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    The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel
    The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel
    The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel

    Written by Daniel Torday

    Narrated by Aaron Abano

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Poxl West fled the Nazis' onslaught in Czechoslovakia. He escaped their clutches again in Holland. He pulled Londoners from the Blitz's rubble. He wooed intoxicating, unconventional beauties. He rained fire on Germany from his RAF bomber.

    Poxl West is the epitome of manhood and something of an idol to his teenage nephew, Eli Goldstein, who reveres him as a brave, singular, Jewish war hero. Poxl fills Eli's head with electric accounts of his derring-do, adventures and romances, as he collects the best episodes from his storied life into a memoir.

    He publishes that memoir, Skylock, to great acclaim, and its success takes him on the road, and out of Eli's life. With his uncle gone, Eli throws himself into reading his opus and becomes fixated on all things Poxl.

    But as he delves deeper into Poxl's history, Eli begins to see that the life of the fearless superman he's adored has been much darker than he let on, and filled with unimaginable loss from which he may have not recovered. As the truth about Poxl emerges, it forces Eli to face irreconcilable facts about the war he's romanticized and the vision of the man he's held so dear.

    Daniel Torday's debut novel, The Last Flight of Poxl West, beautifully weaves together the two unforgettable voices of Eli Goldstein and Poxl West, exploring what it really means to be a hero, and to be a family, in the long shadow of war.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateMar 17, 2015
    ISBN9781427265500
    The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel
    Author

    Daniel Torday

    Daniel Torday is the author of The 12th Commandment, The Last Flight of Poxl West, and Boomer1. A two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award for fiction and the Sami Rohr Choice Prize, Torday’s stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and n+1, and have been honored by the Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays series. Torday is a Professor of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College.

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    Reviews for The Last Flight of Poxl West

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    • 5/5
      Wow. What a novel; very well done.
    • 2/5
      I could try to be clever and echo from the book reviews of the internal book - yes, the title of this novel by Daniel Torday is also the title of the memoir written and published within this novel by Poxl West - so there are self-referential story telling themes galore, but it all left me cold.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyed the story. Set in WWII and present-ish day. Multiple perspectives of a man's life and history.
    • 4/5
      In Daniel Torday’s novel, THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST, both main characters judge and reject loved ones over things that seem fairly unimportant to their overall happiness. Poxl leaves home abruptly after seeing his mother having sex with someone who was not his father. Once again he does the same thing to the woman he loves, Francoise, after observing her having sex with a sailor, this despite knowing that she was a prostitute. He lives to regret these rejections but neither can be redeemed. Eli rejects Poxl after he learns that his memoir was embellished by false claims of wartime heroics and thus is never able to reclaim the close childhood relationship he had with his hero and mentor. Torday’s central theme suggests that rash rejections of loved ones are not easily redeemed and can lead to lives that are less full than they could be. The overarching message seems to be that learning how to love and accept other people despite their flaws is essential. Blaming is less important than forgiveness.Poxl did not pilot a bomber over Germany in WW II as he claimed in his popular memoir about a Jewish war hero who managed to exact some measure of revenge on the Nazi’s for killing his family. It seems clear that Poxyl was not just misremembering his heroic role in the war, but most of his memoir is not about that, but instead tells the story of his two wartime romances: a Dutch prostitute (Francoise) and a British nurse (Glynnis), both of whom he treated poorly and lost. Another theme of the book involves truth and memory and their roles in storytelling. Clearly, tales of self-dramatization in storytelling can take on an aura of truth, especially if told often enough and when the people involved become famous. However, these fictions have the potential to backfire resulting in a loss of trust and credibility (e.g., the recent embarrassing revelations about the wartime exploits of Brian Williams and Bill O’Reilly). Although Poxyl does not express any regrets about what he did, it did destroy his important relationship with Eli, whose perspectives were revealed in a second narrative viewed as an adult from the present. Eli seems to regret not repairing his relationship with Poxl before he passed away.Torday’s writing in “The Last Flight of Poxl West” demonstrates considerable skill although the memoir portions seemed to lack detail. Torday needed to show the memoir was a bestseller and well received by the critics to make Poxyl’s fall even more dramatic. However, the narrative that made up the bulk of the book told a rather mundane tale of wartime romance and loss.
    • 4/5
      A fun adventure and coming of age story. Maybe a little heavy handed, but what drew me in was the unpacking of Poxl West's lies. It's the kind of story that falls just short of what I'd consider the top tier of deceptive narrators (Turn of the Screw comes to mind, as does Philip Roth's Ghost Writer).
    • 4/5
      This novel was made up of two stories - the first story was the coming of age story of Elijah, the nephew of Poxl West who hero worshipped him in the beginning of the book. It is also the story of Poxl - a Czechoslovakian who fled to Amsterdam and then to London during World War II. He left people that he loved behind every time he left one place and fled to another city. As the novel begins, he has written a book about his exploits as an RAF bomber pilot during WWII. The novel is told from both perspectives but for both the old man and the young boy it is the story of learning how to love and accept other people. I thought that the novel was very well written and that it gave a very different side of world war II than other books that I have read about this time period. I would recommend it for book clubs.
    • 4/5
      It starts out straight as a historical memoir, which wasn't grabbing me, but it slowly morphs into something that makes you think about how family is defined, and how much truth is or is not an important part of relationships.
    • 5/5
      The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday is a magnificent book debut and one the reader will not want to set down. Torday has expertly crafted a multilayered, multigenerational look at a family’s life after WWII, what it means to be a family, love, loss and the craft of storytelling. The Last Flight of Poxl West is told from two viewpoints; present day and Poxl’s memoir, allowing the reader to decide for themselves the truth behind what truly occurred. By all accounts Poxl West is a WWII hero in the eyes of his nephew, Eli Goldstein, whom Poxl has taken on as his charge to educate and refine. Eli worships Poxl for all his worldly wisdom and heroic deeds during the war that is until Poxl’s memoir, Skylark, is published, which causes Eli to question all that he thought he knew about Eli. Torday has crafted an absorbing story which seamlessly weaving together Poxl’s viewpoint and that of Eli’s following several different threads and making the reader question which version is the truth. Torday’s prose is exceptional, his characters are realistic and it is easy to forget they are works of fiction, his storylines are so atmospheric at times the reader can easily get lost in the book, being taken back to another time and to a war where courage as well as unspeakable loss occur. The Last Flight of Poxl West is an absolute must read for anyone who enjoys works of exceptional fiction and I would highly recommend this book to all book discussion groups.
    • 4/5
      A Jewish teenager, Elijah, reveres the older man who is his Uncle Poxl. This man has time for him, takes him to museums, discusses art and literature with him and tells him stories of his life during the war. This is the bare bones of the story but this is a story within a story and telling more would ruin this book for future readers.There is something so tender in the way this is written, the characters so likable. The art of storytelling, the interpretation of memory, experiences and regrets, the importance of relationships and the detriment of fame, are what I kept thinking about after finishing this book. It is difficult for me to explain why I liked this book as much as I did. It is a quiet book, a book full of regret and some deceit and yet it made me realize how fragile relationships are, how we need to take better care of and appreciate them. Poxl's war experiences are his own, but memories and relationships are universal, this book made me think and that is a good thing and enough of a thing for one book to do. Good and poignant read.ARC from NetGalley.
    • 5/5
      I wish I were as eloquent as Daniel Torday. I want to be able to say glowing things about this novel in compelling, touching, engaging prose.The most literary novel I've read in years, The Last Flight of Poxl West rises above most fiction. The Last Flight of Poxl West intersperses West's memoir, _Skylock_ with the person account of 15-year-old Eli and his relationship with his Uncle Poxl. Both narrators have clear, authentic voices, and both are people I wish I could get to know better. It was truly a delightful read, and I am looking forward to Torday's next novel.