Flying In Place by Susan Palwick

Flying in Place by Susan Palwick

My review

Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Flying In Place won The Crawford Award for Susan Palwick in 1993. The Crawford Award is presented to books falling into the fantasy genre. While it's true that there are aspects of this book that qualify it for the fantasy category, I wouldn't necessarily have categorized it that way.

Flying In Place is the story of Emma and her family: her surgeon father, her school teacher mother, and her sister who died before Emma was born. From all indications Emma lives in a normal family situation, but in fact, nothing about Emma's home life is "normal". Emma receives pre-dawn visits in her bedroom from her father. To spare herself the trauma of these visits, Emma projects her mind out of her body up to the ceiling of her bedroom where she can fly and avoid dealing with the assaults on her body by her father. I didn't read this situation so much as fantasy as I did the matter of mental self preservation.

While the writing is descriptive about the abuse Emma suffers, it never becomes graphic so that this book is suitable reading for adolescent girls.

The subject matter of Flying In Place is certainly distasteful, but the message it conveys is so well written that once started, the book is almost impossible to put down.

Highly recommended particularly to young girls whether or not they've experienced this kind of abuse. It never hurts to be informed, particularly on subjects such as this one.


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