The Week: Best novels of 2022
Reviews of the top fiction titles released so far this year—including The Seaplane on Final Approach
Reviews of the top fiction titles released so far this year—including The Seaplane on Final Approach
The Seaplane on Final Approach is a jaunty, perfectly paced and exceptionally well-written coming-of-age story. It is slyly funny, with just the right touch of darkness to take the edge off.
The writers discuss Rukeyser’s debut novel, The Seaplane on Final Approach, and their long-lasting friendship.
We spoke with US author Rebecca Rukeyser about her debut novel, The Seaplane on Final Approach, and why she’d like to see more young female perverts…
Tony Tulathimutte talks to the author of The Seaplane on Final Approach
“A set of teenage girls wait out the summer in the wilds of Alaska in THE SEAPLANE ON FINAL APPROACH an impressive debut by German writer Rebecca Rukeyser.”
“Rukeyser’s assured, elegant prose brings colour and outline to the great outdoors … Her debut novel is part adventure story, party coming of age tale, about a woman on the cusp of adulthood, fully of inchoate longing. If moving a character to a foreign world in order to bring about a transformation is a time-word staple of fiction writers, Rukeyser takes that old trick and flies her reader off to a brave new world.”
“A deftly juggled mix of mercilessly sharp character judgment and gentle compassion […] definitely one for readers who enjoy the sort of dive into dysfunction championed by Ottessa Moshfegh.”
“The Seaplane at Final Approach is, like all great coming-of-age stories, a perfect blend of deep, dark humor, sadness, and (of course), adolescent horniness. It’s also a love letter to the specific wildness of a place—“God’s own country,” as the proprietor of the Lavender Island Wilderness Lodge tells it. Whether the place belongs to God or something sleazier, in Rukeyser’s hands, its strange magic bewitched me.”
“If you never quite thought of Alaska as the center of all things lust-worthy and sexy, Rebecca Rukeyser’s debut will have you thinking otherwise.”