Customer Reviews

Landing

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I just finished reading my sixth book by Emma Donoghue.
I was just about to say sixth "novel" but three of the others were short story collections. Emma is a terrific short-storyist, and yet I think she is even a greater novelist. She's written five. So let's talk about this one, her latest, called Landing.
First off, I freakin' LOVED IT.
Landing is about two women that fall for each other while having coffee and eating raisin crumpets at London's Heathrow airport. They met because an old guy died on the first woman. And when I say "on" I mean "on". But yet, not what you think!
Her name is Jude Turner. She was on a flight to London to retrieve her ill mother. Jude is from a small town, [fictitious] Ireland, Ontario, and this is her first time in a plane. The old man seated next to her quietly croaks, and leans into her. At first Jude thinks he is merely sleeping. Alerting the stewardess to the situation, they together conclude that he is totally dead.
Upon landing at Heathrow, they meet again at the baggage carousel and end up in the restaurant, talking. Not her and the dead guy. Her and this hot stewardess.
Sile [pronounced Sheila] is her name. Sile O'Shaunessy. She lives in Dublin, and she is Irish / Indian. Voluptuous. Ravishing, even. Sile is hip, addicted to technology, and leads a vibrant, socially exuberant, urban lifestyle.
Jude is in very worn jeans, and is somewhat androgynous. She cuts her own hair. Badly. She rides a Triumph motorcylce when she is not driving her old rusty Ford Mustang. She eschews technology and leads an extremely quiet life as a museum curator, back in Ontario.
Although Sile and Jude go their separate ways after their initial encounter, they cannot seem to forget about each other.
And so, they re-connect. Sile initiates this.
But their re-connection is limited to the telephone and [later] the Internet.
E-mail. Also, old-fashioned actual paper letters are sent!
While their relationship grows as a result of these connections, the very [shall we say, untactile?] means in which they are forced to communicate only accentuates the physical distance between them.
In a phrase, it drives them crazy!
And so they meet again.
And then return to their respective corners of the planet.
And e-mail, and telephone, and call and call, and write, and e-mail.
And dream.
Of being together.

Landing is a wonderfully-written, realistic look at the difficulties inherent in long-distance relationships... or LDR's, as they are often referred to in the book.
There may have been a time when lovers restricted their "partner-finding" to some sort of five-mile radius of their own homestead, but those days are over. Ours is the era of the global village, and there are really very few insurmountable geographical boundaries to "love."
We want the best for Sile and Jude, even while we, the readers, are often just as confused as they are, as to what the best might mean for them!
There are many twists and many turns in this novel which I will not at all mention here. I encourage you to GET THE BOOK and enjoy these for yourself.
At the end of Landing, I cried. A bit. In a public place [Starbucks]. I must confess.
Emma Donoghue is one of my favorite contemporary writers, and Landing is a winner.

As much as I thoroughly enjoyed Emma Donoghue's historical novels Slammerkin and Life Mask, I'll confess to a longing for her to turn her extraordinary novelist's eye to a contemporary topic. Landing fulfills that wish and a great deal more. This is a story that could only take place in the time of easy international travel, email, and long-distance telephone. And yet, the long-distance relationship that Donoghue explores is all the more painful because of these aids to long-distance communication. It seems as if they are always in touch, but touch, physical, sensual, tactile, is just what is missing despite the connections offered by phone and email. Sile and Jude are wonderful characters, vibrant, funny, touching, and imperfect in complementary ways. Their effort to connect, to make hard choices, to love one another despite the distance (Jude is in Ontario, Canada, Sile in Dublin and the Atlantic Ocean is far more than a pond), despite their very different ways of seeing and being in the world, is the stuff of a great story, and Donoghue is a great storyteller. I recommend Landing highly. It is a splendid novel that will make you think about your own life and your own choices in a completely new way.

Having read Donoghue's other work did not really prepare me for how much I would like this contemporary novel.
Donoghue is one of a very few novelists who writes about lesbians and their lives in an intelligent and literate way. This book is light, and smart and very well written.
It perfectly creates the longing and uncertainty involved in starting a new relationship when everything is up for grabs.
Donoghue can do it all.
Reading Landing makes me look forward to whatever else comes next
I loved it.

I was immediately hooked into this story about an "against-all-odds" love relationship. At the center of the story are two heroines, each likeable in her own way, who exemplify the saying that "opposites attract."
Jude Turner is a young museum curator who has always lived a simple life in a village (population: 600) in Canada. She has no desire for a cell phone, credit card, or even an alarm clock. She doesn't use e-mail and is fearful of air travel.
When Jude must fly to London, she encounters the cosmopolitan Sile O'Shaughnessy, an attractive flight attendant who resides in Dublin. Sile's constant companion is her "gizmo" that she uses to check her stocks and text-message her friends.
As their attraction for each other grows, they face the obstacles of their different lifestyles, doubting friends, and the thousands of miles that separate them.
This story is, by turns, funny, sad, sensual, and joyous, as Jude and Sile attempt to find common ground in more ways than one.

Life is about to change for Jude Turner in Emma Donoghue's novel, Landing. The 25 year old archivist/curator of a one-room schoolhouse museum in her very small town of Ireland, Ontario, Canada, is "celebrating" New Years Eve by flying to the United Kingdom to see her mother, who has been visiting her sister, Jude's aunt. This mysterious request from Jude's aunt heralds illness and loss for Jude. Thus for the first time Jude, the self-proclaimed Luddite, is on a plane. It will be one of many firsts as an unusual incident during the flight prompts her meeting Síle O'Shaughnessy, a meeting that will have long term effects on both women. Síle is a 39-year-old flight attendant of Indo-Celtic heritage with nearly 20 years of experience in her career. A resident of Dublin, Ireland, Síle is a cosmopolitan, high-tech, and high energy lesbian whose fast-paced vagabond life suits her. She was born, after all, at 40,000 feet. For more of this review, please check my website. Thanks! MJ

Really, I find it hard to express how much I love this novel--and I'm a writer! (Worrisome, right?)

But seriously, this is the kind of love story the 21st century needs to see more of: one that recognizes love isn't just reserved for men and women looking to get married and have 2.3 kids while living in a cookie cutter house in the suburbs.

On the surface, the story of "Landing" is nothing unique: two people fall in love but their romance is hampered by distance. This has been done before. But Ms. Donaghue managed to make me forget the ordinariness of the basic plot with engaging, witty and heartfelt writing.

I fell for the two main characters in "Landing" because they are both so fully realized as individuals and are simply likable people with just enough annoying quirks to make them as imperfect as the rest of us. And as impractical and seemingly impossible as their dual continent romance is, you really do root for them despite that fact that if either one of them were your daughter, sister, best friend, whatever, you'd tell them to forget about it and move on.

Look, if I continue I'll end up giving away things that are better left for first time readers to discover. Suffice it to say, I first read this book, I believe, sometime in March or April, and I've already re-read it. I've discovered it is one of those books (along with others) I will come back to time and again like comfort food.

done with great wit and tenderness, and wrapped around a remarkably vivid travel journal on Ireland and Ontario. As a writer, Emma Dougherty can do it all--proper history and historical fiction, fairytales and realistic modern social comedy, essays, short stories and novels slender and massive, gay and straight, comic and tragic. Readers who dismiss Landing must be looking for a different kind of book, because within its genre, this one is perfect and rewards return readings. Other reviewers have not mentioned that, while the book is very oblique in its treatment of the sex between the protagonists, the sensual pull they exert on one another is rendered in a hundred deliciously evocative ways, as are the two Irelands that separate them, with all of their geographic and social particularities. When Sile butters a croissant, you can taste it; when Jude pours oatmeal into steaming bathwater, you can smell and feel the difference on your skin.

If possible listen to the unabridged audio version of this book. I dont know how authentic the Irish accent was but it definitely made Sile larger than life.
A well thought out book and the only pure romance novel Ive read since I was thirteen.

I've always been partial to Emma Donoghue's novel Hood but I must admit that Landing has edged Hood out of top spot. I don't know that I've ever read a more eloquent, realistic, humorous, empathetic or insightful romance. Donoghue is brillant in her lyrical portrayal of long-distance romance and its trials and tendencies.

I absolutely love this book! Emma Donoghue is one of my favorite writers, and she weaves this story beautifully. The characters are unique and remain true to themselves, even as they come together. The pacing is wonderful, and each character unfolds more fully as the story goes on. The dialog is funny and charming, witty, and at times so tender and vulnerable. One of my favorite things about this book is how ideas and actions seem to echo throughout the lives of the characters: for example, a story that Jude tells Síle will resonate in the moment, and it will come back many chapters later. I read this book in one day because I could not put it down!

However, I did have one problem with this book. I gave this story 4 stars because I was disappointed and put off by some of the anti-American comments from the characters. I didn't understand why these sentiments were there...none of the characters are American. None of the characters want to live in the United States, or have any ties or interests in the Unites States. I didn't know what purpose the anti-American comments served.