A review by lookhome
Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk
4.0
Olga Tokarczuk's Flights could eventually be touted as the precursor to The Post-Internet Novel. It is an awe-inspiring cycle of anecdotes, short stories and non-fiction bits and tidbits.
Much like the internet, Flights is is made up of various interconnected fragments, both Fictional and Non-Fictional, and a profound meditation on time and space and the human desire to interact with its environment. As a result, it explores, in a distinctly non-linear way, strange and unique encounters with both the modern and natural world.
Tokarczuk's approach is thematic and scattershot, but never heavy-handed.
The novel unfolds as though someone were looking through an old photo album and its various witnesses each made comments and connections, touching on previous statements as the book is poured over.
Possibly, it is a novel best understood as the embodiment of the sensation one gets from clicking various connecting links in a Wikipedia page. Everything is loosely connected and yet oddly purposeful. All is an expansion. The mention of certain words, or colours, places and dates all take on a new meaning within the provided context.
Though the last 100 pages cover ground discussed at length within the first 300, overall it is a novel to be read and re-read.
Strongly recommended.
Quotes: (library book meaning I didn't highlight while reading)
"only what is different will survive'"
"I had a name for what was wrong with me; it was like discovering my own secret name, the name that summons one to an initiation"
If you like Flights, you'll probably like:
-The Book Of Disquiet by Pessoa
-The White Book by Han Kang
-Known And Strange Things by Teju Cole
-Any and all non-fiction work by John Berger
Much like the internet, Flights is is made up of various interconnected fragments, both Fictional and Non-Fictional, and a profound meditation on time and space and the human desire to interact with its environment. As a result, it explores, in a distinctly non-linear way, strange and unique encounters with both the modern and natural world.
Tokarczuk's approach is thematic and scattershot, but never heavy-handed.
The novel unfolds as though someone were looking through an old photo album and its various witnesses each made comments and connections, touching on previous statements as the book is poured over.
Possibly, it is a novel best understood as the embodiment of the sensation one gets from clicking various connecting links in a Wikipedia page. Everything is loosely connected and yet oddly purposeful. All is an expansion. The mention of certain words, or colours, places and dates all take on a new meaning within the provided context.
Though the last 100 pages cover ground discussed at length within the first 300, overall it is a novel to be read and re-read.
Strongly recommended.
Quotes: (library book meaning I didn't highlight while reading)
"only what is different will survive'"
"I had a name for what was wrong with me; it was like discovering my own secret name, the name that summons one to an initiation"
If you like Flights, you'll probably like:
-The Book Of Disquiet by Pessoa
-The White Book by Han Kang
-Known And Strange Things by Teju Cole
-Any and all non-fiction work by John Berger