Flying in Place [May 01, 1992] Palwick, Susan

Emma, a twelve-year-old child, escapes from the subtle horrors of her life by learning to walk on the ceiling and to fly away from herself. A first novel.

Prominent surgeon Stewart Gray is a pillar of his small Wisconsin community, receiving holiday gifts from the local judge and dining with the mayor. But, as this chilling and finely tuned first novel illustrates, Dr. Gray is no paragon: he has been sexually abusing his 12-year-old daughter, Emma, for years. His wife, a respected English teacher, might be regarded as his accomplice, as she chooses not to know what occurs almost nightly in her daughter's bedroom. Emma narrates this contemporary horror story calmly and with fluid grace, engaging in dialogues and imaginative excursions with her dead sister, Ginny, in order to insulate herself during her father's systematic assaults. Only the Grays' boisterous next-door neighbors, the Hallorans, give her affection and support. Mrs. Halloran, the school nurse, sees Emma's bruises, notes her withdrawal and plummeting grades, and, with a few pointed questions, manages to piece the scenario together. The arrival of Emma's estranged yet knowledgeable Aunt Donna precipitates an explosive family confrontation--and further devastating revelations. Palwick avoids pat solutions, offering instead a deeply felt, deeply moving tale.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An imaginative first novel about incest from a young doctoral candidate at Yale. Twelve-year-old Emma Gray, daughter of a surgeon and a schoolteacher, lives in the shadow of her ``perfect'' younger sister, Ginny, who died at the age of ten, before Emma was born. Emma, who must also endure her surgeon father's early morning visits, finds a novel way of coping: she leaves her body behind and flies around her bedroom to escape the awful sound of his heavy breathing. Eventually, Ginny visits Emma, and the two sisters begin to fly together to a favorite retreat. In time, Ginny shares her own shameful secret: their father abused her, too. Meanwhile, the school nurse and mother of Emma's best earthly friend, Jane, has noticed that something is wrong with Emma. But the truth doesn't out until the day that Emma's aunt comes to visit and reveals her own suspicions about the father and his relationship to Ginny before she died. Told in a strong narrative voice that pulls the reader in- -despite an occasional awkward and uneven handling of plot and character (the father, for instance, is not really developed; too much is made of Emma's pretense of menstruating). Still, Palwick's debut has a wonderful fantasy tone and builds to a convincing climax. It may lack the impact of some of the more hard-edged novels about incest-- e.g., those by Kathryn Davis or Kaye Gibbons- -but it certainly stirs sympathy for the paths of survival such victims must take. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.