the flight attendant by chris bohjalian summary

Bohjalian, one of our finest storytellers, weaves his spellbinding magic by interleaving glimpses of Katie, David, and the others’ pre-kidnapping lives so that we gain rich snapshots of each character - their histories, secrets, and vulnerabilities - even as we learn more about their fates.Įach character has extraordinarily engaging elements - we learn about the local guides’ lives as well - but Carmen Tedesco may just steal your heart: Not only is she the outward definition of “what you see is what you get,” but she’s fully aware of the work she has to do to present herself in that fashion.

Faced with a dire situation, the various individuals in the Hollywood contingent must handle things as best they can in a bid to survive. Not even Katie & Co.’s luxury safari camp - based in an idyllic slice of nature where wildebeest, zebras, giraffe, elephants, impalas, rhinos, and real lions cavort - is immune: Things take a sinister turn with a violent kidnapping.

For the novel’s true setting is not heady, glamorous Hollywood, but 1960s Tanzania, which, along with much of the rest of the continent, is in the throes of revolution, attempting to unshackle itself from European colonialism: “It was impossible to know what turns the upheaval would take: even the Americans on this safari had come from a nation born via a bloody caesarean, a revolution against one of the very same European nations that had demanded such fealty from East Africa.” The two of them left afterward for Paris and then the wilds of Africa on a ‘safari.’ Rumor has it that the actress is bringing along an entourage into the jungle…”Ĭalling themselves “Lions of Hollywood,” this privileged, somewhat arrogant group is about to get a bit of a wakeup call. Most chapters begin with excerpts from The Hollywood Reporter and other fan-and-film publications that traffic in breathless, gossipy items such as this scene-setter: “Hollywood royalty gathered Saturday night at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where Katie Barstow wed Rodeo Drive gallerist David Hall. The magic of movies, both dark and light, is at play here: Several of the book’s characters have found success in Hollywood, while others are struggling with the weighty baggage of parents-as-industry-icons or carrying childhood terrors in their emotional makeup. No, not the one attributed to Audrey Hepburn - “Everything I learned, I learned from the movies” - but Orson Welles’s “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” Indeed, Bohjalian’s story intermittently raises the question: Where could you halt this narrative to conjure up a happy ending? And for whom? “ The Lioness,” Chris Bohjalian’s latest novel, kicks off with a red-alert epigraph.

The flight attendant by chris bohjalian summary