CBR 15 Bingo – Nostalgia: This book is set in the glamorous heyday of air travel (and as I am currently in hour three of a ten hour layover in Munich, I can assure you I am feeling very nostalgic.)
Over the course of seven hours, Lincoln Airport must go through a snowstorm, a protest, and the return of an airplane that’s had a hole blasted in its side.
I love stories about airports and airplanes. They’re exciting to me because they are emblematic of adventure – even if they are rather cramped!
In this book, Hailey explores the inner workings and concerns of the Lincoln airport. I really enjoyed this peek into the lives of people like the airport manager, air traffic controllers, and pilots. Despite having a good sense of how the story would go – the plot’s fairly predictable – the story was written in a tense enough manner that I kept being surprised by what was happening.
However, I didn’t love the constantly hand-waved infidelity of the cast, as well as the pro-life rhetoric that goes as far as comparing abortion to the “Auschwitz ovens.” I also just wasn’t terribly invested in the characters and their lives, especially their love lives. I think Hailey’s previous work Hotel did better in that regard.
08/13/2023
My rating still holds, though on a second read-through I better appreciated the agency that Hailey endowed the female characters with. I also put my finger on what bothered me so much about the hand-waving of the infidelity – the suggestion that it was alright because the characters were such attractive and intelligent people. Pretty privilege does not excuse adultery!