[Blog Tour] The Paradox of Vertical Flight by Emil Ostrovski: Review, Excerpt & Giveaway

Posted by Nina L. on 9:00 PM in 5-star, blog tour, contemporary, Emil Ostrovski, excerpt, Giveaway, realistic fiction, review, YA,

Author: Emil Ostrovski

Release date: September 24th 2013

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Series: N/A

Age Group: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary / Realistic Fiction / Tough Issues / Suicide

Tour organized by: Lady Reader's BookStuff Blog Tours

Purchase: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository

Add to your library: Goodreads

What happens when you put a suicidal eighteen-year-old philosophy student, his ex-girlfriend, his best friend, and his newborn baby in a truck and send them to Grandma's house? This debut novel by Emil Ostrovski will appeal to fans of John Green, Chris Crutcher, and Jay Asher.

On the morning of his eighteenth birthday, philosophy student and high school senior Jack Polovsky is somewhat seriously thinking of suicide when his cell phone rings. Jack's ex-girlfriend, Jess, has given birth, and Jack is the father. Jack hasn't spoken with Jess in about nine months—and she wants him to see the baby before he is adopted. The new teenage father kidnaps the baby, names him Socrates, stocks up on baby supplies at Wal-Mart, and hits the road with his best friend, Tommy, and the ex-girlfriend. As they head to Grandma's house (eluding the police at every turn), Jack tells baby Socrates about Homer, Troy, Aristotle, the real Socrates, and the Greek myths—because all stories spring from those stories, really. Even this one. Funny, heart-wrenching, and wholly original, this debut novel by Emil Ostrovski explores the nature of family, love, friendship, fate, fatherhood, and myth. (via Goodreads)

Review

Philosophy is something I'd gladly occupy myself into whatever the time of the day is. Sometimes, it's hard to decipher whatever the metaphor really means. Sometimes, it's easy as breathing. Though most of the time, philosophy is just as what it really is. You need not to think deeply over what has been said or written to get it. People try to overthink when really, its true meaning is within us.

I knew even before I started this novel that I'd love it. Preconceptions could have definitely killed my reading experience but I believed my instincts and still read this one. Maybe I loved this because I have set my mind already. Maybe I loved this because of its story. Or maybe I don't know. It may have been the combination of the two.

What was written in the synopsis was just the same as the story inside. Literally. It was an easy read. The philosophy, metaphors and the roadtrip were quite the wonderful package for this novel. Oh yes, of course I should not forget the characters' wit and cleverness.

A prologue was present wherein Jack was meeting up with a fresh high school graduate Socrates and telling him all about his adventure together with Tommy and Jess after kidnapping him when he was just a baby. What totally disturbed me was the idea that Jack stole the baby from the hospital. I mean, come on. He was just born that day. Wasn't he supposed to stay in an incubator so that his body system could adapt to his new world? Didn't he catch any colds or other complications since he was supposed to be getting medical attention given that he was just born? Yet Socrates the baby acted ALL OKAY throughout the journey. As crazy as it may seem, I wished he could have gotten something then it would have been more realistic to me. Newborn babies are as fragile as a delicate glass that's why I'm freaking out that Socrates the baby was that fine.

Another thing that bugged me was how Jack was so inviting. Especially to strangers. Just because he felt a philosophical connection with someone does not mean he was supposed to invite him over to eat. Specifically with strangers. I don't know. But maybe Jack was really like that. Though considering that they were being chased by policemen, how could he just trust someone that easily?

I also have some issues at the end of the novel but I cannot say it here because well, that would be possible spoilers. I don't know I just wished I have known more about what happened to Jess and Tommy especially after their journey.

My issues were more on the practical side (I think). I would have felt this novel to be more realistic, I believed, if those were resolved. But what do I know right? I'm not the author and I still loved the novel anyway. Yes, love. Since despite my personal issues, I'm giving this a 5. Love it that much.

Despite my issues, I absolutely enjoyed Jack's journey. Jack is, I think, the most pensive fictional character I've ever encountered to date. No kidding. He thought about things we wouldn't admit to anyone we actually think about. Who would even have self-made conversations with dead philosophers, right? For some, maybe he was crazy. Yet for me, I practically connected with him in some ways. I'm not suicidal like him in the first part. But I do ponder about those things. Like what would happen if I die? Will I be missed or what? What would happen to the people I'm close with now? Will still it be the same after a few years? Or what about our existence? Is there really good and evil? Is there really such a thing as free will? Or are we puppets because The Fates have it all figured out for us even before we have our first breath? There were a lot of these questions. I personally think that we won't be able to have answers. Just like what Jack said. Thinking about questions we'll probably never have answers to is hard. If we do, it won't be the same for all of us. Jack may have believed that the journey he took was all for Socrates' welfare. I believed otherwise. He needed that to believe that after everything that had happened, he will still be fine. That even if he won't be a family with Socrates and Jess, his life will turn out fine. The journey and all the conversations with dead philosophers were, I seriously believe in the angels of heaven, for his own good.

I know it's been too long already but what can I say? Reading a novel with such philosophical ideas make me think too much. In a good way, I presume.

Jack and Jess' relationship may not have ended happy ever after but I did feel that whatever they had was genuine and just so cute. Despite the chair-throwing, those two care for each other even after not talking for nine months. Their own geekyness was adorable at all levels. Even with Tommy. I just have to say that those three were all fabulous. *wink wink*

I have to end this now. But yeah, I would have love to learn about Jess' pregnancy days and Tommy's military life. And even their lives after the journey. I feel like I still have a lot to say but... 

If you're a philosophy buff, definitely read this. Even if you are not, still read this. A lot of life's rhetorical questions will have you wondering and wondering. 

Excerpt

My phone rings, but I don't get up.

In my dream, the teacher hands out frogs, living frogs, and lectures: “Frogs produce smaller air bubbles than humans, who in turn produce smaller air bubbles than llamas. We find this out by drowning the species in question, of course. Please drown your frog and make sure to measure the diameter of its air bubbles, rounding to the nearest significant digit. Tomorrow we’ll measure the bubbles produced by our lab partners, and the day after that, the students that are left will move on to the llamas.” It makes no sense at all, but so it goes with my dreams. Some people dream of epic heroes’ quests, of saving the universe from a great evil, and I get dreams about the differentiation of air bubbles across species.

Around nine I roll myself into a sitting position, finger the gunk out of my eyes, examine it for a moment, and then launch it across the room to where I don’t have to immediately deal with it. My roommate’s snores filter down from the top bunk.

My cell is on my desk. The blinking red light of a missed call flashes across the room. Damn. I missed Bob. I try calling her back, but she doesn’t answer. She’s always losing her phone, misplacing it; broke it a few times from chucking it, because she couldn’t get the idiotskaya electronica to work.

I call my grandma “Bob” because I’m too lazy to bother with the alternatives; namely, “Babushka,”“Baba,” and “starypur,” the Russian version of old fart. Bob has Alzheimer’s, and it’s my birthday, so her call means today’s one of those days, or maybe just one of those moments, a flash, when she remembers me.

Partly to distract myself from the guilt, but mostly out of habit, I turn on my computer and wait for Windows to load. I don’t capitalize “god” but I always capitalize “Windows.” I spend much of my life in front of a screen, plugged into the matrix, looking through a Window into my virtual life. Still waiting on a black dude with a name that sounds like a drug to show up and teach me kung fu, though.

I log in to Facebook and I’m so depressed I want to laugh. Fifteen Facebook friends have wished me a happy birthday so far. I’ve never really cared about birthdays, honestly—I mean, it’s just another day—but to see all these people, most of whom I don’t know or in a few years won’t remember, wishing me a happy birthday makes me feel like I should care. Like it should be a special day, like it should mean something.

I think I hate Facebook.

I lean back in my chair and stare out the window. When I’m thirty years old, will I still get a bunch of people I don’t know wishing me a happy birthday? Will that number dwindle over the years? Will, year by year, some people who’ve forgotten me remember and some people who’ve remembered me forget? What’s the point of it all, for any of us, if that’s the way it goes—if the way it ends is with me logging into Facebook at ninety years old, bald and fat and wearing a diaper and not remembering how to get to the toilet, which is why I’m wearing a diaper in the first place, and seeing, what? Fifteen people I don’t know wishing me a happy birthday? And each of my fifteen with fifteen of their own, on and on, a miserable network of Happy Birthday Facebook wishes connecting the entire world, the entire human race, until one day we nuke ourselves and it all goes black and there are no more happy birthdays for anyone.

Sometimes I get like this, depressed I mean, but I’m not one of those crazies, you know, a danger to themselves and others, nothing like that. Never even contemplated suicide, though in a few seconds I will be contemplating jumping out a window. It’s hot—eighty, maybe more; my T-shirt’s wet on my body, and it feels more miserable than it has any right to for a May morning in our great moose- infested state of Maine. I wheel over to open the window, slide it all the way up. I have to stand so I can reach the screen, to slide it down into place. Instead I stick my hand out.

What if I jump? What if I jump, now? I don’t want to die, but getting hurt would be kind of nice, you know? Like two years ago, when I got my appendix out. Everyone from class sent Get Well cards and Tommy skipped school to spend a day with me playing video games in the hospital. Yeah, that’s selfish, but remembering your friend because he almost kicked it is just as selfish.

I turn away from the window. The attention would last a couple weeks, max. Then everyone would go back to their own lives and everything would be the same. But unlike when I got my appendix out, I might be crippled for life.

I walk on over to my desk, pull open a drawer, shuffle through video game boxes and CDs and pencils and pens and a worn pink eraser I never use but bring to school every quarter anyway. I grab the bottle of pills, sit back down on my chair, and stare at the bottle. Painkillers. From a few months back, when I got into a fight with a fence over the arbitrary authority by which it goes about the supremely arrogant task of delineating space. The fence won the tiff, but, fractured ankle aside, I like to think I’ll win the war. I set the painkillers on the desk, and check under my bed. That’s where I keep my water, but there isn’t any left, so I stuff the pills in my pocket.

“Hey,” comes my roommate Alan’s I’m-still-three-quarters-sleeping voice.

I spin round. “Hey,” I say, too loud.

He frowns at me, head about three inches off the pillow, and says, “Feel like I wanted to say something to you. But I forget. I’ll remember.”

“That’s all right.”

“Jack,” he says, suddenly concerned. “It is a Saturday, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “No worries.”

“Phew,” he says. His head drops back down. Almost every Saturday Alan groggily asks me if it’s really the weekend—like he can’t quite believe it himself. He’s a nice guy, Alan, as nice a roommate as you could hope for, but we don’t really do anything together aside from, well, sleeping together. .It’s just that kind of a relationship.

I have my hand on our doorknob when--voices in the hall. When they’re gone I nudge the door open and head for the bathroom. A guy’s in the shower, singing something about how we’re meant to be together in a voice that he really should keep a firm leash and a choke collar on if he insists on taking it out in public.

I set the bottle of pills on the shelf below the mirror. My reflection has a zit coming up on his forehead. It hurts to touch. He squeezes anyway, and bites at the inside of his lip. It explodes; a bit of yellow-white pus hits him in the eye and slides down, down, like a tear.

How many pills will kill me and how many will almost kill me? That is the question. It’s a fine line, probably. I open the bottle, look inside, and frown. Pull the cotton ball out.

I turn on the faucet. And hold my hands under the warm water. Close my eyes. Breathe. Breathe. I’m about to down my first pill when my cell rings. Once, twice, three times. The guy in the shower stops singing.

My breath catches when I see the number.

About the Author

“I'm twenty-three. Rather than give you a witty, self-deprecating account of the trials and tribulations of my twenty-three year old, suburban, upper-middle class, went-to-a-girl's-liberal-arts-college life, I'll admit that I haven't really done anything much worth reading about.

So in lieu of providing you with my biography, I will recommend that you read Desmond Tutu's.  Here. 

Why Desmond Tutu?

Well, I've always liked his name.” 

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