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A review by libreroaming
Girl on a Plane by Miriam Moss
3.0
Fictionalized versions of true events are a tricky format to explore. Frequently, there is the feeling that the fiction is a way to sensationalize and coerce meaningful moments from the muddy reality, leaving readers with something that streamlines into the neat narration of the plot. It is even more complicated when said events happened to the author first hand, and readers are left wondering how much of it is personal experiences and what is informed by their need to tell a story.
"Girl on a Plane" seems to move to the other extreme, where the protagonist Anna is almost muted in her reaction to a situation that could easily be the plot of a thriller/suspense novel. Based on the true story of three jetliners hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian, Anna and the other passengers on her plane are flown to a remote part of the desert and kept as hostages. It is a ticking time bomb of a situation (at some point, threatened quite literally when they tie explosives to the wheels), ripe for exploration. But there's a restraint to the way things transpire that won't keep readers on tenterhooks with each chapter.
First, the choice for first person point of view doesn't really work as a character development except in the epilogue. The few chapters that focus on third person for her family tend to be better written, conveying the dread tension in ways that are more creative than Anna's inner monologue. Even if the constraints of true events leave Anna largely reactive to her captors and not likely to stage an "Air Force One"-esque retaking of the plane, it's difficult to gauge what we should care about from Anna's own scattered reactions.
There is a moment early on when she is walking down the aisle and her belt gets caught on a terrorist's grenade pin that is the most terrified she gets.
There's nothing wrong with this interaction except it's sparse. And it's pretty much the most intense the book allows itself to be. Darker interactions like the second in command's ruthless behavior toward the hostages are brushed over a page later. And an interaction between a passenger and a hijacker that is insinuated to be dubiously consensual is given less weight in Anna's thoughts than the alarm when her seatmate's terrapin goes missing.
In all, "Girl on a Plane" strives to give a view of the story that isn't anymore sensationalized than the story was on its own, but it seems to strip some of the compelling nature of it in its aims by leaving us with a numbed POV. The emotional flux hostages go through could explain why some moments seem immediate to Anna and others just worth mentioning in an offhanded way, and I think the author is diligent in portraying the conflicting feelings that could contribute to her feelings, in an almost shellshocked fashion. But it doesn't do enough to really showcase the range of the rest of the hostages' varied reactions or give a great idea of the microcosm the hijacked plane created in those four days.
Finishing it, I wanted to read more about the events behind it from a non-fiction perspective.
"Girl on a Plane" seems to move to the other extreme, where the protagonist Anna is almost muted in her reaction to a situation that could easily be the plot of a thriller/suspense novel. Based on the true story of three jetliners hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian, Anna and the other passengers on her plane are flown to a remote part of the desert and kept as hostages. It is a ticking time bomb of a situation (at some point, threatened quite literally when they tie explosives to the wheels), ripe for exploration. But there's a restraint to the way things transpire that won't keep readers on tenterhooks with each chapter.
First, the choice for first person point of view doesn't really work as a character development except in the epilogue. The few chapters that focus on third person for her family tend to be better written, conveying the dread tension in ways that are more creative than Anna's inner monologue. Even if the constraints of true events leave Anna largely reactive to her captors and not likely to stage an "Air Force One"-esque retaking of the plane, it's difficult to gauge what we should care about from Anna's own scattered reactions.
There is a moment early on when she is walking down the aisle and her belt gets caught on a terrorist's grenade pin that is the most terrified she gets.
"I...was...get...past..." I start to shake uncontrollably. My knees, my legs, my arms.
I can't see. Can't hear. My mind's shutting down.
I'm...going...
The navitgator's voice is muffled, distorded. "She was just trying to get past...caught on him...didn't mean to." Then louder: "It was a mistake."
I feel a wave of gratitude. Sweaty swims in front of me through the blur, looking unsure. He shrugs, waves us away. The young guard in the ammo belt looks shaken, confused, as I stumble past.
There's nothing wrong with this interaction except it's sparse. And it's pretty much the most intense the book allows itself to be. Darker interactions like the second in command's ruthless behavior toward the hostages are brushed over a page later. And an interaction between a passenger and a hijacker that is insinuated to be dubiously consensual is given less weight in Anna's thoughts than the alarm when her seatmate's terrapin goes missing.
In all, "Girl on a Plane" strives to give a view of the story that isn't anymore sensationalized than the story was on its own, but it seems to strip some of the compelling nature of it in its aims by leaving us with a numbed POV. The emotional flux hostages go through could explain why some moments seem immediate to Anna and others just worth mentioning in an offhanded way, and I think the author is diligent in portraying the conflicting feelings that could contribute to her feelings, in an almost shellshocked fashion. But it doesn't do enough to really showcase the range of the rest of the hostages' varied reactions or give a great idea of the microcosm the hijacked plane created in those four days.
Finishing it, I wanted to read more about the events behind it from a non-fiction perspective.