Landing (Emma Donoghue)

[shewhostaples]

Published in 2007 (the year in which I last travelled by plane, incidentally), this is a complicated romance between an Irish-Asian flight attendant and a Canadian museum archivist. And, while I've been doing a lot of escapist travel reading throughout the pandemic, I wouldn't say that this was a book to induce wanderlust: it's too clear-sighted about the trials of travel, and of being in love with someone who's thousands of miles away. Though there's a real affection for the real Ireland and for the fictional 'Ireland, Ontario' I didn't find myself planning an expedition, the way I have with some other places.

I could add all sorts of tropey genre tags - long distance relationship, age gap romance, opposites attract - but they wouldn't come close to conveying the depth of the novel. I would want to say that all of them add up to make for two interesting, complex characters. (And the supporting cast on both sides of the Atlantic deserves a mention, too: from the stoner ex-husband to the obnoxiously precocious god-daughter.) I wasn't convinced that their relationship was going to last beyond the end of the book, but watching it get as far as it did was fascinating.