Customer Reviews

Fly Away Home: A Novel

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(31)
2 star:		(23)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Fly away home is the beautifully written story of Sylvie, a politicians wife, and her two daughters Diana and Lizzie. In the wake and aftermath of scandal these three women are forced to face the truth about themselves including who they are, who they want to be and what they want out of life. The women deal with past issues as well as present. Weiner does a wonderful job of taking the serious issues of commitment, self-esteem, identity and choices and mixing them with comical moments.

Meet the women of Fly Away Home:

Sylvie: Wife of Senator Richard Woodruff. Sylvie has spent her life in her husbands service, helping him, guiding him and focusing on him. After his affair is brought into the open, Sylvie must re-evaluate who she is and who she wants to be. She must make the biggest decision of all. Will she be able to trust and forgive?

Diana: The eldest daughter of Sylvie and Richard Woodruff. After watching her parents marriage, Diana has a very clear path for her life and how she wants it to be. While everything makes sense on paper, Diana forgets about the heart and love. When she is reminded her world is turned upside down and she must choose to love or not to love? Will she be happy?

Lizzie: (Elizabeth) The youngest daughter of the Woodruff's and the family screw-up. Returning from rehab, Lizzie is determined to be better, to make something of herself, and to stay clean. It seems the world doesn't want to make this easier for her, and her family isn't in the best state to help. Will she be able to overcome of one the hardest parts of her life? Will she learn from the rehab and will she survive the shock and surprises she will encounter along the way?

The novel is divided into three sections. Each section skillfully sets up the next and smoothly transitions into it. Each section is divided into chapters, entitled by the woman who narrates the chapter. The first section focuses on past memories as well as current happenings. The second section dives deeper into the issues of the women, each leading to the point of no return. The third and final section brings the three women together. They face the past, present and future together and discover where home truly is.

Jennifer Weiner did a wonderful job with this novel. Fly away home quickly moved its way up the list of my favorite novels by Weiner. She encompasses so many relationships and focuses on them throughout the book. It is skillfully written and will make you laugh as well as feel the emotions of each character. You will find yourself relating to each character in your own way and rooting for them to find comfort and happiness. Fly Away Home is a heartbreaking, insightful novel, full of humor and interpersonal relationships. It will easily become a novel you will not want to put down, a novel that will carry you through many emotions, a novel you simply wont want to end.

Reviewed for [...]

I hate to do this (give this book such a low rating) but I truly found it close to dreadful. I have read other Jennifer Weiner books and liked them all, but I found 'Fly Away Home' to be quite slow and boring. As others stated in their reviews, I too kept waiting for something to happen, for there to be something funny, or for me to actually care about the characters - none of which ever happened (for me). I found it hard to beleive that Sylvie didn't talk to her husband for months and then suddenly started talking to him every day, that Diana would actually marry a man who by every discription in the book was totally wrong for her, and that Lizzie did a full 180 with no slip-ups. I found myself wishing that there was some happiness and at least one reason to root for the main characters.

Maybe I was expecting too much? I have enjoyed Jennifer Weiner's works in the past. I really wanted to like this book, but I just finished and found myself saying... "blah."
Nothing happens. And at the same time, everything seems sadly predictable. Reading this is like eating cotton candy -- pretty promises but empty.
Maybe the point is that these scandals are commonplace now and the story is "no story." Because really, now that I'm done, I feel so let down and like I wasted time.
Sylvie continues to go through the motions the entire book. No wonder her husband sought somebody else. She's on autopilot and things don't seem to change. First she takes a swing at her philandering spouse. Then she says she'll be on t.v. She didn't even have a conversation (argument, conflict, upset) about the whole "stand by your man" bit -- in fact her man didn't even ask her to stand by him. Next she's hiding (in Connecticut?? ) and grocery shopping as therapy? She learns to cook overnight, a sensation on her first try. And that's the extent of her growth?
Some of this is rehashed headlines with bits and pieces of Grey's Anatomy, The Good Wife, and an after school special on what not to do when your kid is addicted (I can't believe her father asked her to make him a drink). Every daughter plot point was telegraphed in advance. I knew exactly what was going to happen (and it did). But I won't say what -- no spoilers (well, not much) on my watch.
So, yeah. This could be a beach read. Just don't get your hopes up. I'm still searching for the book of the summer.

I'm a big fan of Jennifer Weiner, and thoroughly enjoyed her past work. But this novel just didn't do it for me. I've read and reread her past books, so maybe this bothered me more than it would other people. But some of the scenes/lines in this book are too reminiscent of past books. For example, the scene in which Diana meets her husband is quite similar to the way Kelly (in Little Earthquakes) meets hers. Both women go out to get drunk immediately after being dumped, and then meet a sweet man in that bar who later becomes her future husband. Before they have sex, Jeff asks Lizzie "Is it safe?", the same exact line that Sam says to Lia (also in Little Earthquakes). There are about a thousand more ways a man could ask a woman if she's using some kind of birth control, no? I don't know, these examples just stood out and irked me.

The characters weren't easy to care about, either. For instance, I wanted to like the character of Lizzie, but she was too nonchalant about Jeff and about her pregnancy. I wanted to like Diana, but there were few and far between moments in the book where I could tell that she actually cared about her son. It seems like we were just told towards the end how much she loves him, but throughout the book the majority of her scenes she is not around him nor thinking of him. Maybe if there were more past scenes showing the characters' history, they would've been better developed and more likeable. And I won't even go in to Sylvie, who has a change of heart toward the end that seemingly came out of nowhere.

Finally, the book had its funny moments, but was not nearly as funny as her past efforts. Despite the criticisms above, I will continue to read Jennifer Weiner, books like In Her Shoes and Little Earthquakes were funny, fun, and hard to put down.

A bit depleted from reading dark literary fiction, I bought this book for my Kindle, thinking it would be some good mindless summer reading fun. Wrong. Cobbled together from the tired stories of every politician's sex scandal we've been subjected to in the last number of years and a cast of characters you know you're meant to care about but just can't, this uninventive and humorless tale had me questioning why I was spending my time reading it at 35% and bailing out altogether at 53%. Beach readers deserve better than this.

I have read every one of Jennifer Weiner's novels and short stories, and have loved almost all of them. But her latest novel is disappointingly ordinary. It could have been written by any mildly successful chick lit author. None of the characters make you feel much for them, and I found myself constantly wondering when anything interesting was going to happen. I read the book lying in bed with my Kindle, and at times actually caught myself getting distracted by the Law and Order re-runs my husband was watching. A tough one to love even for Weiner's fans.

I have always enjoyed Weiner's books and could hardly wait to get Fly Away Home.

Weiner has always created characters that are relatable, larger than life and generally jump off the page and right into your heart. They are a little crazy and always funny with at least one "laugh out loud" moment.

Not this one! The women in Fly Away Home are definitely NOT funny or even likable. They are crazy, but not in an engaging way. Three women -- the sell out attorney, the uptight, self righteous older daughter and the messed up addict little sister. The only redeeming character is the mother/grandmother Selma.

I am really disappointed and not sure why Weiner wrote this or why her editor or publisher thought it was a good idea.

After reading Best Friends Forever, Jennifer's previous novel, I became a huge Jennifer Weiner fan. So as any fan would be when it comes to reading an author's next work (and early even!), I jumped at the chance, and I'm glad I did, even though Best Friends Forever still remains my favorite Weiner novel.

Politician sex scandals. You see them every couple of months, blaring across the TV, everyone varying from your uncle to your neighbors talking about it, gossiping about it. Though, one thing you don't see is the after effects, how these events affect the lives of their family, and that's the story that Fly Away Home tells.

Fly Away Home is the story of three women, a mother and two daughters, completely different yet the same deep down, all dealing with the same event but different ones as well that may just bring their lives to one big halt. Sylvie, the mother, is dealing with the back lash of her politician husband's sex affair, the husband she thought she would always call hers. Sure, she's not the skinniest woman ever, but she loved him and still does even with the events occurring. Lizzie, the youngest daughter, has always felt inferior when compared to her genius older sister and parents, which may just be the reason why she fell into a drug addiction. Though, now she's different; she's overcome her past and has gotten a job, earned back some of her family's respect, and may just even be in love, which is if her past doesn't ruin everything. Diana, the oldest daughter, has always gone to the end of the earth to be the smartest she can possible be, just so that maybe, just maybe, she can earn her parent's attention and respect, though when her own affair comes to halt, taking down nearly everything she has worked for, her life just may never be the same.

The one thing I always love about Weiner's novels is the amount of effort and layers she puts into her characters, effort and layers which leave for each and everyone to feel just the right amount of real and jump of the page one jump at time. But with saying that, I have to admit for most of Fly Away Home, I never really felt a connection to any of the characters at hand. I enjoyed reading about them of course and found them to be likable, but I just didn't relate at all. Sure, there were some little parts I could relate to, but for some of the major ones I just could not; perhaps because of the fact that their major worries and fears are some that I, as a teenager, don't face for the most part. Though, I did enjoy seeing how in the end, the characters, ones who at the beginning never really understood each, came together and made peace.

The thing that ended up making my problem with the characters venial was the plot and Jennifer's writing, since tied together both always make for an addicting story, one which you could never be truly sure of what would happen in the end, and brought up several important questions, such as could one event really change everything someone has worked for. Also, the ending of this was one I liked.

Because of the fact that I couldn't relate to the characters nearly as much as I would have liked to, this is not my favorite Weiner novel. Though I still highly suggest my adult readers of my blog, as well as some of the teenagers who enjoy adult novels, consider giving this a chance, because Weiner's novels are always quite spectacular because of her world building, and Fly Away Home was no different, leaving me with the same feeling Best Friends Forever did. That feeling? Eagerness to read more by Weiner.

Grade: B-

I have loved all of Jennifer Weiner's past efforts- especially Goodnight Nobody which didn't seem to go over as well as her other books. This is a nice novel- but that's all it is. Normally I'm driving my husband crazy snorting with laughter as I'm reading her books, and I think this one might have elicited a single chuckle through the whole thing. Humor is a lost art in women's fiction as far as I'm concerned, and Jennifer Weiner was one of the few that had a great comic voice. I found this to be her most pedestrian, mainstream effort. Had it been written by anyone else, I don't know that I would have been so disappointed, but I depend on her to be funny! Hope she's back to form in her next book.

I think this is definitely my favorite book that I've read so far by Jennifer Weiner. As much as there were sad things happening, it was uplifting at the same time.

I really liked all of the characters. They completely seemed real to me. I kept thinking of Sylvie, the mom, and relating her to my mom. And how my mom is always there backing up my dad and how if my dad was unfaithful I could see the next series of events unfolding the same way they did in the book. I could also relate to a little bit of something in each of the sisters. They were both so different and started off so far apart emotionally but grew towards each other.

I thought the plot seemed very realistic. And I loved the little pop culture/current events tidbits that were in the story. Some are so recent that I think its incredible that they're in the book. And I think that some women might not like the ending with Sylvie, but I did. Without giving away what happens, I think I would have made the same choice that she did. A great summer read!