Flight Lessons

by Patricia Gaffney

Book Overview

From the extraordinary Patricia Gaffney, New York Times bestselling author of The Saving Graces and Circle of Three, comes a poignant and wise story of truth and loyalty, of the bonds that shape, sustain, and ultimately uplift us.

Anna has studiously avoided her aunt Rose -- the woman she once loved more than anyone else in the world -- ever since the night Rose betrayed Anna and her mother, Rose's own fatally ill sister. In the sixteen years...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061031445
• ISBN13: 9780061031441
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: HarperTorch
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Highly recommended!

As an Italian-American, and one who delights in the creative outlet of cooking, as well as the comfort of delicious food, I can't resist a story set in an Italian restaurant. After experiencing heartbreak in her independent life hundreds of miles away from her hometown, Anna returns to help her aging aunts rejuvenate and revive their declining family restaurant. She was driven away years ago by a situation she interpreted as a deep betrayal in which she was unable to forgive the aunt who was responsible. Now, working together with Aunt Rose, and rediscovering the depths of family bonds, and the healing power of love, Anna arrives at a new and more enlightened view of the situation that once divided her family, and eventually learns to let go of past hurts and move forward from there. In addition to the wonderful setting of this story, I loved the strong hardworking supporting characters, their interactions with each other, the themes of working together towards reconciliation and strengthening family bonds, and so much more. It's a story about priorities; what's important in one's life.

A simple dish, perfectly done

While the plot of FLIGHT LESSONS may not be either particularly involved or original -- a woman returns home to help salvage the family's dying business, which in turn forces her to confront issues from the past -- Pat Gaffney's rich characterizations, as well as the emotional depth behind her deceptively simple prose, certainly made this story a winner for me. These are people with both strengths and weaknesses, whose actions and attitudes we might not always agree with but whose motivations are always made clear. Gaffney really nails the complexity of human relationships, that true-to-life mixture of tart and sweet that can make the reader both want to root for a character and knock some sense into him or her at the same time. The relationship between the sixty-year-old Rose and her dying lover Theo is a particular treasure, but the quiet, scarred Mason stole my heart (even though I agree with another reviewer that perhaps his emails were too long -- but at least he apologized for that!). A lesser man would have given up on the hard-headed Anna by halfway through the book: that he didn't makes him a real hero in my eyes. But perhaps what most impressed me was the way in which Gaffney seamlessly braids so many threads. I never felt I was reading about several separate subplots, since each character's situation so tightly intersected with the others'. Very difficult to pull off, but Gaffney makes it seem effortless.While I've read, and thoroughly enjoyed, Ms. Gaffney's previous contemporary novels, for some reason (Mason, would be my guess) this one's edged out the others as my new favorite. These were people I wouldn't mind checking up on in a few years to see how they're doing.And I can't ask more of a book than that.

Good Read

Patricia Gaffney presents us with a narrative involving unsolved family disputes and with the ease of a talented writer she draws you, the reader, into the midst of the conflict. Gaffney holds your interest with her many twists leading you into a well crafted and pleasing plot. Great story telling.Beverly J Scott author of RIGHTEOUS REVENGE

The Prodigal daughter

The Oscar Wilde quote, "After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations" that Patrica Gaffney prefaces her book with, is an accurate description of the issues she explores in Flight Lessons. In a twist to the biblical prodigal son, Anna returns to her hometown on the Chesapeake bay at the age of 36 and after a disasterous end to a romantic relationship. Anna is a complex, and often quite exasperating character. She is balanced in the book by her aunt Rose, now 60 and the owner of a faltering Italian restaurant. Anna is welcomed home and agrees to manage the restaurant for the summer but is not ready to forgive and forget the family issues that caused her to leave. Rose is a more appealing character, particularly in regard to her relationship with Theo, a crusty Bay waterman, now sidelined with a degenerative disease. All of the characters are finely drawn, Frankie, the talented but troubled new chef at the restaurant, Eddie, the handsome but unreliable bartender and Carmen,the unmarried, overweight long time chef who is resentful of the new chef and the changes Anna wants to make to save the restaurant.The close up look at running a small family restaurant was particularly interesting and the bits of information about birds and bird photography, the avocation of Mason, another character were engrossing. (I will now try to catch a bird yawnings, soemthing I never knew they did) More than a love story, the book is honest and insightful as it explore the complicated dynamics of family and the ways individuals address their own family history. Anna's apparent dysfunction and inabilty to sustain relationships seems as much due to her own unforgiving nature as the tough issues she dealt with as a child and young woman. Our desire to paint family members as either black or white, good or bad is illuminated as Anna addresses her memories of her mother and father as well as Rose. More than a good summer read, the book has enough interest to make your reading list in any season.