Flight

by Victoria Glendinning

"Martagon, a young and talented engineer and a loner by nature, has devoted his life to his career - occasionally, and regretfully, sacrificing friendship and family for professional success. He accepts a position masterminding the construction of a new, high tech airport in France, applying his cutting edge expertise to build it almost entirely of glass." The land and vineyards on which the airport will be built belonged to a feuding brother and sister. It is Marina, the beautiful flamboyant, and completely irresistible sister, with whom Martagon falls in love for the first time in his life. The detached and rational engineer is thrown off balance and begins questioning the ambitions he once took for granted. He takes risks to be with Marina, compromises himself professionally and emotionally - a mistake that could cost him everything he has struggled to achieve.

272 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2002

About the author

British biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. She is President of English PEN, a winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, was awarded a CBE in 1998 and is Vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature.

Glendinning read modern languages at Oxford and worked as a teacher and social worker before becoming an editorial assistant for the Times Literary Supplement in 1974.

She has been married three times, the second to Irish writer, lawyer and editor Terence de Vere White, who died of Parkinson's disease in 1994.

Reviews

[Peter]

Enjoyed this very much. There was just the slightest touch of Ballardian dystopia in this exploration of stress and load-bearing, transparency and motion, in buildings and people and systems. Met Victoria the other evening at dinner, and spent yesterday evening with an assembly of illustrious architects, so it all seems to fit together in an interesting way.

[bob walenski]

A bit slow moving and predictable, the book was a short, easy read and had moments of insight into relationships and the way they start and inevitably end when infidelity is involved.
a good 2 day read.

[Maslela]

I read The Grown-Ups over twenty years ago and remember liking it so I picked this up, also more than fifteen years ago now. A few pages in I had to look up where Glendinning's from again because I was so confused as to why it's reading like a translation rather than a British author's work.

It's too amateur, too simple, almost babyish. Gives off quite a strange vibe, with the story set in UK and people speaking English but the tone, the language, and prose as if it is crudely translated. Quite repetitive in discussing the qualities of each character but not adding anything to them.

Her non-fiction books are all very highly rated (beyond 4 stars) and she wrote biographies (one of Trollope!) so it looks like fiction is not really her forte.

[Jayne Charles]

In a bold attempt to make civil engineering sexy, this novel has a guy called Margtagon (Martagon??? Isn’t that some kind of gas?), designer of massive glass structures, getting involved with a French redhead. Before we get to that bit, though, there is a fair amount of corporate manoeuvring to plough though, and whilst one trusts the author that this stuff will prove important later on, it does go on a bit.

We are told this book is a romance, and indeed it is, though I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was about Marina the French redhead that was so attractive (I mean, she didn’t even have nice legs). I didn’t find her at all likeable, and that was a problem. At its heart, the plot is a fairly standard one of romance gone wrong, but the setting lends it a nice feeling of originality. There is a thoughtful quality to the writing, too, and it allowed itself time and space along the way to consider such topics as the European image of the UK, and pride in being British (and whether that's embarrassing).

What was excellent was the portrayal of the building industry at its flamboyant top end. The high flyers that populate it, the macho culture, and the potential for small errors to cost millions and cause embarrassing time delays. I used to work as a surveyor and remember it well.

[Jacqui]

This was an interesting book of love and loss and not knowing what you want until it's too late, the main character is very self-indulgent, a good read but not compelling.