At seventeen, Emery Land finds her life voraciously consumed by physical deterioration resulting from seizures. Practically living in a hospital under constant surveillance by her scientist father and an ostensibly-skeptical team of doctors, she feels herself a lab rat; consequently, weighing the stifling emotional price of her caged existence against the physically lethal cost of freedom, Emery flees in order to pursue her theory that during her seizures she travels through time and space. Inhabiting an emotional purgatory that exists somewhere between the heaven of free will and the hell of self-recriminations, she meets Asher Clarke who seems to be intimately entwined with her plight. Together, they must race against the Doomsday clock to understand the truth of their complicated connection. Above all else, Flutter is a beautifully-written, poignant tale of possibly-star-crossed lovers that questionably ends in death but certainly avoids being trite or predictable. Moreover, it would be a wonderful read for those who are intrigued by aspects of science-fiction or paranormal fiction but are hesitant to explore these interests. As the plot unfolds, the protagonist becomes increasingly mired in a hopelessly, complex situation. Being drawn further and further away from a satisfying conclusion, the story necessitates a deus ex machina akin to Austen’s poultry rustlers in order to avoid sending the audience into a nihilistic plummet. Nevertheless, the very device which saves both the plot and the reader is simultaneously cathartic and unsettling. Linko’s expert manipulation of first-person point of view encourages the reader to not only fall prey to the limitations of her naïve narrator but also deny the wisdom of a more balanced, objective perspective – willfully experiencing this sensuous journey as Emery does. In the end, finding herself returned to an existence outside of Linko’s story, the reader feels compelled to question beliefs and portrayals of an afterlife. Although critics may argue that the author’s conceptualization is highly discriminatory – excluding nonwhite, non-christian individuals – Linko’s crafting of such an intimate bond between the protagonist’s life and her afterlife suggests that “heaven” is deeply personal and thereby reflects the plurality of the living. In short, Linko seems to dispel the notion of an objective reality and propose that each of us is only privy to the heaven which reflects us.
- Flutter by Gina Linko
- Secondary
- Random House
- 343 pp.
- Published 2012
- ISBN 978-0-375-86996-9
- $16.99
- Romance
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