The seaplane on final approach A novel

Rebecca Rukeyser, 1985-

Book - 2022

"A 'lusty, funny, heart-breaking' (Carmen Maria Machado) debut about a sex-obsessed young woman seeking out experience on a remote Alaskan homestead. Tourists arrive all summer, by boat or seaplane, at Lew and Maureen Jenkins's Lavender Island Wilderness Lodge in the Kodiak Archipelago, expecting adventure. But the spontaneity of their authentic 'Alaskan wilderness' experience is meticulously scripted, except when real danger rears its head. Lew and Maureen's lodge is failing, as is their marriage. Eighteen-year-old Mira has been hired for the season as the lodge's baker and housekeeper. But she's also busy gleefully nursing twin obsessions: building a working theory of American sleaze and pursui...ng a young fisherman she's determined is the embodiment of all things deliciously sleazy. Her plans become more perverse and elaborate, even as life on Lavender Island starts to unravel. By midseason, it becomes clear that Lew, the jovial, predatory patriarch of the lodge, has turned his sexual attentions to another young employee. As the mood of the lodge spirals into chaos, the inhabitants of the lodge realize just how isolated Lavender Island really is. Hilarious, sensual, and charged with menace, The Seaplane on Final Approach brilliantly illuminates the mirage-thin line between the artificial and the feral, and between a young woman's potential and her actual becoming. In this daring and psychologically razor-sharp debut, Rukeyser's characters tear aside the façade of good manners to reveal all of our deepest needs and naked desires"--

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Subjects
Genres
Humorous fiction
Novels
Published
New York : Doubleday [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Rebecca Rukeyser, 1985- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
pages cm
ISBN
9780385547604
9780593314029
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

In her debut novel, Rukeyser invents Lavender Island, a place off the coast of Kodiak Island, Alaska, that can only be reached by boat or seaplane, and where cars don't exist. Into this pristinely rugged, claustrophobic setting she drops Mira, a teenager exiled for the summer to work as a baker at the island's Wilderness Lodge. But what Mira's parents consider a sort of punishment for her own wildness she sees as freedom, a catalyst for even greater escape, preferably with the sleazy-sexy fisherman step-cousin she met a year ago and can't stop thinking about. Through the scrim of Mira's detachment, readers meet lodge owners Stu and Maureen, whose facade as long-married, happy homesteaders crumbles as the novel progresses and Stu's playful affection for Mira's coworker, a teenager herself, reveals itself as something else. Rukeyser's writing is spare and deliberate as, from a murky present, adult Mira looks back on this now-crystallized teenage summer with a kind of awe. Lodge guests came and went, weather threatened and broke, and things that once seemed impossible became not so--and vice versa.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In Rukeyser's intoxicating debut, high school dropout Mira, 18, finds herself witness to a whirlwind of drama on a remote Alaskan island. Mira, obsessed with the concept of sleaziness, appreciates Alaska for "contain more sleaze than the entire lower forty-eight" after a trip the previous summer, during which she fell into unrequited lust over her aunt's seedy stepson, 24-year-old Ed. She returns and takes a job as a housekeeper and baker at Lavender Island Wilderness Lodge, with the goal of finding Ed and building a life with him. She's one of six employees on the island, including Maureen and Stu, the middle-aged married couple who own the business; 18-year-olds Polly and Erin; and a recovering alcoholic chef. When not masturbating to the fantasy of phoning Ed, she notices Stu taking an interest in Erin. Tensions in the group escalate, creating a sense of desperation that's heightened by the "deep, solemn fear" cast by the landscape. Mira, with her propensity for daydreaming and detachment, imagines intricate inner lives for her colleagues, a charming and fascinating element that takes this beyond the standard workplace drama. Rukeyser's signature bleak humor will leave readers excited to see what comes next. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (June)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Rukeyser's debut is a haunting coming-of-age narrative with a distinctive protagonist. Over the course of a pivotal summer in Alaska, teenage narrator Mira confronts adulthood, lust, and compulsion. Taking on a hospitality role at a seaside resort, she is thrown into a rugged new world of tourists, staff, and fishermen as she wrestles with daydreams, baked goods, trauma, and an unknown future. As this novel is told in the first person, listeners will spend much time inside Mira's head. She has a unique way of seeing the world and a fixation on taxonomy and sleaze, which is reflected in Rukeyser's poetic language. Jeremy Carlisle Parker's performance emphasizes Mira's teenage detachment from the world through flattened, monotone narration, but other characters are performed with more animation, which sometimes seems to reflect Mira's dislike of them. This can make for a jarring listening experience at times. VERDICT This is a powerful look at the bewildering world of young adulthood.--Halie Theoharides

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Rukeyser's debut is a strange, dreamlike coming-of-age story set in coastal Alaska. Mira, the 18-year-old narrator, is, oddly, obsessed with the concept of "sleaze": defining it and identifying it. She spends a summer working as a baker at Lavender Island Wilderness Lodge, a homestead that functions as a sort of bed-and-breakfast for international tourists. She passes time fantasizing about her aunt's stepson, Ed, and observing the strange social dynamics that result from the eclectic coterie of personalities working at the homestead, which include a middle-aged married couple, two other teen girls, and a brooding addict. While she is obsessed with sleaze and with her imagined future with Ed, Mira is largely detached from her actual surroundings, participating mostly as an observer--until the drama among her colleagues becomes impossible to ignore. The detached perspective through which we experience this unfolding narrative adds to its rarified, dreamy quality. With a delicate touch, the story invites rumination on themes of obsession and fixation, the dichotomous beauty and eeriness of an isolated landscape, and the struggle of locating oneself within a new environment. It is a testament to the power and subtlety of Rukeyser's writing that the novel's violent climax, though preceded largely by a sense of quietude throughout, does not feel surprising or out of place; it is simply the result of the building social tensions and sense of desperation among the group and of a particular landscape whose compelling beauty--the author shows us--conceals dangerous potential. The obviously talented Rukeyser has crafted a vividly beautiful and odd world; the specificity of Lavender Island propels the story here as much as the characters and the plot, and that is thanks to her descriptive and imagistic prose. This darkly compelling novel promises more interesting writing to come from Rukeyser. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Chapter 1 The name Lavender Island Wilderness Lodge was honest, for the most part. The nearest neighbors were eight nautical miles away, the nearest Native village twenty nautical miles, the nearest town with a streetlight fifty. It was a lodge. It was on an island--­one without roads, electricity, or any power other than that supplied by the generator. The staff wasn't allowed to use the satellite phone, except in the case of emergencies. But there was no lavender in Alaska; what grew best on the slopes of Lavender Island was fireweed. I appreciated this lie. Lavender was a cultivated flower, in the way that gloves and small spoons were cultivated. Lavender Island sounded like a place that understood, even as it hunched in the middle of nowhere, that nature was a bear at the end of the garden. The owner, Maureen Jenkins, had a practiced laugh and a practiced jauntiness: she insisted on being called "Maureen." Her hands, as she untied the mooring lines, coiled the rope, and steered the boat from the harbor, were clever. I believed that under her watchful eye I would be molded into a truly excellent baker. Because that was going to be my job, Maureen explained. I was to be something of a domestic jack-­of-­all-­trades, but she'd really hired me because of my enthusiasm when it came to baking. She told me that I would have a few definite tasks: cookies were essential for packed lunches, because people crave sugar at high latitudes. Pie was essential for dessert, because people needed to taste those fresh Alaskan berries. And bread! We needed fresh bread with fresh salmon. She encouraged me to do fun things in my off-­hours, like walk down the beach and hunt octopuses by luring them from their holes with syringes full of bleach. But life on a homestead was, Maureen reminded me, her eyes never leaving the flat water of the sea lane, more work than play. The guests needed continual attention. * It took the better part of four hours to navigate out from the town of Kodiak to Lavender Island. The journey was longer when the weather was inclement. But there was really no such thing as bad weather in Alaska, said Maureen, only bad clothing. However, it was true that days like today, with the water reflecting a high, starched sky, were the very best. Maureen turned from the wheel, pointing out a flotilla of sea otters, a whale breaching, a chartreuse green slope scattered with blooming lupine. "It's a bluebird day, Mira," she said. "Perfect welcome weather for you." Maureen, knee steadying the wheel, filled a thermos lid with coffee and handed it to me. When the Wilderness Lodge guests came in for breakfast, she explained, my job was to keep the coffeepot full, and to serve up the platters of pancakes and the bowls of eggs. In the evening, I'd fill the wineglasses and make sure dessert was plated even before the dinner was over. I would wear black-­and-­white-­striped chef's pants. I would be quiet and bustling. When I introduced the meals, Maureen said, I should tell the guests, "Tonight Chef has prepared for you . . . ," and then, whenever possible, throw in the word "Alaskan." It was impossible to overuse the adjective. The fish were Alaskan. The nettles in the salad grew native on Kodiak, Alaska's own Emerald Isle. We grew rhubarb in our Alaskan garden. * There were two girls jumping and waving on the beach of Lavender Island Wilderness Lodge. Maureen smiled as she anchored and tied up to a smaller aluminum skiff. The girls were the size of wedding cake toppers at this distance, with the same pleasant blurred faces. "Polly and Erin," said Maureen. "I think you'll all hit it off--­you all just graduated high school, and you all have the same sparkle." I hadn't graduated. I had flunked out, but I didn't correct Maureen. Polly and Erin's voices rose up, reflecting cleanly across the water. "Welcome to Lavender Island," they sang, to the tune of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." "Welcome to Lavender Island, welcome to Lavender Island," and there they dissolved. They had practiced the first part of their welcome, but not the second. They couldn't say "And so say all of us," because there were only two of them. It was true that somewhere, in the gray clapboard buildings nestled in the alders, there were two more. I helped Maureen unpack into the aluminum skiff and watched as she motored to shore. It was only a few hundred yards, but it was enough to hear the roar of the skiff recede and echo back to me from the mountain. As the motor on the skiff cut out, there was the sound of laughter. The word "Hi!" bobbled out to me. In the brambles high above the Wilderness Lodge, I saw the haunches and triangular head of a bear. It was a surprisingly jolly sight: piggy snout, round ears, the movement of a seal in an aquarium. The only unsettling thing about the bear was its fur, which was the pale color of dog shit. Then Polly and Maureen were back in the skiff, coming toward me. Polly smiled, with her two dimples. "Mira! You're here!" she said, and I said, "I'm here!" When I looked back at the hillside, the bear was gone. "I saw a bear," I told Maureen. "The Kodiak Archipelago is famous for its bears," she said. "It's the real-­deal wilderness out here, the kind of place that really molds you." On the beach, Erin took me right into a tight hug. She was covered in auburn freckles and wore an oversized Les Misérables t-shirt. Polly was terribly pretty. Her cheeks seemed to be so full of cheek that they shone. She was small, with small feet. Erin's large feet were pointed outward, and she had a scarecrow grace. I went to grab my duffel, but Erin wouldn't hear of it. I had just arrived, she could take it. She hoisted it and placed a box on top of it. There was glee in her movements; she was happy to exert. Maureen smiled, and Polly and I took up the lead. "She's like that," said Polly. "She's super-­strong. And you packed light!" "Did you know her before?" I asked. "Oh yes," said Polly. "We've known each other since sixth grade." Excerpted from The Seaplane on Final Approach: A Novel by Rebecca Rukeyser All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.