Customer Reviews

Flight Of The Phoenix

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4 star:		(1)
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This book has a fairly simple overall plot. A plane crashes in the desert, and when dealing with dire conditions the men who survive the crash try to find a way to survive the desert. The writing is gripping, and the personalities of the characters build through the book. The descriptions of the harsh conditions of the desert on the men, leave the reader disturbed, but wanting to read more. Themes that include the power and beauty of nature are intertwined throughout the book. Survival for these men is presented almost as a complicated puzzle which must be solved to avoid deadly consequences. It was a page turner for me- the writing is excellent!

"Flight of the Phoenix" held my attention, as an adventure novel should. What makes this book stand out is a character who is ignored for the first half of the book, because he's quiet and keeps to himself. In the middle of the book he becomes the most important character. In the penultimate chapter the plot twists around this character in what has to be most unexpected surprise I've ever seen in a novel. The character is a young engineer with Asperger's Syndrome, although the book was written thirty years before Asperger's Syndrome was discovered. Individuals with this form of autism are extremely intelligent but have poor social skills. They're ability to focus on a task can be their greatest strength or their downfall. In "Flight of the Phoenix" this is what saves the men, but then...well, I won't give away the plot! I listened to the audio download, which was very good except you really need to see what a Skytruck looks like, as the characters talk about different parts of the airplane wreckage. A quick Google search will find you photos of this type of aircraft.

The Flight of the Phoenix by Elleston Trevor is an excellent story that has spawned two very good movies. Pilot Frank "Shut It Down" Towns is sent to shut down an oil rig that has gone dry in the middle of the Libyan desert. On the way home, the plane crashes in a horrific sandstorm, killing two of the passengers. The survivors of the crash must band together to survive. Their original plan is to sit tight and wait for someone to come and rescue them until one of the passengers, a young aircraft designer named Stringer, proposed building a new plane out of the wreckage and flying to safety. What follows is a race against time as the survivors must battle the elements with limited supplies as they try to survive.

Elleston Trevor's novel is a well-told character study of what happens when people are placed in horrific conditions. Much of the novel centers around the fight for authority between Towns, the experienced yet self-doubting pilot, and Stringer, the young, obsessed aircraft designer. By the end of the novel, Trevor has fleshed out all the characters so the reader legitimately cares whether they survive or not. If you enjoy this novel, check out the 1965 classic starring Jimmy Stewart and Richard Attenborough and the exciting 2004 remake starring Dennis Quaid and Giovanni Ribisi. For a well-told story with believable characters and an unexpected twist, check out Elleston Trevor's Flight of the Phoenix!

The first movie tie-in that I can recall reading was a Star Wars novelization in Spring of '76, before any of us had even really heard about the
movie. At first I just assumed that the George Lucas had based his film on the book, but it gradually dawned that, to the contrary, the screenplay had been the source of a quickie book. (As I recall, the book is credited to Lucas, but I think Alan Dean Foster actually wrote it.) It seemed sort of like a rip-off to me even at an early age and I've been suspicious of books that are also movies ever since. So when I found this one, with scenes from the fine Jimmy Stewart film on the cover and a big movie announcement on the back, I looked it over carefully to make sure that the book had come first. Imagine my surprise when a little research turned up the fact that not only was Elleston Trevor a well regarded author, but he was also the writer known as Adam Hall, who wrote the Quiller series of spy novels, the first of which, The Quiller Memorandum, was voted the 1965 Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Indeed, Elleston Trevor turns out to be a synonym too, for an Englishman, born Trevor Dudley Smith.

In Flight of the Phoenix, Elleston Trevor (for that was what he had his name legally changed to) gives us a harrowing tale of survival against the elements and human frailties in the Saharan desert. Fourteen men and a monkey, returning from the Libyan oilfields, live through a plane crash, but are left without food, water, or a radio, and because a sandstorm had blown them off course, no one is looking for them. The pilot, Frank Towns, is so caught up in justifiably blaming himself that he is nearly ready to give up. But his navigator, Lew Moran, coaxes him towards survival and mediates between the rest of the group and Stringer, a young, arrogant, and hypersensitive engineer who has figured out a way to cobble together a jerry-rigged smaller plane from the wreckage of the original. Stringer, though unbearably officious, is in all likelihood their only way out, if Moran can keep him from storming off in a fit of pique and keep the others from killing him.

Also among the survivors are Trucker Cobb, a chief driller being sent home from the fields because he's begun to lose his mind and Captain Harris, a gung-ho, by-the-book, British officer and several of his less enthusiastic men. There's also Roberts, who, in a gesture of insane but touching tenderness is giving his water ration to the monkey. Together they form an ill-matched group and as thirst, starvation, exposure, madness, and desperation turn up the torque, social order and morality and simple human decency are shunted aside and the men begin to turn on one another. The only thing that gives them some sense of purpose is the slender possibility that Stringer will somehow manage to salvage a workable plane and that Towns will get it together enough to fly them out.

Mr. Trevor keeps the action moving, but doesn't hesitate to draw out the tension, particularly between Stringer and Towns, the two men who are the equally important keys to survival, but who end up vying for authority over the group. This adds an element of Lord of the Flies to what would be a decent enough action yarn anyway. In this case at least, though the movie is now better remembered, the book holds up well as an exciting piece of fiction in its own right.

GRADE : B+

I had just watched the Flight of the Phoenix (the good Jimmy Stewart version, not the crummy John Moore film!) and remembered I'd read the book back in high school. I like to hunt down old books, so I found this (apparently British school version) of the story of the Phoenix.

It's one of those "engineer tear-jerkers" - like Apollo 13 - where a few people make the decision to do something great in the face of disaster and it takes more brains than brawn to get it done.

The story is simple - a cargo plane is trapped in a sandstorm in the Libyan desert and crashes. The survivors at first hope to be rescued, but soon realize that nobodies looking for them. They choose different paths - some still hope for rescue and the British captain tries to walk out of the desert. One of the passengers, Springer, proposes to build an airplane from the wreckage. This outlandish idea gains support (although conflict with the idea continues through the book - especially between young Springer and the "ancient pelican" pilot - Townes. Although Springer is an "airplane designer," there's a twist to his background that almost kills the effort.

How the passengers manage to stay alive in the desert with little water and only dates to eat will keep you at the edge of your seat.

You can probably guess the ending, but I won't spoil it here in case you haven't read the book or seen the movie.

Its an oldy but goody!

If you haven't read this all-time best adventure story, do so. You're in for a treat (it beats the movie versions hands down). During World War II, a plane crashes in the North African desert, and the survivors reconstruct it to fly again. That's enough to tell. Read a longer review after you read the book.

I hope you find the following suggestions useful. All great African adventures:

Also read "Cry Wolf," by Wilbur Smith--another great African story (set in Ethiopia in the 1930s): Cry Wolf

And don't miss "The Sands of Kalahari" (a plane crashes in the Kalahari desert): The Sands of Kalahari

"The Sapphire Sea" (a modern adventure in Zanzibar), by Ben Robinson.

The Sapphire Sea

A cargo plane carrying workers accross the Libyan desert is brought down by one of the sand storms that the region is famous for.

For the survivors the struggle of life and death will soon make them all aware of the value of human life and the determination of one man who will not take defeat. He is determined to survive and make it home and soon comes up with an amazing idea, that, if he can convince his fellow survivors to help, will get them all home safely.- They can jury-rig a crude areoplane out of the well preserved remains of the cargo plane that has become their unbearable home.

With yet another movie treatment of this clever and accomplished novel about to explode onto our screens, it's even more to readers' advantage to check out Elleston Trevor's original story.

The 1965 Robert Aldrich version was a worthy effort but nevertheless held back from tackling the undercurrent of menace and sheer adult writing that made the novel such a triumph in the first place. The 2004 <a href="http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/flightofthephoenix/">Hollywoodization</a>, with Dennis Quaid. G Ribisi and Miranda Otto, barely seems to pay lip-service to the title before galumphing off in good old 'Indiana Jones-meets-Hidalgo' fashion towards lowest common denominated Phantasia-in-the-Sands.

Read quick to avoid disappointment.

I read this book when I was in High School, I'm 44 now, and I still remember the last line in the book, "Out of the desert walked seven men and a monkey." I'm currently searching for this book and will pay a good price for it. If you have not read this, read it. Its also been made into a movie, starring James Stewart! 1965