Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

Dear Edward is dark, but I liked it. Anyone who is already iffy about travelling by airplane should not read it. Once the book gets to the point where the plane has crashed and you know Eddie survives, I thought we were just going to move forward with his life experience from there. When I got to another chapter and realized the author was going to take us back to the airplane and further flesh out the characters on it, I paused, surprised. This was going to be hard, I thought, knowing their fate before they did. And it was.

After a few chapters, I began to notice that the ones about Eddie and his life after the crash are titled as month and year and the chapters taking place on the airplane are titled with a time, so with each chapter, the time creeps closer to the crash. It’s pretty awful. However, I really related to how the author described the way people were observing each other and interacting on the plane. Last summer, on a 4.5 hour flight to Seattle, I found myself watching a young couple with a toddler and baby who were sitting maybe six rows in front of me. I began reading their moods and reactions to each other and the children. I noticed the way the mother’s hair flopped around in a loose knot on top of her head, as she shifted the baby to a different hip and the way the father entered the overhead hatch to retrieve things from their bags like a million times. I think the pair of them stood up on that flight more than they sat down. I got to know the people who came down the aisle more than once to use the loo, a man who was sitting at 2 o’clock in the next aisle over, who continued to use the call button above his head to beckon the flight staff in a way that began to annoy them. At one point, I think the seatbelt light was turned on under the guise of possible turbulence, just to halt the flow of folks in the aisle, so the staff could walk freely through the cabin. There was so much to look at and to learn, just like on Flight 2977.

The way the author separated Edward’s family on the plane added to my distress and felt like a big ole reminder of how every moment of our lives counts and could be our last. This one act that wouldn’t have been consequential had the family landed in Los Angeles and physically reunited, becomes definitive in their last moments before the crash. Jane, Edward’s mother, sat in first class, segregating herself from her husband and boys so that she could complete an important work project. She experiences guilt about doing that, while Bruce, Edward’s father, resents her choice. My feelings about Bruce were complicated by learning how his dedication to finding the solution for an elusive math problem led to his not gaining tenure as a professor at Columbia University, which played directly into the decision to move to Los Angeles, where Jane will continue the work that financially supports their family. This is the reason the family is on the airplane. The author really shakes the tree here and these details rain down uncomfortably on the reader.

Edward was likable and I think the author does a good job in helping us to feel how empty, how lonely, and how limited his world is for the first couple of years after the crash. It’s as if he’s just sleepwalking through a daily routine. There’s a point in the story where a cacophony of voices and screeching sneakers during a typical gym class are too jarring for him, perhaps too reminiscent of the noise inside the airplane before the crash and Edward cannot bear it. The author continues to show us how fragile Edward is and how his life, as his therapist said, would always be about coping with the crash. The shock of it would never leave his body and brain.

One thing that surprised me was that I had to remind myself that Lacey and Jane were sisters and it was because there was so much emphasis placed on Lacey not being able to conceive that the loss of her only sibling seemed downplayed. The relationship dawns on Edward at one point in the story, and the thought surprised him, but that was totally understandable for a 12 year old boy. Kids often don’t notice the emotional pain in adults. I really liked how Lacey and Edward watched General Hospital together and how he missed that when they stopped. Sharing a show can be so comforting under any circumstances.

I was impressed with Lacey’s approach to feeding Edward, given that he has no interest in food and he’s losing weight. It made me think of my own mother who would often begin my road back to eating after a vomiting virus with a few cheerios, a saltine cracker or a tiny square of toast. Sometimes, life needs a plan like that. If it won’t go, you have to get behind it and push until it does.

I didn’t love Shay right from the beginning. I can’t put my finger on why, but I just didn’t and in the end, it seemed too convenient that she and Edward end up together (for life?). That he’d walk into her bedroom the first day home from the hospital and she would become the mother of his child 16 years later. There would be no other women in his life from age 12 forward? That was a little too fatalistic for me. Her face, coming at Edward, for a kiss, during the final chapter and blotting out the sky, was too much love-conquers-all for this reader.

The author is an excellent writer and I really enjoyed the way she strung her sentences together. She captured feelings and moments in time with such expertise and precision. The flight attendant doesn’t just lean toward an attractive passenger, she cocks her hip at him, which says volumes about what that one small shift of her body indicated. Love stuff like that. Brilliant. She does that all over the place.

This book really made me think about who I would be and how I would be different had my entire family disappeared when I was 12 and I went to live with a childless aunt and uncle. I would no longer be the baby of the family or a sibling or a daughter. Who would I be today? So much of who I am or think I am grew out of my position in my family and how they perceived me. What if all of that influence had ended at age 12? Hard to fathom. This book is definitely food for thought.

I love flying. I love the take offs and landings especially. They excite me and I like to compare them between different flights and airlines. Reading about this crash does not discourage me at all from flying, but I think it might really frighten others who have misgivings about travelling by air and those who already fly reluctantly. Like the way Jaws ruined swimming in the ocean for me. I do it, but never without some trepidation. Lol.