Landing
A Novel
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
An "engaging . . . entertaining journey," Landing explores the pleasures and sorrows of long-distance love in the digital age (The New York Times Book Review).
Síle is a stylish citizen of the new Dublin, a veteran flight attendant who's traveled the world. Jude is a twenty-five-year-old archivist, stubbornly attached to Ireland, Ontario, the tiny town in which she was born and raised. When Jude meets Síle on her first transatlantic plane trip, the spark between them is instant.
After a coffee shared at Heathrow Airport, both women return to their lives—but neither can forget their encounter. Over the next year, Jude and Síle connect through emails, phone calls, letters, and the occasional visit. But no matter how passionate, every long-distance relationship comes to a crossroads, because you can't have a happily ever after when the one you love is a world apart . . .
"[Donoghue] explores with a light, sure touch the subject of desire across distances of various kinds: generational, cultural, even spiritual." —The New York Times Book Review
"[A] charming tale." —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her affecting fifth novel, Donoghue (Slammerkin) explores the idea that true love can conquer all. Jude Turner is a 25-year-old androgynous Luddite who's rooted to her small Canadian town of Ireland. She's also uneasy about flying, but forces herself to board a plane when she hears that her mother, visiting family in the U.K., may be ill. On the plane she meets the older, feminine, worldly S le O'Shaughnessy, a flight attendant who lives in the other Ireland. After exchanging contact info, the duo part and find themselves thinking of one another and writing to each other as they lead their respective lives: Jude as the curator of a tiny museum who has the occasional dalliance with her former love, Rizla; S le in bustling Dublin, entrenched in a complacent relationship with her longtime partner, Kathleen. Jude and S le fall in love over the course of their correspondence and try to make their relationship work despite the distance between them, nay-saying friends, jealous exes and their own nagging doubts. That Jude and S le are so vividly opposite is the slightest bit precious, but Donoghue mitigates the boilerplate aspects of this love story with an abiding compassion for her characters. There's a lot to like here, but nothing to really love.
