3 Stars
Though the themes are different, this novel reminded me of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. Because nothing major happens, the characters must find ways to distract themselves through conversation. And even when the characters talk about leaving or taking action, they move very little. Just as Godot never arrives, their flight never takes off.
Ivan, 75, meets his daughter Nina, 29, in the Los Angeles airport. They are travelling to Paris where Ivan lived for a few years as a young man. He wants to show Nina where he lived and to share his early life with her; perhaps the trip will bring them closer together. Their flight is delayed and then delayed again and again. Soon all flights are delayed. Security tightens and no one is allowed to leave the airport terminal. Obviously something is terribly wrong but no one has any information.
The father and daughter spend their time talking. They discuss many issues. They express their grievances and regrets and talk about their relationship. Nora, Ivan’s wife and Nina’s mother who left her husband and child 12 years ago to follow her dreams, is often mentioned. Ivan frequently talks about his memories of Nina as a child. Because the third-person omniscient point of view is used, the reader also learns Ivan and Nina’s thoughts. Ivan, for instance, worries about whether he was a good father: did she inherit his lack of ambition? And Nina has so many conflicting emotions when it comes to both her parents.
The novel is obviously very character-focused. Ivan is nostalgic, often focused on the past. His love for his daughter is all-encompassing, the depth of which he cannot find words to express, matched only by his love of nature. He describes himself as “a sucker for the sweet syrup of nostalgia, a weakness for sentimental reverie, a man more moved by his daughter and the past and the balm of night air than anything else.” He is cautious and unambitious, “more afraid of losing what they had than determined to have more.” Of course it’s interesting to see how they view each other. Nina thinks she understands why Nora left him: “His self-pity, his hunger for attention, his constant reconfiguring of the past, the conviction that he was always being slighted and misunderstood.”
Nina irritated me. She tends to be self-centred, negative and judgmental. She is upset that Ivan “could never just listen to her. When would he come to understand that there was no more advice left to give?” But then “she was furious that her father had run out of useful lessons.” She often behaves like someone much younger. She does admit, “She could not go on behaving like she was fifteen. It was embarrassing. All this petulance.” I could not agree more. She thinks it’s a daughter’s privilege “to be angry without regret, without concern, without responsibility to fairness.” She’s upset with her life “and all its myriad disappointments and dissatisfactions,” but expresses her unhappiness through anger at what she perceives as her father’s faults, including his need to provide constant advice.
Nora, the absent wife and mother, never appears in the novel, but we learn a lot about her too. Clearly she is single-minded, focused on following her own desires and ambitions. In a flashback, Nina remembers her mother telling her, “’There are things I want to do. Just as there are things you want to do. And we should do them because if we stay where we are out of fear, or expectation, or loyalty, well, then we will never do anything at all, and we’ll hate ourselves forever.’” And what Nora wants to do she is convinced she can do only if living alone. Nora and Ivan are clear foils: he returned from Paris and fell into his father’s business reluctantly, out of cowardice, because “Every step [was] in direct opposition to desire.”
There is some suspense. From the beginning, there’s a suggestion that something is wrong. Ivan comments on the peculiar yellow sky. Then there is reference to earthquakes. Later a trio of fighter jets streak across the sky. People in the airport start behaving strangely. And there are guards preventing anyone from leaving. What is responsible: “the president and his goons” or climate change or the arrival of aliens? But readers should not expect an explanation.
I found reading this book to be a slog. I got tired of the endless introspection and inertia. Perhaps the fact that I will soon be travelling and spending time in five airports made this book too unsettling for me at this time. I do not want to be stalled, either physically or psychologically, as Ivan and Nina are.
Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
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