Filmscripts: "Great Moments in Aviation" and "Oranges are Not the Only Fruit" - Softcover

Winterson, Jeanette

4.09

22 ratings by Goodreads

9780099285410: Filmscripts: "Great Moments in Aviation" and "Oranges are Not the Only Fruit"

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009928541X ISBN 13: 9780099285410

Publisher: Vintage, 1994

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Great Moments in Aviation is set in the 1950s and tells the story of five very different people whose lives collide for seven days. Bound for England, by boat from the Caribbean, each has a secret which gradually comes to affect all the others. A mystery story, a love story, an investigation into the nature of truth, Great Moments in Aviation is a journey both real and imaginary. At its centre is Gabriel Angel, a young black woman with a passion for aeroplanes - 'Grand-daddy Thomas told me that where other girls have breasts I have propellers.'

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Review:

Gabriel Angel is on board a ship and heading for England. This young black woman has a small amount of luggage, but a large amount of courage: "You've got to risk the best you've got if you want a little bit of life." Gabriel has left her home in the Caribbean for the opportunity to spread her wings, but for the moment she is enclosed on a ship out in the middle of the ocean. In this film script Winterson characters are limited by location, but their emotional lives are given free reign.

Winterson concentrates on five passengers, Gabriel, who's grand-father was a "magician, and a entertainer, a man of the air"; Duncan Stewart, a handsome, mysterious photographer; Rex Goodyear, an art dealer in his 50s, and two missionary women, Doctor Bead and Miss Quim. Each person has a secret, a hidden past or motivation, which gradually begins to effect all of the others as the seven-day voyage continues. The ship becomes a floating vessel of stories, a love story, a mystery story, a drama of revenge and redemption.

Familiar Winterson themes are explored here: the transformation of the ordinary work-a-day world into something vibrant and magical; the quest for beauty and truth, the workings of the heart. But what is sometimes missing is the sheer joy of language. Winterson's novels are as much about the glory of words, as the interest of a story, here the prose is more pared down, stripped away. The mind's eye has to work as a camera, filling in light and texture and image and this makes for a challenging read. Eithne Farry

About the Author:

Anne Tyler is one of America's most acclaimed novelists, and in 1994 was nominated 'greatest living novelist writing in English' by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby. Her fiction includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Breathing Lessons and The Accidental Tourist, which was made into a major film. Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis in 1941, but has lived for many years with her family in Baltimore, where her novels are set.

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