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“The Last Flight of Poxl West interweaves a powerful war story with a profound meditation on the need such stories fill in us and the truths they can sometimes obscure…Really good stuff.”
— Phil Klay, National Book Award–winning author
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“[A] viscerally-gripping, eye-wateringly moving first-person account…It’s also a profound and timely meditation on the desire for justice, retribution, and redemption…Its ending left me speechless.”
— Karen Russell, New York Times bestselling author
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“A touching, old-fashioned drama about war and love…Torday [has the] ability to shift gears between sweeping historical vistas and more intimate family dramas and between old-school theatrics and more contemporary meditations on the nature of storytelling.”
— New York Times
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“[An] expertly crafted first novel…There doesn’t seem to be a germane subject for which the author hasn’t done his homework, from the leather trade to the cockpit controls of military aircraft to the kabbalah…And all of this is rendered in Torday’s unobtrusively lyrical prose, superb Rothian sentences that glide over the page as smoothly as a Spitfire across a cloudless sky.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“A rollicking joy ride that leaves you breathlessly excited and a little sad, all at once.”
— Amazon.com
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“A richly layered, beautifully told, and somehow lovable story about war, revenge, and loss.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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“A masterful story of a WWII hero, performed with precision by narrator Aaron Abano…Abano’s performance is as exceptional as the book. His adept use of accents, coupled with an uncanny delivery, allows listeners to submerge themselves in the complex character Torday has created. The result is an extraordinary story of courage counterbalanced by a gripping story of suspense. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
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“Aaron Abano reads, giving Poxl a softly Slavic voice and Eli a tender,
adolescent awe and anguish.”
— BookPage (audio review)
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“Love, lust, war, revenge, betrayal: I was inclined to like this book before I opened it. Daniel Torday’s gorgeous prose and moral candor made me love it. A spectacular debut.”
— Daniel Smith, author of Monkey Mind
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“While Torday is more likely to be compared to Philip Roth or Michael Chabon than Gillian Flynn, his debut novel has two big things in common with Gone Girl--it's a story told in two voices, and it's almost impossible to discuss without revealing spoilers. A richly layered, beautifully told and somehow lovable story about war, revenge and loss.
— Kirkus (starred review)
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A wonderful accomplishment of storytelling verve: tender, lyrical, surprising, full of beautifully rendered details. Torday is a prodigiously talented writer, with a huge heart.
— George Saunders, author of Tenth of December
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The Last Flight of Poxl West is a beautifully told and moving story of love, loss, and growing up. Daniel Torday is a stunning writer, and his first novel is full of elegant, thought provoking surprises.
— Edan Lepucki, author of California
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This ambitious, complex novel beautifully interprets and illuminates the past with contemporary eyes and a gentle heart.
— Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica, a National Book Award Finalist
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The Last Flight of Poxl West is a love story, a war story, a family saga, an intimate view of vast Twentieth Century events, a treatise on the telling of stories, and a damned good read as well. Torday's language is precise and it is grand; and he uses it to describe scenes you will swear he was witness to himself. The details, the insights, the knowledge, the writing, and the unmistakable empathy-- these elements add up to a stellar, memorable book.
— Robin Black, author of Life Drawing
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Love, lust, war, revenge, betrayal: I was inclined to like this book before I opened it. Daniel Torday's gorgeous prose and moral candor made me love it. A spectacular debut. Torday is quickly making a name for himself as one of our finest young novelists.
— Daniel Smith, author of the New York Times bestseller Monkey Mind
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OMFG! What a book! Eli Goldstein has the retrospective candor of Roth's Zuckerman and the sensitivity of a Harold Brodkey narrator, and Poxl West is an unforgettable creation. Plus, things happen in this book, big things like the world wars. A delight!
— Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure
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A brilliant--and perhaps even more importantly, hilarious--book about what we make of our heroes, and what our heroes make of us. It's all here: the crime of storytelling, the joy of storytelling, the story hidden not so well in history, and the pleasures and problems of one word placed so well after another.
— Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
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Daniel Torday's The Last Flight of Poxl West interweaves a powerful war story with a profound meditation on the need such stories fill in us, and the truths they can sometimes obscure. Eli Goldstein's relationship with Poxl West is strange and moving, and the book's final pages present a deep and revealing pathos. Really good stuff.
— Phil Klay, author of Redeployment, National Book Award winner