Night Flight

A cargo plane pilot is struggling to fly through a cyclone from Patagonia to Buenos Aires. Meanwhile his boss back at the base is more concerned with delays in trans-Atlantic deliveries, which in turn may interfere with his plans of revolutionising long-distance air mail.

I'd like to think that as I go through more diverse reading materials, my pet peeves start to become less set in stone. Don't get me wrong, I still dislike poetry, or rather anything with even a whiff of lyrical sentiment... but at least I can now go over them with minimal grumbling. To be fair, some descriptions occasionally brought beautiful Ghibli-style images to my mind's eye.

Sometimes, after a hundred miles of steppes as desolate as the sea, he encountered a lonely

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farmhouse that seemed to be sailing backwards from him in a great prairie sea with its freight of human lives.

What I wasn't on board with however, was the whole overworking for the sake of progress subplot. I've personally gone through some really dismal bouts of burn out, which has me jump to extreme reactions toward anyone promoting overwork. Now, logically I understand that some people may honestly be so fulfilled by their job that dedicating 16 hours to it on a daily basis feels like an accomplishment. My sanity though, is instantly triggered whenever I hear people talk about glorifying sacrificing health for the job.

Reading Riviere's point-of-view sections made me relive a whole host of negative emotions, that I'd normally experience over months spent in a toxic work environment. There was righteous anger, the disbelief over his view of men as "mere lumps of wax", only to settle on helpless rage.

Someone or something had to pay for it all... but how do you even begin to make amends for a human life?

Score: 3.3/5 stars

This story managed to enrage me more than a dismal day at work... which should make me rate it higher. But if I did, I'd feel like I was (at least partially) condoning this senseless rat race. show less

Ce roman se base sur les expériences de l’auteur lorsqu’il faisait le courrier de vol en Amérique du Sud, et il est poétique en plus de contenir du suspens. A cette époque, l’aviation était encore un métier pionnier et les vols de nuit étaient encore nouveaux : les pilotes devaient se débrouiller avec des communications radio non fiables et des instruments moins puissants, et leurs patrons devaient prendre des décisions d’opérations avec des informations qui pourraient ne pas être de dernière heure. Les vols de nuit, et le vol tout simple dans ces conditions, se ressemblaient plus à une devoir qu’à un boulot.

C’est un roman des impressions et des petits moments au lieu d’un intrigue. Fabien est pilote et son show more vol de nuit ne se déroule pas bien. Rivière est le chef pilote qui envoie ses équipages sur leurs missions possiblement dangereuses. Et puis on a Robineau, l’inspecteur qui erre par ici, par là, et qui se douter de sa carrière. On voit également (et brièvement) Madame Fabien, et avec sa présence on se rend compte que ce milieu de vol, à cet endroit, à cette époque, n’accueille pas les épouses. C’est un monde exclusif.

J’ai aimé ce livre plus que Pilote de guerre. Vol de nuit est plus léger, avec plus de magie si on pourrait le dire. Je sais que je vais faire une relecture. show less

Even translated the language is rich and evocative. It is however overcome by macholosophy. About a night mail hub in Buenos Aries, the director, ground personnel and pilots under pressure to preform or be eliminated as impractical. Not that the ideas are invalid, just that the nobility of the cause of night mail may not be up to the costs, and that it is a very insular male world in which the values are tended.

This was an excellent novella. Saint-Exupéry takes us into the minds, thoughts, and feelings of the principal characters and creates a story vivid, rife with entangling themes and mixed emotions that allow us to experience it as a emotional, philosophical, and moral tale. Everything that you want in a literary novella is here and it is by no means preaching or ingratiating, This was great, well-written, and (in my opinion) extremely readable.

4.5 stars- no less!

"Amid the far-flung treasure of the stars he roved, in a world where no life was, no faintest breath of life, save his and his companion’s. Like plunderers of fabled cities they seemed, immured in treasure-vaults whence there is no escape. Amongst these frozen jewels they were wandering, rich beyond all dreams, but doomed."

In Buenos Aires, a director awaits the arrival of three courier planes from various regions in Argentina. However, the planes are flying at night and storms are approaching, threatening the safety of the pilots. The book follows the director as he deals with the possibility that one of the planes might not be making it.

From the summary of the book I thought I'd love this book and boy did I try to love it. But like the descriptions of the pilot flying in between threatening clouds, my attention and fondness for the book wavered between superficial skimming and engrossed reading. Despite a beautiful start to the book, every time I thought I'd start to learn more about the characters I'd get pushed away again to read something a little show more less engrossing. I don't typically need to get attached to characters to enjoy a read but this time I really wanted it.

By the end of the book I did end up feeling a little hint of emotion as I understood the director and his motivations and his spirit of knowing that he needs to continue forward, but I thought the author stumbled in trying to describe the character at the beginning. In reality, I thought the author's strengths were in the description of the flights and the interaction between the characters so it was disappointing when he spent so much time writing not about these things.

Thus, although I wanted to love this book, and although I did feel for the book by the ending, -- despite the shortness of this little novel -- I did not get the experience I really wanted. show less

This novella doesn't quite live up to its classic billing, although it generates some suspense and has a few memorable scenes. French mail pilots in South America converge on Buenos Aires, where the mail flight for Europe is waiting to depart, but a horrendous storm gets in the way. It doesn't help that in striving for poeticism, the English translation often verges on incoherence.