Flights (Tocarczuk) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
It’s a busy, beautiful vexation, this novel, a quiver full of fables of pilgrims and pilgrimages, and the reasons—the hidden, the brave, the foolhardy—we venture forth into the world.… In Jennifer Croft’s assured translation, each self-enclosed account is tightly conceived and elegantly modulated, the language balletic, unforced.
New York Times


A beautifully fragmented look at man’s longing for permanence… ambitious and complex.
Washington Post


An unclassifiable medley of linked fictions and essays.… Reading it is like being a passenger on a long trip…. It’s amusing, exciting…. It moves… to moments of intense interest and beauty.
Wall Street Journal


Tokarczuk’s discerning eye shakes things up, in the same way that her book scrambles conventional forms…. Like her characters, our narrator is always on the move, and is always noticing and theorizing, often brilliantly.
New Yorker


A revelation…. Flights is a witty, imaginative, hard-to-classify work that is in the broadest sense about travel…. In this risky, restlessly mercurial book, Tokarczuk has found a way of turning… philosophy into writing that doesn't just take flight but soars.
NPR (Fresh Air)


What’s in a novel? This Man Booker International Prize winner reads like a rigorous response to that question in the best, most edifying (and maddening) way.… Flights has the scattered intimate quality of a personal diary, its magic wedded to its singularity. It’s an unexpected, funny journey into that most elusive of places—the human condition.
Entertainment Weekly


A select few novels possess the wonder of music, and this is one of them. No two readers will experience it exactly the same way. Flights is an international, mercurial, and always generous book, to be endlessly revisited. Like a glorious, charmingly impertinent travel companion, it reflects, challenges, and rewards.
Los Angeles Review of Books
 

(Starred review) [A]n indisputable masterpiece…. Punctuated by maps and figures, the discursive novel is reminiscent of the work of [W.G.] Sebald. The threads ultimately converge in a remarkable way, making this an extraordinary accomplishment.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) This host of haunting narratives teases the mind and taunts the soul…. As a solution of severed threads, it relies on readers for assemblage, and the task is exhilarating indeed.
Library Journal


(Starred review) Characters are drawn to precision…. Tokarczuk’s tales vary in length and are complex and layered, forming an exploration into the impermanence of existence and experience.
Booklist


It’s not a novel exactly.… This is a series of fragments tenuously linked by the idea of travel—through space and also through time—and a thoughtful, ironic voice…. Tokarczuk has a sly sense of humor.… A welcome introduction to a major author.
Kirkus Reviews