Flights of Angels
by Ellen Gilchrist
List Price: $13.95
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0316002305
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
The opening story in Flights of Angels sets the theme for this new collection:
the intricate and inexorable relationships between power, love, and loss. A Mississippi
patriarch lies dying as his large family gathers around him. Once rich and powerful, he is
now reduced to dependency on the very sons who ruined his financial empire and on
government programs he has always despised. His granddaughter, the story's narrator, her
marriage falling apart, starts an affair with the attending black hospice worker,
ironically fulfilling the old man's prejudices.
In the ensuing stories, parents and children, siblings, and lovers tread the
treacherous paths of love. The reader is treated to tales from familiar Gilchrist
characters-Rhoda, and Traceleen and Crystal--and is introduced to a gallery of sparklingly
eccentric new ones. Caught in the snares the heart spins, they all learn the cost and pain
of love, while reveling in its joy and hilarity.
The final story asserts the universal need to extend one's love beyond family and
friends and to make one's mark upon the world--to improve it. A group of young men and
women sets out to expose the dangers of a nearby abandoned nuclear reactor. Their
adventures in righteous enthusiasm teach them more about themselves than about fission.
As always, Gilchrist's insights are imbued equally with humor and sorrow. In her world,
where we encounter divorce, avarice, and death, we also find hope and laughter and the
redemption of the human heart.
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1. Compared to her earlier works, how has Gilchrist's approach to race developed and changed? Does this development parallel what has changed in American society over the past two decades?
2. While Gilchrist has stated over and over in various interviews that she is only a story teller, various moral themes are persistent in her work. Examining this collection of stories, what does she seem to indicate is the cost of love? Who owes what to whom, emotionally? And how much? Can emotional debts ever be paid?
3. Examine how Gilchrist uses scienc--particularly physics and astrophysics--in her stories. Is her use of science in any way comparable to how 19th century writers used religion?
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" Ellen Gilchrist should be declared a national cultural treasure. "
—Washington Post
"Ms. Gilchrist possesses a distinctive voice, and.... blends a sense of poignancy with an often outrageous Gothic humor. "
—New York Times Book Review
"Few pleasures can match the satisfaction of a collection of short stories by Ellen Gilchrist. "
—Chicago Tribune
"Gilchrist is more the literary soul-mate of Anne Sexton than Eudora Welty, and her prose style is quick-witted and urbane and as gossipy as Vanity Fair. Quite simply there is no Southern writer quite like her. "
—Raleigh News & Observer
"Gilchrist is funny, forgiving, and lyric. "
—Miami Herald
"Every story is a gem. "
—Joan Mellen, Baltimore Sun
"A satisfying collection....Gilchrist brings to each story an engaging sense of compassion and a saving sense of humor. "
—Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"It's the women who shine here, as they cope with dying patriarchs, aging playboys, children and drugs, racial violence, afternoon affairs, and holiday flings....Gilchrist's characters are blessed with very human faults and an irrepressible exuberance for life. "
—Daneet Steffens, Entertainment Weekly
"With these 19 stories Gilchrist ventures further into the morally ambiguous landscape of contemporary America than she has perhaps ever ventured before....Readers will find the penetrating intellect, deep compassion, and dark sense of humor that mark Gilchrist's best work and place it among the best writing coming out of the South-or anywhere else, for that matter-today. "
—Ron Carter, Richmond Times—Dispatch
