Another recurring element of Flights investigates the human body itself as a landscape of infinite inward exploration. “Practical travel psychology investigates the metaphorical meaning of places,” we’re told. There are deadpan sections of Flights outlining in utterly plausible detail an academic pursuit referred to as travel psychology, whose practitioners meet in airports for their conferences and workshops. Later, the mystery returns with the husband searching photographic evidence for signs and clues. The story line itself disappears for pages at a time while other narrative threads emerge. A husband grows frantic when his wife and son fail to return from a morning walk during a family vacation on the Croatian island of Vis. One strand tells a mystery that unfolds like an Antonioni film. Disparate narrative pieces cohere around the theme, or constellation, of travel and dislocation. “Constellation, not sequencing, carries truth,” she writes. Olga Tokarczuk builds her novel thematically. The risk reward ratio can be perilous for both reader and writer when embarking on something nebulously described as a “fragmentary novel.” Flights is a win-win.
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