Natural Flights of the Human Mind

Natural Flights of the Human Mind introduces two damaged, mysterious characters in a seaside village on the English coast. The first is Peter Straker, a misfit who lives in an abandoned lighthouse that each day grows closer to falling into the turbulent sea. Despite having no job, Straker lives a regimented life governed by numbers and routine. Creeping in around the edges of his carefully managed, solitary life are the voices of the 78. The 78 are the victims of a mysterious accident Straker believes himself to have caused.

Imogen Doody is a school caretaker determined to live life on her own terms after a young marriage that ended in disaster. Fortified by a powerful anger that gives her the control over her surroundings that she show more desperately craves, she's willingly walled off from any human companionships, fending of all advances from her family and would-be friends with her prickly attitude. Fatefully, she comes into some abandoned property from her long lost godfather. As she struggles to restore the abandoned cottage, Doody crosses paths with the mysterious Straker, and the two make a connection that sets in motion a series of extraordinary events that neither could have anticipated that sets them both on the path to destruction...or redemption.

This books is definitely a slow burn, carefully drawing out the often unlikeable but all-too-sympathetic main characters, peeling off the layers of their stories little by little, revealing their damaging histories, unpacking the troubled pasts that led them to their solitary, broken lives. The seaside village where the two collide, despite its beauty, is rendered starkly, a place of exile for Straker who hopes the whipping coastal winds will one day be powerful enough to sweep him and his lighthouse away.

If you're the sort of person who's ever wondered what the life of somebody foolishly or even unwittingly responsible for tragedy would be like, Natural Flights of the Human mind is a compelling glimpse into that psyche. I never expected this one to be a page turner, but I found myself rushing toward the finish desperate to see if the troubled characters Morall had brought me to care for would find redemption. Flights is a haunting and beautiful story of perils of inadequacy and guilt and the power of love and forgiveness. show less

I, like other reviewers, got this book because I loved Astonishing Splashes of Colour. And, like them, I wasn't disappointed.

This is an introspective story of two people who both live soliary lives. Both are struggling to deal with guilt: Pete was responsible for a train accident in which 78 people were killed, and Imogen Doody believes she is responsible for her sister's suicide. Both are also dealing with living profoundly alone -- partly by choice, but not entirely. When the meet in middle age, they are drawn to each other, yet unable (at first) to let their guards down.

Clare Morrall is a very good writer who is able to explore deep themes with perception and grace, without sacrificing a good story to do so.

I really like Clare Morrall's work. She seems to have a a special connection with troubled people. I understand her description of how the same issues can keep going around and around in your head at a conscious level, and also how events in your life can have a long term effect at an unconscious level. Some people (such as me) are more affected by this than others. In relation to the impact on relationships, the question arises as to whether there is something you can do or say in a relationship that might stop this perpetual grinding and wearing away at your soul. In this book the possibility of forgiveness is raised but there is also a recognition that some people are just not ready or able to offer forgiveness. What happens to the show more wrong-doer in that case is not clear. The reason this book doesn't score a 5 for me is that a few too many of the situations and events are just too unlikely and coincidental, such that the element of realism is degraded. show less

“To me, the world of fiction has always been more satisfactory than the world of reality.” Clare Morrall

Peter Straker lives in silent penance on the Devon coast in an old lighthouse, kept company only by his two cats and the seventy-eight voices he hears in his mind and dreams. Twenty-four years ago, Straker was responsible for their deaths in a horrendous train crash and has lived in self-inflicted exile ever since. He spends his days reconstructing the lives he destroyed by gathering snippets from the families left behind.

Imogen Doody’s husband left for work one day and never came home, leaving her a bitter, cantankerous shell. Working as a school caretaker, she receives a surprise inheritance of a cottage in the Devon village show more where Straker does his weekly shopping. Slowly a reluctant friendship develops and with it, the opening of each to possibility.

It is difficult for any author to release their second novel after critical acclaim on the scale received by Clare Morrall’s Astonishing Splashes of Colour. Morrall handles her sophomore book with grace, choosing to create a more introspective novel. Natural Flights of the Human Mind is told in the alternative perspectives of Straker and Imogen. Periodically, Morrall interrupts these perspectives with the dialogues Straker carries on in his head with the seventy-eight dead. Thrown into the tide of these shifting perspectives are vignettes of the moments leading up to the accident as experienced by various members of the seventy-eight. Like the photographs and letters Straker collects from the living relatives, these vignettes are word photographs, creating an image of the deceased that is occasionally at odds with the one conjured in their dialogue with Straker.

Straker and Imogen are damaged people living in their own fiction. Straker is filled by the seventy-eight he carries with him, so caught up in the silent dialogue moderated by Maggie, one of the seventy-eight, that his silent penance has become a fictional escape. Hidden within her rage and stubborn self-reliance, Imogene finds only further pain. Straker relies on routine and autistic patterning to stave off the world. For him, “Thoughts should be logical. They should run on straight lines so that you can see the beginning and end.” The meeting of these two polar opposites, destined from the first word to be cataclysmic, becomes a story of redemption and healing through Morrall’s deft handling of her subject.

Straker has lived for many years with his only jury being the seventy-eight and his two cats, Suleiman and Magnificent. Like their namesake, Suleiman the Magnificent, The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the cats sit as his judge, ruling him by opposing any self-deception; however, it is only in regaining his own voice and sharing his crime with Imogen that Straker begins to receive redemption.

Morrall has offered her fans and critics a novel rich in emotion and pain. Natural Flights of the Human Mind is a testament to the damage families can wreak and the repercussions for the community as a whole.

Clare Morrall’s first novel, Astonishing Splashes of Colour, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2003. The publishing world was caught off guard by Morrall's nomination, not because she was the first debut novelist shortlisted, but because Astonishing Splashes of Colour was published by Tindal Street Press, a new publisher, and only 7,000 copies of the book were in print at the time. Morrall lives in Birmingham, England where she teaches music and continues to write.

http://antheras.blogspot.com/2006/06/book-review-natural-flights-of-human.html show less

Having read another book by Clare Morrall I was looking forward to reading this and wasn't disappointed. As with 'Astonishing Splashes of Colour' she writes very rounded characters who are misfits in society but she writes about them with warmth and humour that draw you into their stories. It is an interesting exploration into where responsibilty for our actions lies and the parental influences which lead us to crossroads/decisions in our lives. The only slight quibble is about the role of coincidence in the plot which calls you to suspend your disbelief about just how many links there can be between 2 complete strangers! That being said I forgive the author because it is a beautifully told tale.

Clare Morrall's sophomore novel, Natural Flights of the Human Mind, explores the surprising connection between two eccentric strangers.

Peter Straker lives alone in a lighthouse on the Devon coast, a strange man who is plagued in his dreams and waking thoughts by seventy-eight mysterious voices. Imogen Doody is the cantankerous caretaker of a primary school some miles from the coast, a woman with few pleasures, the greatest of which is inciting anger in other people. Doody inherits a cottage in the Devon village near Straker's lighthouse.

Straker lives a routine existence, carefully crafted to require the least possible human contact. It is as if he needs all of his faculties to manage his omnipresent internal voices. On the day that show more Doody arrives in town and climbs onto the roof of her cottage to inspect her dubious roof tiles, Straker heads into town on his weekly trip for provisions. As fate would have it, just as Straker passes the cottage, Doody slips and falls from the roof in an undignified heap on the ground, twisting her ankle under a wayward tree root. Doody, of course, imperiously demands help from him, and is rewarded with uproarious laughter – probably the first audible sound Peter has uttered in weeks.

From this point on, Straker and Doody are inexplicably tied together, and craft and awkward sort of friendship. Doody forces Straker to communicate, and because Straker refuses to cooperate with Doody's repeated attempts to antagonize him, he earns her grudging respect. In time, Straker begins to help Doody repair her crumbling cottage.

As the novel progresses, we learn that Peter's voices are actually passengers on a train that crashed, something for which he feels personally responsible. Not only does he communicate with the dead, he also sends letters to the loved ones of the deceased, under various guises – completing a survey, writing a book to honour the dead, etc. We also learn of Doody's desire to be a novelist and of her obsession with old airplanes.

They make a strange pair, Straker and Doody, and yet they do form a strong bond as they haltingly learn how to become friends.

Clare Morrall proved her writing talent with her debut novel, Astonishing Splashes of Colour, and this novel is certainly accomplished. It appears that Morrall has avoided the dreaded sophomore slump. Morrall's writing is brisk and energetic, and her eccentric characters slowly endear themselves to the reader. It is an enjoyable novel, however it does not stand out in comparison with some of the brilliant new literary novels released in 2006. show less

This was a very satisfying read. The portrayal of the characters is like a portrayal of emotions; Doody primarily represented by anger and Straker by guilt. Very well done! I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the Devon coast and nature, but all in all Morrall is good at describing just about anything: surroundings, characters, emotions, internal struggles, interaction. Doody's anger, for example, was so tangible it filled me with awe.