The Aviator [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Ernest K. Gann (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 265 pages
• Publisher: G. K. Hall & Company; Large type edition edition (February 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816132577
• ISBN-13: 978-0816132577
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,264,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A tender, touching tale, March 27, 2010

By 

Rui A. Laureano (Lisboa, Portugal) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Aviator (Mass Market Paperback)

I have to disagree with the other two reviewers, enough to prompt me to write my very first review here. The Aviator is a lovely tale set during those early daring days of mail flights in small biplanes. The trips were dangerous, information on weather enroute was minimal, frequently obtained by calling farmers that lived along the route for local weather conditions. No radios, no cockpit instruments for in cloud flights, no cockpit heating and nav instruments but a paper chart and a clock. And no reliable engines (in a modern sense). Business as usual, back then.

The main character is a mail pilot cut off from the world after a bad accident that left him with more guilt than he could bear. And a bad scar in his face to remind him. He didn't have to look at the mirror to be reminded, he just had to see the look on everyone's face when they stared at him. After his soon to be wife left him, he hid from any kind of human contact by spending the most time in the sky as possible, becoming the most eficient and reliable pilot Moravia, the line's manager had.

In comes the little girl, who wanted to see the world like birds do, so she could describe it to her blind grandfather. A little girl with a huge heart and strong personality, that didn't look away in disgust at the first sight of the aviator's scar.

This is a story of a man who, afer being hidden from the world and from any kind of warm human relationships for a long time, finds himself forced to deal with his repressed ability to love and protect, when he crashlands in an remote valey during a winter storm and injures his passenger.

The way that, despite her injuries, the enduring little girl manages to melt the thick ice in his heart and "bring him back into the light" and the dialogs between the two while the aviator reads her mail letters to keep her distracted from the pain and hunger are memorable to me. Overall this is a tender and heart lifting tale.

Together with the amazing "Fate is the Hunter" (an autobiographic tale), I've kept this as one of my favourite aviation stories.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "The saddest words of tongue or pen, are these:...", February 4, 2008

By 

Robert W. Winter (Truman, MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Aviator (Mass Market Paperback)

It is 1928. With questionable judgement, the parents of an eleven year old girl are letting her fly to see her grandfather - in a mailplane, in the mail bin, with no seat, no belts, no chute - rather than take the train. For reasons best known to themselves, the pilot and flight ops manager decide to go along with this, though they're aware that her route is the riskiest of their line. Needless to say, something goes wrong, and a forced landing ensues which wrecks the airplane beyond any repair and leaves one person injured. To complicate matters, the pilot had (for good enough reason, or so it seemed) deviated from the usual route and has gone down in mountain terrain, in the American west, in winter. Barring early rescue, (highly unlikely), we know that these twos' life spans can be measured in days.
What a splendid plot to build a book around! A shame that Gann doesn't. Instead, we have such inessentials as a pilot with Lester's face and Dan Roman's tragic past, a one-legged Gafferty from "Blaze of Noon," a timid, self-centered pilot who puts his own safety ahead of others' survival, etc, etc. We really learn little about pilot Jerry, and though he comes across neither as the fictional Dooley or the real-life O'Connor, he's a man we could clearly learn much from. Even more from 11 year old Heather. Alas, we end knowing less about her than the one-legged Moravia.
Given the contacts Gann had in the flying world, it's entirely possible that this story is based on truth. If so, here's hoping we read it someday.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good insight into early aviation, May 13, 2011

By 

Carla J. F. L. - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Aviator (Mass Market Paperback)

Ernest K. Gann was a "pilot's pilot" and wrote many novels that proved it. This one is set in 1928 and tells the story of a then-modern-day "pony express" rider-a U.S. Mail pilot whose plane goes down in the Rocky Mountains during a bout of bad weather. He also had a passenger on the trip: an intellectual 11-year-old girl traveling to visit relatives, whose parents wanted her to see the world from the air instead of sending her by a safer mode of travel. (Could anything be less safe than riding in a front well of a plane, on top of a bunch of mail sacks, wearing a helmet that's apparently several sizes too big?) They both survive the crash, but she is severely injured. The story of the search for them and how they cope with their situation is fascinating.

Aviation was relatively new in 1928; it was also a whole lot scarier than today and essentially the Wild West in terms of safety. Pilots of that time were truly adventurers. They had no radar; radio contact was rare, as were runways; there was no air traffic control, and no Weather Channel. They had to figure out themselves where they were, based on visible landmarks, past experience and gut instinct. And they did all of this while flying machines that, though beautifully designed for what they were doing, also seem to have been incredibly fragile. Gann had a gift for description, and an obvious love for his subject matter, so this "primitive" world of flight comes alive in his writing. When he described the planes as being made of "wood, fabric and wire" I got a picture in my mind that made my stomach do flip-flops.

As the daughter of a pilot, I've always believed that they fly because they love it and can't imagine doing anything else. To those of us who don't share that lust it can seem a bit insane, and a book like this gives us a glimpse into the minds of these "flyboys." Very well done.