Fly Away Home

by Jennifer Weiner

Sylvie Woodruff has spent the last 30 or so years being the ideal politician's wife and raising two daughters. When her world crashes down around her after a painful, public betrayal, she retreats to her grandmother's rambling seaside home to wait for the scandal to blow over. Sylvie's eldest daughter, Diana, married out of friendship and respect, not love...then years later, finds herself falling for a most unsuitable man. When the affair ends badly, she sets off in search of a new beginning. Lizzie, Diana's younger sister, who caused her parents such heartache as a teenager, is finally getting her life together. When a summer fling leaves her pregnant, and her charming boyfriend turns violent, she too heads out of town.

• ISBN10: 0857201441
• ISBN13: 9780857201447
• Publish Date: 5 August 2010 (first published 30 June 2010)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 7 February 2012
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

I’ve been a little reluctant to read more from Weiner, because the first two books I read focused so much on the weight of the protagonist that it was a little bit of a turn-off. Thankfully, Weiner has grown as a writer and moved away from that to focus on more important issues.

Fly Away Home is about what happens to a family when a betrayal is revealed in a very public way. Sylvie, the victimized wife, decides that she needs some time away. She moves to her mother’s vacation home, hoping to figure out who she is now that she’s not being the Senator’s wife. Her oldest daughter, Diana, is a busy doctor with an inattentive husband who finds excitement in the arms of another man, despite seeing what adultery has done to her parents. Her youngest daughter, Lizzie, is a recovering drug addict who is relishing the chance to be the caretaker for a change. I’d tell you more about the men, but they are rather one-dimensional.

I rather enjoyed Sylvie and Lizzie’s parts of the story, but had major issues with Diana, for several reasons. First, she’s basically a bitch. From the beginning to the end, I had a hard time mustering up any sympathy for her. Weiner tries really hard to make her husband, Gary, as distasteful as possible, but the more distasteful she made him, the worse Diana looks. In fact, I felt bad for Gary, because he married a woman who obviously never loved him to begin with and only married him because she figured she might as well get that part of her life over with. Box checked. I also didn’t like the hot and cold relationship she had with her young son, who seemed so much better off with his recovering addict aunt. And finally, the event that forces Lizzie out of Diana’s house made no sense to me. It seemed like an incredibly huge over-reaction. I think we’re supposed to accept it because Diana is lashing out at someone else to assuage her own guilt, but it didn’t work.

I also found the ending to be a bit disappointing. It’s open-ended, and I would have preferred at least a little resolution.

I listened to this on audio and enjoyed Judith Light as narrator.

[Leah]

Jennifer Weiner is an author that I don’t have much experience of. I’m well aware of the fact that she’s huge in America, with hundreds of reviews on Amazon of all of her books but, for me, I’ve never fancied reading any of them, not enough to go out and buy any anyway. At the start of 2010 I received a review copy of Best Friends Forever and because I adored the sound of it, I read it. Unfortunately it really disappointed me. It just wasn’t what I expected. So when I recently went to the post office to collect a package and saw her latest novel Fly Away Home I was in two minds about reading it. Sure, I disliked Best Friends Forever but Jennifer is an author many people love. In the end, I decided to read it and, do you know what?, I’m pleased I did. Because it was much better than Best Friends Forever and it was certainly a very readable novel.

I must admit, when I first starting reading Fly Away Home I thought I’d made a grave mistake. It was slow-going and I wasn’t entirely sure I was on board with Sylvie, who is the main character, as she’s in her 50s. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be prejudiced but I find it hard to relate to heroines who are thirty years older than me, as you might expect. However, by bringing in Diana and Lizzie into the story, with their own troubles, really helped me get into the book. Because it wasn’t just about Sylvie being betrayed by her husband, it was Lizzie and Diana, too and because they were younger and more around my age group, I found it easier to get into the novel on the whole. And I must admit, once I passed the 200 page mark, I was hooked. It wasn’t that the first 200 pages were rubbish, it’s just they weren’t as engaging as I found the last 200 pages. However once I got into the book, and truly felt it, I was flying.

The base of the novel is infidelity. How Sylvie deals with learning that her husband of thirty years has cheated on her with some upstart, who (which makes it worse) looks like Sylvie did thirty years ago. What makes it worse is that Sylvie’s husband is a politician so she’s got a decision to make: does she stand by her man a la Hillary or does she split? It reminded me of the TV show The Good Wife, I have to admit, not because of any similarities but because of the plot itself. As I’ve already mentioned, Sylvie’s daughters have their own troubles, too. Diana is in a loveless marriage, and is cheating with a intern student at the hospital where she works and Lizzie is a recovering drug addict, something she’s forgotten to tell her boyfriend, Jeff. I liked how each female was represented in the book, with separate chapters allowing us a peek into their lives. I thought the part of the book set in Connecticut was brilliant, and very well described by Weiner.

I must admit, I did find the characters to be a little cliche. The cheating politician – check, the meek wife – check, the daughter who is perfect – check and then the screwed up daughter – check. But despite the ‘perfect’ nature of all of the characters, I did find them fascinating. Despite my worry over Sylvie being someone I couldn’t connect with, once I got into the book and once the tale moved to Connecticut, I was absorbed by how Sylvie handled herself. I thought she handled the scandal of her husband with grace and dignity and how she didn’t let it define her. I did find Diana, Sylvie’s eldest daughter, to be a hard one to like. She’s a bit of a hypocrite, she treats Lizzie like she’s a leper and she only allows her son a small amount of ‘screen time’ each day. To you and me, that’s TV time. She screamed perfection, but yet, she wasn’t perfect at all. Because she did exactly what her dad did, she cheated on her husband just like he cheated on his wife. A bit more humility would have done her the world of good, lemme tell you. Lizzie was my favourite character, she wasn’t perfect, but she was trying to keep her life together and she was doing it. She spoke to me the most, strangely enough, and I felt sorry for her that she was treated badly by her family. I don’t really have anything to say about Richard, typical politician, to be honest!

Despite the fact it took my a while to get into it, in the end I think I did very much enjoy the novel. It really comes into its own during the last half of the book and is well worth persevering because it comes good. I must admit, the ending left me in two minds. On the one hand, I understand why Sylvie chose who she chose, but on the other, there’s part of me that wishes she’d chosen differently. But what I will say is that the ending was well executed. Because I understood Sylvie’s choice. Fly Away Home is very well written, and I can see why Jennifer is so huge in the Chick Lit world, she can tell a good tale. I will definitely be looking to read her new book Then Came You which is out in August. Weiner brings warmth and realness to her characters, so that even though you have one opinion on how you think it might pan out, you’re not disappointed with the way it really does and that’s a clever talent. I’d definitely recommend reading Fly Away Home, and I am looking forward to the next Jennifer Weiner novel!