I was very happy to discover David Szalay and his novella Turbulence.
Szalay is a Canadian/Hungarian writer via Lebanon, London, and Brussels, who now lives in Budapest. He is the winner of multiple awards, on many Best Young British Authors lists, and was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2016 for All That Man Is.
I am happy to find the writing met up with the hype.
International travel seems the perfect setting for this modern version of La Ronde, as twelve short stories follow people on flights around the globe, exploring the family and friendships that unite us. Each story features a few characters interacting, then follows one (not always who you'd think) carrying the story forward. Things fall apart. Things lift off.
A mother has a distressing flight, and is comforted by a man who returns to a home he wasn't expecting. A woman is concerned her daughter is marrying a muslim, then the daughter travels to visit her ill father. A brother avoids a family debt while systematically stealing from his father, while their maid comforts a sister who will not leave her abusive husband, even while he lives away from home and is having an affair with the man next door.
The writing is clean and crisp, deceptively simple, yet lived with me after I finished it.
Seemingly mundane stories of everyday life are played out in writing so accurate (with multiple characters living in global communities, of differing religions and classes) Szalay shows a talent for writing that is engrossing.
When I finished (it's a short 136 pages) it felt like the end of a flight - are we here already?
I wanted to savour it more. So I read it over again.
I also was lucky when a copy of All That Man Is fell into my hands.
Interesting how new authors come into your life.
2018 / Tradeback / 136 pages
Never heard of the author but the stories seem interesting esp as they are inter-connected. I will search for the book.
Neeru