Reviews
"This is one of the best works of fiction to come my way in a long time. Paul La Farge writes beautifully, with wit, humor and passion. He has created as thoroughly imagined a world as you would expect from Chekhov or Flaubert, and has bestowed upon two fictional families enough sympathy and care to rank himself among the best of parents. Luminous Airplanes is a quiet triumph of a book." Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story "Paul La Farge's novels have always been luminous, but in Luminous Airplanes his relentlessly sharp eye alights on our crazy present for the first time, knocking the new century against his strange and wondrous imagination. The results inhabit a recognizable world that feels brave and new, a social history that feels like science fiction, and a wild story that you could swear happened to friends of yours. It's funny without sacrificing its serious intent; it's ambitious without abandoning its intimate boundaries; it's everything we want in a novel and quite a few things we hadn't thought of until this moment. I closed this book with a tiny little sadness that I'd never again get to experience it for the first time." Daniel Handler , author of Adverbs, "Like some kind of freakishly gifted Olympic ice skater, Paul La Farge skates gracefully through decades of time, tracing the through lines from childhood games to the dramas and disintegrating dreams of adulthood. Our charming, hilarious narrator is caught in a grinding stasis created by "what I lacked the courage to pursue but could not let go": his crummy programming job, his stillborn dissertation, his dead patriarchs, his impossible (plural) mothers, and the phoenix of Yesim, his beautiful, mildly hirsute, first love. This perfect figure-8 of a book links San Francisco's tech boom to one nerdy kid's quest to seduce a girl with a computer game to the quacky cul-de-sacs of early aeronautics history to sleepy 1980s upstate New York to the Millerites' cosmic goof. Luminous Airplanes is a coming of age story like none other I've ever read, one that seems to exists simultaneously in the past and the present, in plausible futures and science-fictional realms. Luminous Airplanes is brilliant, poignant, startling, hilarious, and a really, really fun read. I loved it." -Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! "This is one of the best works of fiction to come my way in a long time. Paul La Farge writes beautifully, with wit, humor and passion. He has created as thoroughly imagined a world as you would expect from Chekhov or Flaubert, and has bestowed upon two fictional families enough sympathy and care to rank himself among the best of parents. Luminous Airplanes is a quiet triumph of a book." -Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story "Paul La Farge's novels have always been luminous, but in Luminous Airplanes his relentlessly sharp eye alights on our crazy present for the first time, knocking the new century against his strange and wondrous imagination. The results inhabit a recognizable world that feels brave and new, a social history that feels like science fiction, and a wild story that you could swear happened to friends of yours. It's funny without sacrificing its serious intent; it's ambitious without abandoning its intimate boundaries; it's everything we want in a novel and quite a few things we hadn't thought of until this moment. I closed this book with a tiny little sadness that I'd never again get to experience it for the first time." -Daniel Handler , author of Adverbs "[A] brilliantly imagined novel . . . La Farge spins his tale with the grace of an acrobat." - Publishers Weekly (starred review), "This is one of the best works of fiction to come my way in a long time. Paul La Farge writes beautifully, with wit, humor and passion. He has created as thoroughly imagined a world as you would expect from Chekhov or Flaubert, and has bestowed upon two fictional families enough sympathy and care to rank himself among the best of parents. Luminous Airplanes is a quiet triumph of a book." - Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story "Paul La Farge's novels have always been luminous, but in Luminous Airplanes his relentlessly sharp eye alights on our crazy present for the first time, knocking the new century against his strange and wondrous imagination. The results inhabit a recognizable world that feels brave and new, a social history that feels like science fiction, and a wild story that you could swear happened to friends of yours. It's funny without sacrificing its serious intent; it's ambitious without abandoning its intimate boundaries; it's everything we want in a novel and quite a few things we hadn't thought of until this moment. I closed this book with a tiny little sadness that I'd never again get to experience it for the first time." - Daniel Handler , author of Adverbs