Larque on the Wing [Paperback]

Nancy Springer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1995

Going through a messy mid-life crisis, forty-year-old wife and mother Larque Harootunian gets carried away with her latest doppelganger--herself at age ten--who helps transform her into a young, strong, courageous, and gay man. Reprint. K. PW.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Larque Harootunian is having a mid-life crisis. But Larque, wife, mother and painter isn't like most 40-year-olds. All her life she's been generating "doppelgangers," psychic manifestations of her thoughts that can impact and, as she suddenly realizes, impede, the reality of her own life. She embarks on a journey of self-exploration that culminates in her transformation--a common occurrence in this world--into an attractive gay man. In the end, she must weigh the attractions of this existence against the good aspects of her actual life. A 1995 James Tiptree Award winner.

From Publishers Weekly

Best known for her traditional fantasy novels, Springer ( Apocalypse ) here offers an offbeat contemporary tale that owes much to magical realism. Larque Harootunian is having a midlife crisis, taking stock of her comfortable life as a wife, mother and painter of chintzy pastels for the tourist market in Soudersburg, Pa. But Larque isn't like other 40-year-olds. All her life she's been generating what she calls "doppelgangers," psychic manifestations of her thoughts, and now she's made one of her preadolescent self, who chides Larque about settling for a life that bears little resemblance to her youthful imaginings. Larque then begins a journey into her own personality that culminates with her transformation into an attractive young gay man. (The narrative treats such surreal goings-on--of which there are many--as commonplace.) In the end, Larque must weigh the attractions of this existence against the good aspects of her actual life. Springer effectively uses fantasy to evoke midlife soul-searching, and Larque's self-exploration is filled with moments of authentic joy and crushing sorrow. Though the author occasionally falls off the narrow tightrope stretched between the real and the surreal, she has produced an engrossing novel about gender and self-formation that should appeal to readers both in and outside the SF/fantasy audience.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Avon Books (Mm) (February 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380767422
• ISBN-13: 978-0380767427
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,158,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"Conform, go crazy, or become an artist." I have a rubber stamp declaring those words, and they pretty much delineate my life. Conforming was the thing to do when I was raised, in the fifties. Even my mother, who spent her days painting animal portraits at an easel in the corner of the kitchen, tried to conform via housecleaning, bridge parties, and a new outfit every spring. My father, who was born into a British-mannered Protestant family in southern Ireland, emigrated to America as a young man and idolized the "melting pot" because at last he fit in. Once in a rare while he recited "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" or told a tale of a leprechaun, but most of the time he was an earnest naturalized American who expected exemplary behavior of his children. My mother was a charming Pollyanna who would not entertain negative sentiments in herself or anyone around her. As their only girl and the baby of the family, I was coddled, yet hardly ever got a chance to be other than excruciatingly good.

My "conform" phase lasted right into adulthood. When I was thirteen, my parents bought a small motel near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I spent most of my teen years helping them make beds and clean rooms. I did not date until I went to college -- Gettysburg College, all of seven miles from home. it was the height of the sixties, and I grew my hair long, but eschewed pot, protests, and "happenings." Instead, I married a preacher's son who was himself conforming by studying for the ministry. Within a few years I was Rev. Springer's wife, complete with offspringers, living in a country parsonage in southern York County, PA.

Here beginneth the "go crazy" phase.

Because I had never been allowed any negative emotions, I began to hear "voices" in my head. First they whispered "divorce" (not permissible), and later they hissed "suicide". They scared me silly. I couldn't sleep; images of knives and torture floated in front of my eyes even during the daytime; something roared like an animal inside my ears; my wrists hurt; I saw blood seeping out of the walls; panic jolted me like a cattle goad out of nowhere. Is it necessary to add that I was clinically depressed? The doctor gave me Valium and sent me to a shrink. The shrink took me off the Valium and told me I had a problem with anger. (No duh.) The next doctor zombied me on the numbing antidepressants which were available at that time. The next shrink said I had an adjustment problem. And so on, for several years, during which I somehow managed to stay alive, take care of my kids, handle the vagaries of my husband, sew clothing and grow vegetables to get by financially, cook, can preserves, show up at church, do mounds of laundry and publish "The White Hart" and "The Silver Sun"--yet not one of the doctors of shrinks ever suggested that I might be a strong person, let alone a writer. All of them were intent on "helping" poor little me "adjust" to being a housewife, mother, and pastor's wife.

Eventually I became resigned to the fact (as I perceived it) that I was an evil, sinful person with horrible things going on inside my head, and I stopped trying to fix me. I stopped going to doctors or therapists. Somehow I found courage--or desperation--to stop trying to conform or adjust or live a role.

"I am going to start taking an hour or two first thing in the morning to do my writing," I said to my husband.

"Fine," he said. He had reached the point where he would agree with whatever to humor the neurotic wife; to him it was just another of my brain farts. But to me it was the most important sentence I ever spoke. With that statement I stopped being a housewife who sometimes stole time to write, and I started being a writer.

Conform, go crazy--or become an artist.

By becoming a writer--by becoming who I truly was--I became well.

It was so simple. Although it did take years, of course; it takes a long time for good things to grow. Trees. Books. Me. Odd thing about books; they not only nourish growth but show it happening. In "The Black Beast, The Golden Swan" and many other of my early novels, you can see me dealing with the yang/yin nature of good and evil, struggling to accept my own shadow. In "Chains of Gold" and "The Hex Witch of Seldom" I start writing as a woman, no longer identifying only with male main characters. In a number of children's books I come to terms with my own childhood. And in "Apocalypse"--whoa, what a fierce, dark fantasy novel, the first thing I wrote after my income from writing enabled my husband to leave the ministry. I hadn't thought of myself as repressed when I was a pastor's wife, but obviously something broke loose when I shed that role. "Larque on the Wing"--whoa again, another breakthrough book that spiraled straight out of my muddled middle-aged psyche and took me places I'd never dreamed were in me.

It's been a long time since those days when I thought I was an evil person. I know better now, and I love and trust me even to the extent of writing "Fair Peril"--a more perilous novel than I knew at the time, interfacing all too closely with my life. Written two years before the fact, it foresees my husband's infidelity and my divorce. The most painful irony I've ever faced is that once I gained my selfhood, I lost my lifelong partner. He had supported me through episodes that would have sent most men screaming and running, but once I became well and strong, he transferred his loyalty to a skinny, neurotic waif all to similar to the young woman I once was. After supporting him through twenty-seven years of stinky socks, automotive yearnings, miscellaneous foibles, and the career change that put him where she could cry on his shoulder, I found this a bit hard to take. But I wouldn't go back to being Ms. Pitiful. Not for anything.

Now married to a rather remarkable second husband, after living 46 years in Pennsylvania I moved in 2007 to the Florida panhandle, where I spent a year living in a small apartment above the aforementioned husband's hangar in an exceedingly rural (swamps, egrets, snakes and alligators) airport. Now we have a real house about a mile from the airport on higher ground featuring tremendously tall longleaf pine trees with rattlesnakes and scorpions underneath them. Life is an adventure and I mean that sincerely.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Suprisingly fantastic!, June 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Larque on the Wing (Hardcover)

I bought this on a whim, not sure if I wanted it or not. I couldn't put it down.. despite the fact that I went to work on 3 hours sleep! This is an wonderful tale. The reviews above explain the plot, but don't be sidetracked by it. I thought this would be over my head (I'm 23, not 40 some), but I not only *got* every bit of the story (there's a great bit about Hamburger Helper) but the story was so engrossing and fascinating, with unexpected plot devices everywhere, and characters that just make sense, I never wanted it to end.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny!, July 22, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Larque on the Wing (Paperback)

A Winner of the Tiptree Award for gender bending science fiction.

This is an incredibly funny book about a woman who has a midlife crisis, splits her personality to become at least four different people, including a gay teenager, a militant churchgoing mother, a brat, and a much put upon bucolic artist, along with the resulting chaos as she turns the town inside out while trying to get her head back together.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my all time favorites!, July 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Larque on the Wing (Hardcover)

This is a hysterical and touching story for "the rest of us." A must-read for anyone who has ever felt a touch of strange magic in their lives, who has ever had doubts that their gender was one or the other, or who just sees things from a slightly tilted view point. The Author manages to meld aspects of all the "freaks" in the world into an adventure through conventional expectations. On the other hand, if you are not comfortable with gay and transgender situations, avoid this one like the plague.