Customer Reviews

Mooney in Flight

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

 

 

Leonard Mooney likes to fix things, window panes, motors, fences, and such, but he doesn't have a clue how to repair what's broken most--Leonard Mooney.

A self-taught expert on passive existence, Leonard has mastered the art of living as if he were watching the scenes play out on a movie screen--cognizant of the parts, but not fully engaged in the emotions. To his credit, Leonard loves his wife and children, but his own ambivalence, coupled with his penchant for alcohol, ultimately render him an ineffective husband and father.

His closest semblance of a friend, Hofstadter, is a chain-smoking geezer who speaks through his artificial voice box with the inquiring authority of a man who has spent a lot of time in analysis. As Leonard manages repairs around Hofstadter's house and drives him on errands, Hofstadter ekes out broken queries to goad Leonard into owning up to his life and his mistakes. Sadly, Leonard will sink further into his meandering existence before he'll begin to understand Hofstadter's intentions.

When Hofstadter dies, Leonard is surprised to learn his old friend has willed him an uninhabited island, an ill-thought investment for Hofstadter, but a potential freedom from life's heaviness for Leonard. Newly divorced and estranged from his children, Leonard sets off to the island to drink and exist beyond life and all its interpersonal complications.

With a spunky crustacean and a Norfolk pine he calls C. Aubrey as his sole companions on the island, Leonard sleeps when he wants, eats when he wants and drinks as often as he can. Not really living, but not yet dead, he exists in a state of rum and depression-induced numbness until one day a plane carrying a young couple unexpectedly lands on the island, forcing Leonard to deal with their intrusion and the danger they bring. Will the sensation of fear jolt Leonard back to life enough to save himself? His wry observations reveal there's still a spark in his darkened heart, which keeps the reader hoping he'll find his way to ignite the pilot light before it's too late.

MOONEY IN FLIGHT provides extraordinary insight into the psyche of a damaged, cyncial soul, who by the end of the book has found enough humanity to climb out of his solitude. The author, using a life-like combination of melancholy and hilarity, gives us an anti-hero who at first blush has no redeeming features. Yet as the book continues, we begin to realize that Leonard Mooney, lowly clerk, failed husband and father, has the best of human instincts. He simply cannot translate them to successful action and the realization of human relationships.

This is a book that everyone needs to read and savor. Unless you have never known a moment's darkness yourself, or never known a person who is emotionally full but stunted in his capacity to express those emotions, this book will pull you in, amuse you, make you cry and laugh alternately, and finally leave you with a sense of triumph at the human condition. I intend to teach it in my course on the modern novel. It is a tour de force!!

Mooney in Flight is a special and rare book, one about adult life as it is lived. While Leonard Mooney's wrecked life might seem a dark and depressing subject, in the author's hand it is anything but. You'll be engrossed, entertained, and humored as Mooney slouches toward the outcome. Witty and knowing, this book is one you won't want to end.

When a friend dies and leaves Leonard Mooney a house on a remote desert island, he
Cannot turn away from this unexpected opportunity. Packing his belongings, Mooney bids adieu to his current wife and flies away, ready to take possession of the posthumous abode. Like any middle-aged man in flight from reality and his personal demons, Mooney romanticizes his new identity, fancying himself an eccentric hermit, albeit armed with plenty of staples, the most important his cases of rum.

Gradually falling prey to the elements, the island house is habitable, outfitted with the basics of survival. Mooney makes elaborate plans for the endless days that lie ahead, days of exploration and self-perusal. But Mooney is unprepared for the suffocating heat of the tiny island, soon prone to rum-soaked naps and wakeful nights. He wanders his kingdom at night, exploring, hacking through resistant brush with a machete, flashlight in hand. Mooney stumbles upon a small shack, thinks he sees a light shining from it. Like a terrified Robinson Crusoe coming upon Friday's footprints, Mooney hightails it back to the house, shivering in fear. Eventually working up his courage, he returns to find that the light was a figment of his imagination, a shaft of moonlight on corrugated tin.

Mooney plods drunkenly along, industriously clearing land with a bulldozer found in the shack, an attempt to stay occupied through the long nights. Instead, he has unwittingly shaped the length of an airstrip, extending an open invitation to unwanted company. When real visitors do arrive, drug traffickers, he isn't sure how to deal with them. These visitors drop in whenever they need to disappear for a day or two, the new airstrip a welcome convenience, Mooney's antics a distraction from boredom.

Clearly Mooney has led less than a satisfying life, toiling at a spectacularly mundane job.
But this is a man who deserted his family in spirit long before escaping to the island. Now he slogs through the endless days and spends hours ruminating about the past, his ex-wife Reba, son and daughter. Mooney's adventures range from delusion to fear to outrage, as he attempts to sort through an exceptionally well-squandered life in this fanciful, meandering tale.

There is always hope, even for such a pathetic soul. In Mooney's case, hope comes in the form of a young girl, Arden, one of the island visitors, who is near the age of his own daughter. In many ways Arden's worldview reeducates Mooney, changing his self-obsession to introspection. Arden prods his conscious, planting a seed of hope, boldly challenging Mooney to meet her expectations or suffer the consequences. Mooney is, indeed, a man in flight, running away from everything that gives life meaning, seeking solace in the bottom of a bottle. Through Arden's endeavors, Mooney thinks to fly toward life again, in a most unpredictable and ingenious manner. Luan Gaines/2003.