previous novels, Native Speaker and A Gesture Life, Lee, a Korean-American, writes of lives being not what they seem: in the first, the protagonist is an undercover agent; in the second, the two halves of Franklin Hata's life never quite come together. Both novels won numerous awards, including Best First Novel, the Hemingway PEN Award, the American Book Award and the Asian-American Literary Award, among others. In Aloft, Lee revisits alienation, a fractured family, mixed heritage and the quest for identity.

Jerry Battle, 59-year-old widower and father of two, retired from the family business--the unmistakably earthbound Battle Brothers Brick and Mortar--buys a small plane because "From up here, a half mile above the Earth, everything looks perfect to me." All is not well below. Jerry knows it, saying "the recurring fantasy of my life...is one of perfect continuous travel, this unending hop from one point to another, the pleasures found not in the singular marvels of any destination but in the constancy of serial arrivals and departures, and the comforting companion knowledge that you'll never quite get intimate enough for any trouble to start brewing". His view from aloft saves him from the gritty reality of the detritus of life--and from life itself.

This high-flyer must come to earth, however, when he finds that his daughter is newly pregnant, diagnosed with cancer and refusing treatment; his son, who is running the company, has piled up so much debt that bankruptcy is imminent; and his father has gone missing from his assisted living facility. Jerry can no longer say, with impunity, "Jerry Battle hereby declines the Real". Lee takes us on great side trips into the pleasures of food and recreational sex, his wife Daisy's death and his longtime lover Rita's almost endless patience. He weaves long, Miltonic sentences that start in one place and end up miles away--flights of fancy--trailing clouds of insight and poignancy. With Aloft Lee just keeps getting better. --Valerie Ryan, Amazon.com

"There's no point in flying if you can't fly alone.", 19 Mar 2004
Jerome Battle, a self-described "average American guido," has managed to live most of his sixty years "above it all," never quite engaging with those around him or becoming emotionally intimate. On weekends he is aloft in his small plane, his "private box seat in the world and completely outside of it, too," flying alone around Long Island, observing the apparent orderliness of the landscape without the "pedestrian sea-level flotsam" of everyday life. Unfortunately, Jerry also lives his personal life the way he flies his plane, as if he's seeing it from a great distance. Numerous personal catastrophes, enough to unhinge a man more sensitive to his surroundings, are now occurring around and to Jerry and his family, but Jerry's long experience in avoidance allows him to remain disengaged from these events. Slowly, inexorably, the author develops the family's crises until they finally force themselves onto Jerry's personal radar screen, and he realizes that "I cannot stay at altitude much longer, even though I have fuel to burn."

By focusing on character, especially that of Jerry, and not plot, and telling the story from Jerry's point of view, author Lee has created enormous challenges for himself. He must engage the reader's interest in a man who is not really interested in much of anything--a man who does not see family emergencies as the dramatic and heart-wrenching events that they would be to other people and who has no interest in changing. So successful is the depiction of Jerry's phlegmatic point of view that the reader, too, may not see these events as very compelling or dramatic until Jerry himself starts to acknowledge them. Yet Lee's novel succeeds in its characterization. His depictions of Jerry and his family strike chords of recognition as he explores the universal questions of how we become the people we are and how we affect the generations which follow.

Beautifully written, and full of penetrating observations and felicitous turns of phrase, the novel is a sensitive and often painful exploration of the human condition, filled with characters who are utterly isolated at key turning points in their lives. Subtle in its development, and rich in imagery and obvious symbolism (Sir Harold Clarkson-Ickes's attempt to fly a balloon around the world, the Discovery Channel's story of the defeat of a lion king), this quietly complex novel by a prodigiously gifted author offers evidence that even a man as determined as Jerry Battle to remain above the fray must ultimately connect with the earth. Mary Whipple

Chang-Rae Lee, named by The New Yorker as one of its 20 writers for the 21st century, has confirmed his place in that company with Aloft, a masterful treatment of a man coming to terms with his own disaffection. In two previous novels, Native Speaker and A Gesture Life, Lee, a Korean-American, writes of lives being not what they seem: in the first, the protagonist is an undercover agent; in the second, the two halves of Franklin Hata's life never quite come together. Both novels won numerous awards, including Best First Novel, the Hemingway PEN Award, the American Book Award and the Asian-American Literary Award, among others. In Aloft, Lee revisits alienation, a fractured family, mixed heritage and the quest for identity.

Jerry Battle, 59-year-old widower and father of two, retired from the family business--the unmistakably earthbound Battle Brothers Brick and Mortar--buys a small plane because "From up here, a half mile above the Earth, everything looks perfect to me." All is not well below. Jerry knows it, saying "the recurring fantasy of my life...is one of perfect continuous travel, this unending hop from one point to another, the pleasures found not in the singular marvels of any destination but in the constancy of serial arrivals and departures, and the comforting companion knowledge that you'll never quite get intimate enough for any trouble to start brewing". His view from aloft saves him from the gritty reality of the detritus of life--and from life itself.

This high-flyer must come to earth, however, when he finds that his daughter is newly pregnant, diagnosed with cancer and refusing treatment; his son, who is running the company, has piled up so much debt that bankruptcy is imminent; and his father has gone missing from his assisted living facility. Jerry can no longer say, with impunity, "Jerry Battle hereby declines the Real". Lee takes us on great side trips into the pleasures of food and recreational sex, his wife Daisy's death and his longtime lover Rita's almost endless patience. He weaves long, Miltonic sentences that start in one place and end up miles away--flights of fancy--trailing clouds of insight and poignancy. With Aloft Lee just keeps getting better. --Valerie Ryan, Amazon.com

"There's no point in flying if you can't fly alone.", 19 Mar 2004
Jerome Battle, a self-described "average American guido," has managed to live most of his sixty years "above it all," never quite engaging with those around him or becoming emotionally intimate. On weekends he is aloft in his small plane, his "private box seat in the world and completely outside of it, too," flying alone around Long Island, observing the apparent orderliness of the landscape without the "pedestrian sea-level flotsam" of everyday life. Unfortunately, Jerry also lives his personal life the way he flies his plane, as if he's seeing it from a great distance. Numerous personal catastrophes, enough to unhinge a man more sensitive to his surroundings, are now occurring around and to Jerry and his family, but Jerry's long experience in avoidance allows him to remain disengaged from these events. Slowly, inexorably, the author develops the family's crises until they finally force themselves onto Jerry's personal radar screen, and he realizes that "I cannot stay at altitude much longer, even though I have fuel to burn."

By focusing on character, especially that of Jerry, and not plot, and telling the story from Jerry's point of view, author Lee has created enormous challenges for himself. He must engage the reader's interest in a man who is not really interested in much of anything--a man who does not see family emergencies as the dramatic and heart-wrenching events that they would be to other people and who has no interest in changing. So successful is the depiction of Jerry's phlegmatic point of view that the reader, too, may not see these events as very compelling or dramatic until Jerry himself starts to acknowledge them. Yet Lee's novel succeeds in its characterization. His depictions of Jerry and his family strike chords of recognition as he explores the universal questions of how we become the people we are and how we affect the generations which follow.

Beautifully written, and full of penetrating observations and felicitous turns of phrase, the novel is a sensitive and often painful exploration of the human condition, filled with characters who are utterly isolated at key turning points in their lives. Subtle in its development, and rich in imagery and obvious symbolism (Sir Harold Clarkson-Ickes's attempt to fly a balloon around the world, the Discovery Channel's story of the defeat of a lion king), this quietly complex novel by a prodigiously gifted author offers evidence that even a man as determined as Jerry Battle to remain above the fray must ultimately connect with the earth. Mary Whipple

"There's no point in flying if you can't fly alone.", 19 Mar 2004
Jerome Battle, a self-described "average American guido," has managed to live most of his sixty years "above it all," never quite engaging with those around him or becoming emotionally intimate. On weekends he is aloft in his small plane, his "private box seat in the world and completely outside of it, too," flying alone around Long Island, observing the apparent orderliness of the landscape without the "pedestrian sea-level flotsam" of everyday life. Unfortunately, Jerry also lives his personal life the way he flies his plane, as if he's seeing it from a great distance. Numerous personal catastrophes, enough to unhinge a man more sensitive to his surroundings, are now occurring around and to Jerry and his family, but Jerry's long experience in avoidance allows him to remain disengaged from these events. Slowly, inexorably, the author develops the family's crises until they finally force themselves onto Jerry's personal radar screen, and he realizes that "I cannot stay at altitude much longer, even though I have fuel to burn."

By focusing on character, especially that of Jerry, and not plot, and telling the story from Jerry's point of view, author Lee has created enormous challenges for himself. He must engage the reader's interest in a man who is not really interested in much of anything--a man who does not see family emergencies as the dramatic and heart-wrenching events that they would be to other people and who has no interest in changing. So successful is the depiction of Jerry's phlegmatic point of view that the reader, too, may not see these events as very compelling or dramatic until Jerry himself starts to acknowledge them. Yet Lee's novel succeeds in its characterization. His depictions of Jerry and his family strike chords of recognition as he explores the universal questions of how we become the people we are and how we affect the generations which follow.

Beautifully written, and full of penetrating observations and felicitous turns of phrase, the novel is a sensitive and often painful exploration of the human condition, filled with characters who are utterly isolated at key turning points in their lives. Subtle in its development, and rich in imagery and obvious symbolism (Sir Harold Clarkson-Ickes's attempt to fly a balloon around the world, the Discovery Channel's story of the defeat of a lion king), this quietly complex novel by a prodigiously gifted author offers evidence that even a man as determined as Jerry Battle to remain above the fray must ultimately connect with the earth. Mary Whipple