Customer Reviews

Flying to nowhere: A tale

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You can actually *see* the things John Fuller imagines: prancing diminuitive horses, floating bodies, new greenery springing to life from old oaken panelling.

I read this book many years ago when it first was released. Being young, naive, and not well-versed in interpreting literature, I did not understand its allegorical nature at all, but I found it utterly compelling, and I could not put it down. I have seen this book compared to "Name of the Rose". I can see some similarities of plot, but NOTR is a completely different kind of story - chock full of themes that are more obvious than in FTN. You have to read between the lines in FTN. An earlier reviewer who explained this was very helpful in my gaining understanding. I am anxious to read it again.

This is a resonant book, a kind of prose poem, mysterious and dreamlike. It has stayed with me since I first read it in 1983. (The hardcover with its dust jacket also happens to be a beautiful object, which looks very different from the paperback.)

I thought this would do more for me from the reviews I read. The setting and premise for this story are great, but the storytelling must be for some other type of mind than mind. It's one of those disjointed "the ending is what you make it" sort of books that has no real resolution and leaves the reader in the dark (ex: why was the novice screaming with terror following his initiation trial? who knows! ). Redo it, John Fuller, and let the reader have something next time. Name of the Rose was definitely better, despite the review on the cover.