The Floatplane Notebooks

by Clyde Edgerton

Book Overview

The Copeland family of Listre, North Carolina, goes back a long way. Each family member has a story to tell, and stories to be told about one another. Albert Copeland, the head of the family, writes it all down in the notebooks he started once to track the progress of the floatplanes he built, though they never did fly. Everything about the Copelands is in these books. And every one of them has his say. Funny and poignant, a family album of talk and...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0945575009
• ISBN13: 9780945575009
• Release Date: April 1988
• Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
• Length: 265 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Literature at its best!

The Floatplane Notebooks is one of those rare novels that truly mananges to captivate the reader. The novel, told from different viewpoints of a Southern family, has much to teach us about life, love, and loss.

My All-Time Favorite

This is absolutely my favorite book, I truly wish it was my family he was writing about.Edgerton is by far the best Southern author writing today.

Southern Lit at its Best

"The Floatplane Notebooks" tells the story of the Copelands, a typical Southern family that gathers every year to clean up the family cemetery. Using the narrative structure of Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" (a series of single-narrator chapters), the family experiences a devastating event that threatens to unravel the family fabric. In the end, all is well, and powerfully bittersweet.The story has what is easily one if the funniest scenes I've ever read (regarding a well and a flashlight), and the way the story is resolved at the end is truly touching (the careful reader will see that the two scenes are closely related). Another notable feature is the observations of one of the book's main characters - a wisteria vine. This may seem strange, unless the reader realizes that the vine is essentially the theme of the story, for it represents death (a ubiquitous theme in all great Southern literature). The Copeland family could easily solve the problem of cleaning the family graveyard by just killing the wisteria vine. But, if they do, they then have no real reason to gather every year. This is a family that is united by and finds strength in death. This is a truly unique and great story, though not appropriate for younger readers. Skilled readers will find much to appreciate. "The Floatplane Notebooks" is Southern Lit at its very best. READ THIS BOOK.

A future classic

I believe this book to be truly underappreciated. Most people tend to think it is just a story about some quirky southern folk. It is that but it is also much more. It is "Our Town" reborn. It should definitely be studied in our classrooms instead of all the novels that are so hard to grasp and seem irrelevent. This one has a meaning to each and everyone of us, no matter how young, old, rich or poor. It is life.

wonderful story

I would like to find this book in a hardbound edition, or at least find the person I loaned it to and demand it back. How can you explain the difference between a paperback edition and the permanence of the complete edition in hardbound?? I still think of this story after more than ten years; Edgerton has a uniquely warm way of presenting characters and life that few authors today have. One of his best and one of the best books I've ever read.