Luminous Airplanes by Paul La Farge

Having read a year end review of books from the year 2011 had not received as much attention as they should have I came across this book. La Farge writes as an unnamed narrator. Returning from a Burning Man type concert in California to his apartment in San Fransisco he receives a call that his Grandfather has died in Thebes, New York. In being away he has missed the funeral and is being asked to come home and clean out his grandfather's home.

Told in a back and forth style in which we learn about the life of the narrator this book is very powerful. When arriving in Thebes he is surprised to see that his childhood friends Kerem and Yesim, Turkish Americans who lived next door to his Grandfather's house are again living in the home next door.

We hear about his childhood in New York with his twin sister mothers, his relationships in Thebes with his Turkish neighbors, his summers at his grandfathers, his life in San Fransisco and importantly his dead father Paul Ente who he never met.

Over the course of a year around the turn of the milenium we see him explore his past and figure out his future. This is a book that is hard to pigeonhole but it is a book that was much better than most current fiction. It is time and place fiction but it is something that were modern authors taken as seriously as those from the first half of the last century that might one day be revered. An excellent book.