The Aviator

by Ernest K. Gann

Book Overview

Sturdy binding. Clean pages. Bright covers. Original jacket present, shows some edgewear. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 087795299X
• ISBN13: 9780877952992
• Release Date: March 1981
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 189 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A tender, touching tale

I have to disagree with the other two reviewers, enough to prompt me to write my very first review here. The Aviator is a lovely tale set during those early daring days of mail flights in small biplanes. The trips were dangerous, information on weather enroute was minimal, frequently obtained by calling farmers that lived along the route for local weather conditions. No radios, no cockpit instruments for in cloud flights, no cockpit heating and nav instruments but a paper chart and a clock. And no reliable engines (in a modern sense). Business as usual, back then. The main character is a mail pilot cut off from the world after a bad accident that left him with more guilt than he could bear. And a bad scar in his face to remind him. He didn't have to look at the mirror to be reminded, he just had to see the look on everyone's face when they stared at him. After his soon to be wife left him, he hid from any kind of human contact by spending the most time in the sky as possible, becoming the most eficient and reliable pilot Moravia, the line's manager had. In comes the little girl, who wanted to see the world like birds do, so she could describe it to her blind grandfather. A little girl with a huge heart and strong personality, that didn't look away in disgust at the first sight of the aviator's scar. This is a story of a man who, afer being hidden from the world and from any kind of warm human relationships for a long time, finds himself forced to deal with his repressed ability to love and protect, when he crashlands in an remote valey during a winter storm and injures his passenger. The way that, despite her injuries, the enduring little girl manages to melt the thick ice in his heart and "bring him back into the light" and the dialogs between the two while the aviator reads her mail letters to keep her distracted from the pain and hunger are memorable to me. Overall this is a tender and heart lifting tale. Together with the amazing "Fate is the Hunter" (an autobiographic tale), I've kept this as one of my favourite aviation stories.