The Last Flight of Poxl West
Daniel Torday, 2015
St. Martin's Press
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250081605
Summary
Poxl West fled the Nazis' onslaught in Czechoslovakia. He escaped their clutches again in Holland. He pulled Londoners from the Blitz's rubble. He wooed intoxicating, unconventional beauties. He rained fire on Germany from his RAF bomber.
Poxl West is the epitome of manhood and something of an idol to his teenage nephew, Eli Goldstein, who reveres him as a brave, singular, Jewish war hero. Poxl fills Eli's head with electric accounts of his derring-do, adventures and romances, as he collects the best episodes from his storied life into a memoir.
He publishes that memoir, Skylock, to great acclaim, and its success takes him on the road, and out of Eli's life. With his uncle gone, Eli throws himself into reading his opus and becomes fixated on all things Poxl.
But as he delves deeper into Poxl's history, Eli begins to see that the life of the fearless superman he's adored has been much darker than he let on, and filled with unimaginable loss from which he may have not recovered. As the truth about Poxl emerges, it forces Eli to face irreconcilable facts about the war he's romanticized and the vision of the man he's held so dear.
Daniel Torday's debut novel, The Last Flight of Poxl West, beautifully weaves together the two unforgettable voices of Eli Goldstein and Poxl West, exploring what it really means to be a hero, and to be a family, in the long shadow of war. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—near Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Kenyon College; M.F.A., Syracuse University
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Daniel Torday is the Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College. An author and former editor at Esquire magazine, Torday currently serves as an editor at The Kenyon Review. His short stories and essays have appeared in Esquire, Glimmer Train, Harper Perennial's Fifty-Two Stories, Harvard Review, The New York Times and The Kenyon Review. Torday's novella, The Sensualist, won the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction. (From the publisher.)
An introduction to an interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air:
Torday pulled from his own family's experiences to write about the war [in The Last Flight of Poxl West]—his father was born in Hungary two years after World War II ended. He says, "My grandfather falsified papers to make himself appear to not be Jewish anymore and that was how they were able to live out the war in Hungary."
Seven years after the war, Torday's grandparents moved to a Hungarian community on Long Island, N.Y.—but they still kept their secrets.
My grandmother died in the early '90s without ever once admitting that she was Jewish, to me or to anybody else," Torday says. "My grandfather, actually, after her funeral, admitted to the rest of the family that he was Jewish and then wanted to tell those stories for the next decade of his life." —March 17,2015
Book Reviews
The Last Flight provides both a touching, old-fashioned drama about war and love…and a more modern framing tale that makes us rethink the impulses behind storytelling, and the toll that self-dramatization can take not only on practitioners but also on those who believe and cherish their fictions…. It's Mr. Torday's ability to shift gears between sweeping historical vistas and more intimate family dramas, and between old-school theatrics and more contemporary meditations on the nature of storytelling that announces his emergence as a writer deserving of attention.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
[An] expertly crafted first novel…. There doesn't seem to be a germane subject for which the author hasn't done his homework, from the leather trade to the cockpit controls of military aircraft to the kabbalah…. And all of this is rendered in Torday's unobtrusively lyrical prose, superb Rothian sentences that glide over the page as smoothly as a Spitfire across a cloudless sky…. The Last Flight of Poxl West…[is] an utterly accomplished novel…. Daniel Torday is a writer…with real talent and heart.
Teddy Wayne - New York Times Book Review
OMFG! What a book! Eli Goldstein has the retrospective candor of Roth's Zuckerman and the sensitivity of a Harold Brodkey narrator, and Poxl West is an unforgettable creation. Plus, things happen in this book, big things like the world wars. A delight!
Gary Shteyngart
The Last Flight of Poxl West manages to be about WWII, the Holocaust, the place of novels and memoirs in the lives of their readers, and what the book's narrator makes of all this.
Terry Gross - NPR's Fresh Air
The last sentence of The Last Flight of Poxl West is one of the great conclusions.... The best 149 words published this year.
Chris Jones - Esquire Magazine
Torday’s descriptive and powerful prose stands as the book’s highlight. The book-within-a-book memoir is a page-turner.... [His nephew] Elijah’s chapters culminate with him looking at his uncle through more mature eyes...culminating with a tender ending to Elijah’s narrative.
Publishers Weekly
Torday...is a polished writer who creates an unforgettable character for whom the term flight describes his whole life.... This portrait of a Holocaust survivor's experiences is innovative, and its page-turning plot will keep readers on the edge until the very end. —Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Library Journal
(Starred review.) While Torday is more likely to be compared to Philip Roth or Michael Chabon than Gillian Flynn, his debut novel has two big things in common with Gone Girl—it's a story told in two voices, and it's almost impossible to discuss without revealing spoilers. A richly layered, beautifully told and somehow lovable story about war, revenge and loss.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. After Poxl's book is published his relationship with Eli becomes distant. He blames his busy schedule, but do you think there were other reasons why Poxl pulled away from Eli? Do you think Eli comes to understand and accept Poxl's withdrawal?
2. What do you think is the biggest lesson Eli learns from his experience with his Uncle Poxl's memoir in the immediate aftermath? How does that understanding change after years of reflection?
3. What roles does art play in Poxl's life, specifically his admiration for Egon Schiele and William Shakespeare? How do you think Poxl's love of the arts shapes Eli's perception of him?
4. How does Poxl's knowledge of his mother's infidelities affect his view of her? How does it affect his views of his father? Do his judgments change after he begins to suspect their fates? How does he feel about the actions he's taken toward them?
5. Do you think Poxl's parents' relationship affected his own relationships with women? How?
6. Who do you think was Poxl's great love? What role did Francoise serve in his life? Glynnis? Victoria? How does each intimate relationship affect subsequent relationships in this life?
7. Eli says of himself that he was not drawn to learning about his Jewish heritage as a boy. What about Poxl's stories captures his interest? Was Poxl's wartime experience as a Jewish refugee who fights militarily against the Nazi invasion different than other Jewish experiences you've read before? How?
8. How did you feel about the ending? Would you call it happy?
9. Can a memoir ever be considered strictly nonfiction? Or does autobiographical recollection always possess a level of fiction,regardless of the factual foundation?
10. This novel alternates between two coming-of-age narratives: Eli's reflections and Poxl's memoir, inviting comparisons between both their experiences of adolescence? How are they similar? How do they differ? Do you like novels composed of two different stories or perspectives?
11. Half of the novel takes place in 1940s Europe, and the other half in Boston in the 1980s and '90s. Was there a time period or section that you preferred? Why?
12. How does Skylock, as a book-within-a-book, affect your reading? What is your experience of returning to the Eli sections after long periods in Poxl's head?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)