I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I found this book incredibly interesting the author really kept me hooked until the end. very well written I highly recommend.

loved the use of historical setting and the use of World War I , it had a great storyline and great character development.

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

Man of the World by Layne Maheu tells a story of the early days of aviation when airplanes were experimental, exciting, and dangerous. In these heady optimistic times, many intrepid investors and adventurers were determined to make it possible for people to fly.

The hero of the novel is Hubert Latham, a restless adventurer who finds a focus for his ambition in piloting a French-designed plane, financed in part by the father of the woman with whom he is hopelessly in love. The woman, Antoinette, loves Latham in return, but she’s married with a toddler son. It’s a little unclear why she married someone else, but it may have been that their families were against the match, though that’s also unexplained since the families had been friendly, vacationed together, and seemed to have been of the same social class.

A second main character is Auguste, a young man who leaves his father’s farm and the deaf girl he loves in order to follow Latham and his crew. They have taken him on as a mechanic, but he seems to be more of a mascot. They’ve named him “Potato,” half mockingly and half affectionately. He narrates some of the activity surrounding the attempts to take to the air–particularly the attempts to be the first to cross the Channel from Calais to Dover.

Auguste is aware that Latham is infatuated with Antoinette (after whom the successive planes made by their investment group are named) but he isn’t really privy to their meetings or secret exchanges. His observations of things are always somewhat superficial and bewildered.

The scenes describing the fledgling flights are interesting and Latham’s struggles are heroic. But much of the book is bogged down in long passages where nothing really happens. One of the observers, César, a friend of Latham’s, is given to lengthy philosophical musing. The scenes between Latham and Antoinette are murky and strained. Potato’s guilelessness works to introduce him to this group, but as the story progresses, his presence distracts from the action. Overall, the story has great potential but is so diffused that the pace slowed to a crawl and the plot fizzled to its end.

This book unfortunately wasn’t for me. I can see where this story was going, but I found it very boring. I did enjoy the characters and the whole premise behind this story, I just wish it gave a bit more. I also found that the story dragged too long and I wanted more from it. It’s still a decent read.

Layne Maheu's Man of the World jumped to the top of my reading list on the whim of my eight-year-old son. The selection process took quite a bit longer than it had when I'd asked my husband and daughter to select a book for me from my TBR, so when my son presented his choice, I made a point of asking what took so long. He duly informed me he wanted me to read a boy's story as his sister and stepdad had already chosen books about girls.

A dedicated genre reader for more than a decade, I am well aware that most historical fiction is written by and about women. I immediately recognized both the challenge and the business logic behind it, but I was also struck by my son's words and could not help appreciating his interest in seeing both genders equally represented on my reading list. That said, I admit I did not give thought to perspective when adding Maheu's work to my digital stacks. I was simply fascinated by the prospects of a novel inspired by a lesser-known historical figure and the challenges he faced as an early aviator.

I rarely find novels about people or events I've never heard of, but Man of the World marks my first encounter with Hubert Latham, Louis Blériot, Léon Levavasseur, Antoinette Gastambide, and the latter's namesake monoplane, fictional or otherwise. Though relayed through a fictional apprentice's eyes and experience, I felt the novel captured both the spirit of the age and the innovative enthusiasm that inspired a generation of engineers and adventurers to take to the skies at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Maheu's work delivers on the originality of its historical subject matter and is noteworthy for its glamourous depiction of early aeronautical experimentation, but I feel this novel far more literary than the description suggests. I was thoroughly unprepared for the intensely introspective nature of Maheu's writing and, despite my enthusiasm for the material, feel the languidly artistic nature of this piece may prove a poor fit for the casual commercial reader.

This is a really interesting story about the early days of aviation in Europe. I love reading stories like this and can't wait to read more by this author!!

This is pretty well written. It's a little slow at times, but I enjoyed the plot and the setting, as well as many of the characters. I think a lot of historical fiction fans will dig this.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

This one is so fresh off the presses, I’m not only the first to rate and review the ARC, but also the one creating a proper listing for it on GR. So, welcome to the book. Being its first reviewer makes me want to concentrate on all the good things about it, of which there was a considerable amount, to be fair. And being the sort of reviewer I am and person I am, the less flattering rest of it will be mentions also.
So the good…
1. The plot. Real story, a terrific real life story about the early days of aviation in Europe. Sure, they did the balloons first and oh so well, but it was the American Wright brothers who set the imaginations on fire with their planes and Europe in general and France specifically were desperate to get there too. Planes were built, crashed and started over. And so in 1908 one daring pilot named Latham and his team try their absolute best to be the first to make the flight over La Manche (that is the English Channel for the English speakers) and back. A bold and exciting adventure awaits.
2. The setting. Europe at the dawn of a new century, before the devastation of world wars, a quiet time brimming with possibilities and bright futures. A time to take to the skies. The Belle Epoque is rendered excellently as are all the locations in the novel.
3. The characters. The novel is actually told through a perspective of a young man who finds himself apprenticed to the aeronauts after a chance meeting brings them together. And as such it has some excellent gee whiz moments when the kid, affectionately nicknamed Potato, gets taken up to the skies for the first time, gets to travel to the city, experience all that life has to offer, etc. Latham and Bieriot and Levavasseur are all real people, of course. So is Antoinette and her aeronautic namesake. Definietely a fascinating group of characters to learn about.
4. The aviation aspect, of course. There’s so much information about it, from details of the actual plane to the vividly reimagined flights they took. It’s all gravitydefyingly delicious.
And now the rest of it…
Since we already established it’s an interesting novel, it stands to mention it’s also a very well written one. The main detractor with this novel is really the pacing. The book took the author 15 years to complete and took what seemed like about as long to read. No, not really, just kidding, sorry. But it was a very, very, very slow read. Oddly so for such a reasonable page count. It seems that the narrative just got buried or at least heavily weighted down under all the generously rendered descriptions and occasional overlong monologues (yeah, Cesar, you) and the overall effect was peculiarly soporific at times. Peculiarly because it’s such an exciting subject. Also, the narrative got away from the narrator for increasingly longer stretches, so much so it almost rendered him unnecessary at times. I mean, why not just do a proper third person narrative instead. Maybe that’s what 15 years does for 278 pages. It beats them into a form of odd perfection, the sort of perfect that can sometimes be the proverbial foe of good. But really, that’s the only thing, it’s a lovely, interesting novel that’s…overly languid.
Fans of historical fiction should enjoy this one. And who knows. Maybe the pacing was an individual preference sort of thing. Early planes were slow too. Thanks Netgalley.