Turbulence

Reviews

More tales of mortality from a master of the genre... [Turbulence] is a chilling achievement. A portrait of our species at a time of crisis... Szalay is our greatest chronicler of these rootless, tradeworn places, and the desperate, itinerant lives of those who inhabit them. Ingenious… [David Szalay] knows about people… Stark and spare, Turbulence is an impressive novel. Reading David Szalay is like receiving a series of electric shocks: his preference for short, sharp sketches, rather than a single, linear plot, means that his books deny the reader the comforts of conventional, more languid storytelling… Szalay’s stories may be over in just a matter of minutes, but they are violently, appallingly immersive. As Szalay consistently uproots his reader, proliferating characters and locations, [Turbulence] could be seen as an experiment in the limits of sympathy… a practical test for the way we feel (or fail to feel) for others. Such calculated neutrality is the perfect foil to some heart-stoppingly beautiful prose… Things in this elegant, frightening, politically charged book, fall apart. They also lift off. Szalay’s gift for inhabiting entirely different lives is as remarkable and spooky as ever. [David Szalay's] mastery of form is evident: with deft touches he builds a tangible world. I was intrigued by the premise and the first story didn't disappoint, capturing that altered state which being cooped up in [an aeroplane] seems to invoke. Beautifully and delicately told. Each perfectly-formed story is part of a bigger narrative, as Szalay explores the way our actions influence those around us, and highlights the fact that while our technologically connected planet seems to be growing smaller, the people living upon it have grown more isolated from one another. Especially striking, in Mr Szalay’s recent work [Turbulence], is how easily he inhabits diverse perspectives… A willingness to leave the dots unjoined is one of the virtues that make Mr Szalay's fiction so rewarding. Expand reviews