Flight : 'Emotionally transcendent' – Boston Globe

A stunning novel about grief, shame, art, family, and all the ways we try and fail and try again to love and care for one another, from the critically acclaimed author of Want

'Suspenseful, dazzling and moving' Rumaan Alam
'Arresting and powerful' Lily King
'Breathtakingly propulsive and insightful' Leslie Jamison

It’s 22 December and Henry, Kate and Martin are gathering with their partners and children at Henry and Alice’s house in upstate New York. It's the first Christmas since their mother passed and without her ever-present advice and gentle nudges to connect with each other when they need it most, the siblings have grown distant.

Their differences are all too apparent, from the lives they have forged for themselves to what they each want to do with their sole inheritance: their mother’s house. As they try and fail and try again to create new picture-perfect memories, tensions and old resentments rise, but they are forced to unite when a local family calls for help.

Compassionate and wise, Flight explores the meaning of family and home, and the gift of being together.


Praise for Lynn Steger Strong

‘Furious, aching and razor sharp’ Emma Cline

‘A deeply intelligent and sneakily moving novel about having the ground fall away beneath your feet. Strong ingeniously undercuts conventional wisdom about what it means to be a success in this world’ Jenny Offill

‘A defining novel of our age of left-behind families... as if Anne Helen Peterson's viral burnout article and John Steinbeck's oeuvre had a baby’ Vulture

‘Elizabeth's anxious, raw voice ties these threads together, coalescing into a story about the price women pay for craving what's just out of reach’ Time magazine

‘Through Elizabeth's experiences and in her propulsive voice, the novel explores race, class, privilege, coincidence, family, friendship and love’ Guardian

‘A smart, sharp novel’ Elle

‘Strong strips away at the imbalance of advantages that ultimately injure us all and the collisions that never cease. Yet, in this stunning novel, she never loses sight of the irrepressible desire to love, connect and forgive one another’ Observer