Chang-Rae Lee — Aloft

Bloomsbury 2004 Paperback, 343pp. Being a solo flyer made sense to Jerry battle right from the start. For his 56th birthday, his long time (and recently ex-) girlfriend Rita Reyes had given him a gift certificate for flying lessons. Once Jerry was up there he thought, 'here was the little space I was looking for, my little box seat in the world and completely outside of it too. ' He immediately bought his beloved little Skyhawk 'ship', and literally painted an 'X' on the roof of his house so he could fly over the setting of his life - and consider it from above. From a half-mile above the Earth, everything looked perfect to Jerry. Everyone close to Jerry knew that he had been disappearing for years. (ISBN: 9780747566939). Good.