A sharp and furious showdown. Siblings are forced to come together when a young child goes missing. The plot is interesting I think it's just missing something.

Excellent! A real intimate, but also psychologically developed, family drama. Adult siblings gather for Christmas at the house of one of them, each with his family - there is a sister with her husband and children, a brother with his wife and children and the other brother with his wife. Half a year earlier, the mother of the siblings died - a mother who cared about maintaining the tradition of spending Christmas together, the whole family, year after year in the same company. Everyone in their family home. And this family house has been empty for half a year, although as it turns out - not really, because one of the siblings is very keen on 'receiving' it. The mother didn't leave a will, nor did she have a great fortune, but there is this house. And there are also problems - smaller, bigger, at the level of individuals, at the level of marriages, at the level of sibling relationships, brothers-in-law. A relationship with a mother who is gone. With children, with everyday life. Problems, difficulties, nuisances, failures, dilemmas, jealousies, you name it. There are different lifestyles, different needs and desires, different experiences, different perspectives which, when so neatly put together, show the crux of most difficulties in arranging relationships with people. Because individuals are different, because experiences are different, because these perspectives are different. And assuming that most of who we are and what builds us is hidden deep inside us, not made available to the outside - for many different reasons (external and internal, conscious and unconscious), these relationships are somehow skewed, not entirely authentic, superficial, almost resulting from some duty, although marked by love, attachment and some kind of community of experiences and emotions. And sometimes you need an impulse, an independent stimulus, sometimes a window of vulnerability, a moment of weakness that will allow you to connect, withdraw the defensive, open up to this other perspective. I think about these characters, these women, their micro- and macro-problems, although what right do I have to judge the scale of their difficulties and problems. Each woman resonated with me in some way, I found something familiar in each of them, each captivated and moved me in some way, but each was also alien to me to some extent. Excellent read.

The premise of this book is straight up my alley and I really enjoyed the writing. My only problem with it was the number of characters we were following, while interesting, sadly was too confusing for me to properly follow all the time. But that might honestly just be a me problem rather than a problem with the book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for sending me an advanced copy

Flight
by Lynn Steger Strong

On December 22nd three siblings and their spouses and children converge to celebrate Christmas for the first time since the matriarch of the family passed away. The upstate New York setting, the snow and impending storms, the holiday activities like sledging, creating gingerbread houses, coordinating dress up for seasonal photos, baking casseroles, all give a terrific sense of timing, a perfect Christmas atmosphere.

From the very first page it is obvious that this is going to be a family dynamics study. The spikiness between the sisters in law is the main tension in the story. Tess, driven, uptight and controlling, Alice, artistic but unfulfilled by her craving to be a mother, Kate, needy with a more free-ranging style of parenthood. They are all processing their grief over Helen's death and internal narratives are ablaze with seething resentments of each other, bitterness over personality traits, comparisons against each other of who is doing what best, rivalries over who gets more attention, love, support. The mood is forced civility, forced tolerance, forced equanimity. It's tempting to say that these are people behaving badly, but they aren't, they are behaving perfectly well, but their thoughts....O My! Yet I recognise all these thoughts. In many ways they are typical family wranglings. I may have thought most of these things about my siblings, in-laws or out-laws at some point. I just hope I didn't say them out loud. For this reason I absolutely devoured this book. I felt seen and in many ways validated.

Happily, like with most family begrudgery, some proximity and shared experiences offer some redemption. I love the ending of this story and in many ways I feel like I have been on an emotional rollercoaster. Quiet but powerful.

Publication date: 1st January 2023
Thanks to #netgalley and #simonandschuster for the egalley

DNF - Ultimately, I couldn't engage with this one, though I had been quite hopeful that we would be a good fit for each other. I gravitate towards literary fiction but, in this case, it wasn't for me.

I was really looking forward to this one, the synopsis completely sold me. However , the arc I received was unreadable and formatted really poorly.
I’ve attempted to read it three times and haven’t gotten further than the opening chapters as the numbered lines make it impossible to read on kindle.
Disappointing.
I’ve left a neutral rating as the small bit I managed to read piqued my interest and I will purchase the book.

Flight is a stunning novel looking at three members of a family coming together for their first Christmas since their mother/mother-in-law died suddenly a few months previously. I found this novel so moving and beautiful. It’s a slow novel but it’s so engrossing and very hard to put down. I loved it and really want to read more by this author.

This book is not only dramatic and engrossing, it is also insightful and wise. Read it! Read it! You will never forget it!

What a stunning read. Short but definitely powerful. This is a novel that digs into the complexity of family relationships, of grief and the loss of a matriarch, and the concept of what family means. We follow three siblings and their separate family units as they navigate the death of their mother, arguably the trunk of the family tree that kept everyone connected.
We see how spouses and children effect lifelong relationships and the very real, very common reality of assets and property threatening division between loved ones.
Strong has a great way of presenting issues as 'no bad guy/no good guy'. Arguments always tend to be more nuanced than they are presented and strong really nails this.
I would say that there is a dip in the middle of the story where I feel a particular section is just dragged out a little too much but it is pretty integral to the conclusion of the novel, so you do need to get through it to feel the impact of the ending fully.

I could not read this book because of the layout with numbers set against each line. I have given it a one-star rating so that the publisher can see why I couldn't read it.

This book, hit hard.
I was actually able to relate to the storyline in a more personal way (by pure coincidence), My Mum does this year, totally unexpected and was only 61 yrs old. Her name? Helen.
This means that this Christmas is the first one without our Mum. I’m dreading it and so is my Sister. (On a par with the story, we did have a brother. He passed away at the age of 35 yrs old in 2019).
So to come across this book, at this time, I knew it was a must read.
A thoroughly emotional story, the author deals with the subject and situation with extreme care & respect.
The characters are so well written, and there are many characters in this ensemble. Once you’ve taken them all in, and know “Who’s Who”, you can lose yourself in the tale.
Would I recommend this one? Absolutely! Truly brilliant.
Thank you to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for my arc.

I was disappointed not to be able to read Flight by Lynn Steger Strong on my kindle as there was formatting issues but then I managed to read it on the app and I’m glad I did as it is an enjoyable and well written novel about adult siblings and their partners and families and the tensions and stresses that arise.

Currently my favourite book of the year. This is a story of a family trying to relate to each other, around Christmas, after the matriarch has died. Showing the grief of a lost one and also of choices not taken.

This book suffered greatly from way too many characters being introduced too early on. And this meant that they (and their backstories) just ended blending into one messy story of characters lacking in nuance that I could not make myself engage with or care about. Such a shame as I've really enjoyed Lynn Steger Strong's other novels.

Set in snowy upstate New York, Flight follows three siblings and their families facing their first Christmas without their beloved mother. All of them are missing Helen who made such a pleasurable ritual of the holidays. Over the next few days, the dynamics of this family will take a different shape, their relationship to each other brought into sharp focus by a crisis involving another family less fortunate than their own.

Lyn Steger Strong unfolds her novel from the perspectives of each of her characters, unfolding backstories while revealing the tensions between them. There’s a thread of suspense but this is largely a character-driven novel. Strong excels at depicting family tensions which Helen is no longer there to smooth over, present in her absence through the dressing up of the children in smart clothes and the making of a pie which goes disastrously wrong. Themes of family, adulthood, parenthood, grief and loss run through this quietly absorbing novel, portrayed with empathy and insight through this middle-aged family brought face-to-face with its privilege. I loved it.

This is a story about three adult siblings and their families getting together over their first Christmas after their mother has died. I enjoy reading family dramas but I had a hard time getting into this. The novel changes points of view frequently and I had trouble keeping track of who was married to who, etc. We get to know the various characters but not much really every happens. It is well-written though, so three stars.

3.5 stars

It took me a little while to figure in my head who was married to who, and which kid belonged to them.
Once that was settled, it was all good.
And it was all good. Almost all of us have felt like at least one of these characters at a family get together.
It felt real, and raw and very relatable.
Some very touching moments.
Family drama done right. Very right.