Daniel Torday. (2015). The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group.

Daniel Torday. 2015. The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group.

Daniel Torday, The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2015.

Daniel Torday. The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2015.

OverDrive Product Record

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1. • value: literary fiction
2. • value: American Authors
3. • value: Jewish authors
4. • value: Czechoslovakia
5. • value: Historical Fiction
6. • value: Pilots
7. • value: American Literature
8. • value: Jewish literature
9. • value: contemporary literature
10. • value: debut novels
11. • value: WWII fiction
12. • value: historical fiction novels
13. • value: contemporary novels
14. • value: historical fiction wwii
15. • value: wwii books fiction
16. • value: wwii historical fiction books

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Torday, Daniel
   • bioText: Daniel Torday is the author of The 12th Commandment, The Last Flight of Poxl West, and Boomer1. A two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award for fiction and the Sami Rohr Choice Prize, Torday's stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and n+1, and have been honored by the Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays series. Torday is a Professor of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College.
   • name: Daniel Torday

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title

The Last Flight of Poxl West

fullDescription

Poxl West fled the Nazis' onslaught in Czechoslovakia. He escaped their clutches again in Holland. He pulled Londoners from the Blitz's rubble. He wooed intoxicating, unconventional beauties. He rained fire on Germany from his RAF bomber.
Poxl West is the epitome of manhood and something of an idol to his teenage nephew, Eli Goldstein, who reveres him as a brave, singular, Jewish war hero. Poxl fills Eli's head with electric accounts of his derring-do, adventures and romances, as he collects the best episodes from his storied life into a memoir.
He publishes that memoir, Skylock, to great acclaim, and its success takes him on the road, and out of Eli's life. With his uncle gone, Eli throws himself into reading his opus and becomes fixated on all things Poxl.
But as he delves deeper into Poxl's history, Eli begins to see that the life of the fearless superman he's adored has been much darker than he let on, and filled with unimaginable loss from which he may have not recovered. As the truth about Poxl emerges, it forces Eli to face irreconcilable facts about the war he's romanticized and the vision of the man he's held so dear.
Daniel Torday's debut novel, The Last Flight of Poxl West, beautifully weaves together the two unforgettable voices of Eli Goldstein and Poxl West, exploring what it really means to be a hero, and to be a family, in the long shadow of war.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus (starred review)
   • content:

     "While Torday is more likely to be compared to Philip Roth or Michael Chabon than Gillian Flynn, his debut novel has two big things in common with Gone Girl--it's a story told in two voices, and it's almost impossible to discuss without revealing spoilers. A richly layered, beautifully told and somehow lovable story about war, revenge and loss."

2. • premium: False
   • source: George Saunders, author of Tenth of December
   • content: "A wonderful accomplishment of storytelling verve: tender, lyrical, surprising, full of beautifully rendered details. Torday is a prodigiously talented writer, with a huge heart."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Karen Russell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Swamplandia!
   • content: "According to Tim O'Brien, 'A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.' Daniel Torday knows how to tell a true war story, and The Last Flight of Poxl West is a stunning debut. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, The Last Flight of Poxl West resurrects a chapter of World War II that was a complete surprise to me. It's the viscerally-gripping, eye-wateringly moving first-person account of a young Czech Jew who flew missions for the RAF during World War II; it's also a profound and timely meditation on the desire for justice, retribution, and redemption. This book is unputdownable, wise, and unbelievably generous. Its ending left me speechless."
4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 12, 2015
     Torday introduces readers to Poxl West, whose bestselling 1980s memoir Skylock is the book within this riveting debut novel. Eighteen-year-old Poxl fled his native Czechoslovakia for Rotterdam when Hitler rolled into Austria, never to see his parents again. As the war progressed, he made his way to London, eventually flying bombers in the RAF. Those impossibly difficult war years unfold over five acts, which constitute the Shylock part of the structure and which alternate with the narrative of Elijah Goldstein, Poxl’s young nephew. Torday’s descriptive and powerful prose stands as the book’s highlight. The book-within-a-book memoir is a page-turner, particularly as Poxl remembers his mother and father and their marriage, and his time in London during the Blitz. His fixation and guilt over the love he left behind in Rotterdam, though, nearly devolves into navel gazing. The author recalibrates his character’s self-indulgence in time for Skylock to end on a poignant note. Elijah’s chapters culminate with him looking at his uncle through more mature eyes. Torday’s restraint as this story line takes on new importance shows mastery of his craft, culminating with a tender ending to Elijah’s narrative.

5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from December 1, 2014
     Elijah Goldstein's devoted Uncle Poxl is a Jewish World War II fighter pilot and an overnight literary sensation. What more could a boy want?While Torday (The Sensualist: A Novella, 2012) is more likely to be compared to Philip Roth or Michael Chabon than Gillian Flynn, his debut novel has two big things in common with Gone Girl-it's a story told in two voices, and it's almost impossible to discuss without revealing spoilers. The reversal that defines this novel arrives late and changes the meaning of everything that's come before, but that's all you'll hear about it here. One of the two narrators is Elijah Goldstein, a 15-year-old student in Boston, who begins his tale, promisingly, like this: "Before halftime on Super Bowl Sunday, January 1986, my uncle Poxl came over. He was just months from reaching the height of his fame, and unaware that the game was being played." This fame results from publication of Skylock: The Memoir of a Jewish RAF Bomber, which Uncle Poxl has read aloud to Eli in manuscript over sundaes at Cabot's after outings to the opera and the symphony. The entire text of Skylock appears here as a book within a book. Poxl's memoir opens with his childhood in Czechoslovakia, where he's the son of a wealthy leather-factory owner and a bohemian mother who poses nude for Egon Schiele. When the Anschluss begins, his parents send him to Rotterdam, where he falls hard for a prostitute. His next move takes him to London, where he joins the war effort and ultimately flies a bomber in a firefight over Hamburg. After each section of the memoir, Eli returns to fill us in on reviews in the Times and the Economist, the book signings and the things we will not be discussing in this review. A richly layered, beautifully told and somehow lovable story about war, revenge and loss.

     COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 2015
     Interest in WWII fiction continues unabated, and this novel by Torday, winner of the National Jewish Book Award for The Sensualist (2012), should find an eager audience. Narrator Elijah Goldstein offers an affectionate story of his uncle Leopold ( Poxl ) West (originally Weisberg), a Czech-born RAF fighter pilot, his life and loves, particularly Francoise, met (and regrettably abandoned) before the war in Rotterdam. Uncle Poxl (not really an uncle), mentor to the teenage Goldstein, is portrayed through Eli's eyes but primarily through Poxl's own best-selling memoir, cleverly titled by the Jewish war hero, Skylock. Within those memoirs, descriptions of the German bombing of London and of the airborne warfare over Hamburg are vividly presented. In reading Poxl's memoirs, Elijah must come to terms with truth, heroism, betrayal, and remorse. A well-crafted and moving novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     February 1, 2015
     

     Poxl West has just published a memoir of his experiences as a Czechoslovakian Jewish refugee who became an RAF fighter pilot during World War II. His nephew, Elijah Goldstein, basks in the reflected aura of Uncle Poxl's success. However, there's a problem. Soon after the book's publication, Poxl is exposed as a fraud. He never flew the missions he described. The man who had been Elijah's surrogate grandfather disappears from his life, depriving the boy of his greatest hero. Telling this story by alternating between Poxl's memoir and Elijah's present-day experiences, the author of the award-winning novella The Sensualist crafts an elegant debut of how war affects individuals, how disappointment in our loved ones can turn a life around in seconds, and how that life can be repaired. VERDICT Torday (director of creative writing, Bryn Mawr Coll.) is a polished writer who creates an unforgettable character for whom the term flight describes his whole life. Poxl's inability to reconcile his love for people with their less-than-heroic behaviors, in the end, leaves him completely alone. This portrait of a Holocaust survivor's experiences is innovative, and its page-turning plot will keep readers on the edge until the very end. [See Prepub Alert, 9/29/14.]--Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS

     Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     October 15, 2014
     

     Winner of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction for his novella, The Sensualist, Torday here ups the odds with writing that's making everyone in-house stop and stare. Elijah Goldstein worships his worldly Uncle Poxl, but when Poxl's memoir reveals that he escaped his Czech home after his parents' death to become an RAF pilot and bomb German citizens to smithereens, Elijah begins to recognize his uncle as a darkly pained individual.

     Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity

135

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Poxl West fled the Nazis' onslaught in Czechoslovakia. He escaped their clutches again in Holland. He pulled Londoners from the Blitz's rubble. He wooed intoxicating, unconventional beauties. He rained fire on Germany from his RAF bomber.
Poxl West is the epitome of manhood and something of an idol to his teenage nephew, Eli Goldstein, who reveres him as a brave, singular, Jewish war hero. Poxl fills Eli's head with electric accounts of his derring-do, adventures and romances, as he collects the best episodes from his storied life into a memoir.
He publishes that memoir, Skylock, to great acclaim, and its success takes him on the road, and out of Eli's life. With his uncle gone, Eli throws himself into reading his opus and becomes fixated on all things Poxl.
But as he delves deeper into Poxl's history, Eli begins to see that the life of the fearless superman he's adored has been much darker than he let on, and filled with unimaginable loss from which he may have not...

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   • description: Fiction / Jewish
3. • code: FIC084040
   • description: Fiction / World Literature / American / 21st Century