The Last Flight of Poxl West

A Novel

by Daniel Torday

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A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE

"An utterly accomplished novel."-The New York Times Book Review

Poxl West fled the Nazis' onslaught in Czechoslovakia. He escaped their clutches again in Holland. He pulled Londoners from the Blitz's rubble. He wooed intoxicating, unconventional beauties. He rained fire on Germany from his RAF bomber.

Poxl West is the epitome of manhood and something of an idol to his teenage nephew, Eli Goldstein, who reveres him as a brave, singular, Jewish war hero. Poxl fills Eli's head with electric accounts of his derring-do, adventures and romances, as he collects the best episodes from his storied life into a memoir.
He publishes that memoir, Skylock, to great acclaim, and its success takes him on the road, and out of Eli's life. With his uncle gone, Eli throws himself into reading his opus and becomes fixated on all things Poxl.
But as he delves deeper into Poxl's history, Eli begins to see that the life of the fearless superman he's adored has been much darker than he let on, and filled with unimaginable loss from which he may have not recovered. As the truth about Poxl emerges, it forces Eli to face irreconcilable facts about the war he's romanticized and the vision of the man he's held so dear.

Daniel Torday's debut novel, The Last Flight of Poxl West, beautifully weaves together the two unforgettable voices of Eli Goldstein and Poxl West, exploring what it really means to be a hero, and to be a family, in the long shadow of war.

Advance Praise

"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)

"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

"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

"According to Tim O'Brien, ‘A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.’ Daniel Torday knows how to tell a true war story, and The Last Flight of Poxl West is a stunning debut. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, The Last Flight of Poxl West resurrects a chapter of World War II that was a complete surprise to me. It's the viscerally-gripping, eye-wateringly moving first-person account of a young Czech Jew who flew missions for the RAF during World War II; it's also a profound and timely meditation on the desire for justice, retribution, and redemption. This book is unputdownable, wise, and unbelievably generous. Its ending left me speechless." —Karen Russell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Swamplandia!

"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

"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

“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

"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

"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

"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

"The Last Flight of Poxl West is an affecting meditation on the way we all want to touch history, celebrity and heroism while remaining safe in our passivity, and on how many opportunities we miss to do the right thing for others. As its saga within a saga renders viscerally London during the Blitz or the exhilarations and terrors of flying with the RAF, it exposes remorselessly the use we make of others, even those we love most." —Jim Shepard, author of NBA Finalist Like You’d Understand, Anyway

Marketing Plan

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For publicity inquiries please contact:

Jessica Lawrence
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*Author Twitter: @DTorday
*Author Website: www.danieltorday.com

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EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9781250051684
PRICE	$25.99 (USD)

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Featured Reviews

Rosemary S, Librarian

My Recommendation

Poxl West regales his nephew Eli with tales of his heroism as an RAF bomber during the Second World War. Eli worships his uncle and when Poxl leaves to promote the book he’s written about his adventures, the young man sets out to learn all he can about his hero. What he learns is far different from what Poxl has told him. Poxl’s story is much bleaker and sadder than anything he had shared with his family, proving that war changes everyone

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Reviewer 208013

My Recommendation

Thank you to St Martin's Press and Netgalley for an opportunity to read an advance copy of The Last Flight of Poxl West. It's a narrative within a narrative. Eli recounts the story of his relationship with his "uncle" Poxl, a family friend who wrote a memoir about his experience as a Jewish fighter pilot during WWII. Eli idolizes Poxl and his stories. Interspersed with Eli's narrative is Poxl's memoir of his time during the war and just after. I really liked Eli's narrative and parts of Poxl's memoir. Torday is a good writer, and Eli is a compelling recognizable teenager as recounted from the perspective of Eli as an adult. Poxl's story of his trajectory from Prague to England via Rotterdam just before the war is also really well done.  I must confess that I struggled a bit with the middle parts of Poxl's story -- especially the parts about his training and his flights during the war. Without giving anything away, this aspect of Poxl's memoir is crucial to the whole book, but I could have done without some of the lengthy detail. It's a small criticism. This is a very good debut. I will be looking for Torday's next book.

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Annie S, Librarian

My Recommendation

Not set

At a reading of his bestselling memory, Poxl West is asked if his memoir has anything new to say about the Jewish experience of World War II by a dandruffy graduate student. The question flusters the old man and infuriates his nephew (our narrator). I wanted to interject myself and say that everyone has a right to tell their story, that there are a multiplicity of stories from that era that deserve to be heard. But what if that story turns out to be less than true? Daniel Torday's The Last Flight of Poxl West begin with the story of a boy and his much-admired war hero uncle before becoming something much more complicated.

Elijah Goldstein and Poxl take turns telling their stories. Poxl's story is one of a Jewish Czech who managed to flee the European continent just after the Anschluß before joining the British war effort as a member of a rescue squad. Elijah is only fifteen in 1986 when Poxl's memoir, Skylock, comes out to great acclaim. The book is the first time the young man has heard a story from World War II in which a Jewish man is not a victim. After a life time of reading Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, Skylock is a revelation to him. He devours the tale of Poxl's work rescuing victims of the Blitz before being accepted to the RAF as a pilot.

Elijah basks in the reflected glory from his uncle's memoir. He resents any negative criticism of Poxl's sometimes shaky prose and overemphasis on sex. It isn't until five months after Skylock's publication that it all comes crashing down. It is discovered that Poxl West's name doesn't appear on the crew lists for the bomber he claimed to fly on sorties over Hamburg. Elijah (and I) had to immediately question everything we'd heard and read from Poxl. How much was true and how much wasn't?

Torday creates distinct voices for both Elijah and Poxl. Poxl's memoir begins stiffly, as though written by a man who is not a native English speaker. But there are parts of Skylock in The Last Flight of Poxl West that have the ring of truth about them. Skylock isn't just the story of a Jew who got a little taste of revenge on the Nazi machine; it's also the story of a flawed man who makes huge mistakes. Poxl's story is a failed love story more than anything else. When Poxl writes of his lost loves, the depth of emotion creates all the verisimilitude the book needs. At 15, however, Elijah is too young and inexperienced to recognize what Skylock and Poxl were trying to say to the world.

It's funny I read this book after recently reading Cynthia Ozick's brief rant about fraudulent Holocaust memoirs [1]. Skylock is just the sort of lie that would infuriate her. A lie that makes readers doubt Jewish history is a dangerous one, the sort that gives Holocaust deniers ammunition. Still, Poxl's story is mostly true—just not the parts about his war record. His losses were real. After finishing The Last Flight of Poxl West, I have to think that if Poxl hadn't written about being a successful RAF bomber pilot, Skylock would have sunk beneath the waves like that graduate student at the reading seemed to think it should have.

I received a free copy of this ebook from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. It will be released 17 March 2015.

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1. Cynthia Ozick, “The Rights of History and the Rights of Imagination,” in Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 103-119.

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