The Aviator

The men's book club at my parish recently read and discussed The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin. Spoiler alert: I loved the book. Second spoiler alert: I'll try not to spoil the actual plot of the book here.

The conversation was particularly stimulating and energetic, with everyone who had read the book making interesting points and asking thought-provoking questions. J____ asked me one such question: "What was it about the book's plot that affected you so strongly?"

My answer was somewhat rambling. I noted that the book was as much a punch to the gut and a bruise to the heart as it was a workout for the mind (while definitely stimulating, I would not say the writing itself was difficult to follow). When asked what especially moved me, I struggled to respond but was able to articulate one thing that hit home: the slow physical and mental disintegration that seemed to be leading to a slow disconnection from someone with whom one had an intimate connection. The slowness of the loss seemed as tragic as the loss itself.

After the meeting, though, I knew that my answer was not so much inaccurate as incomplete. Yes, the impending loss moved me deeply, as did an earlier, similar loss of connection with another character. But, more than that, I think the book held up a startlingly clear mirror to my inner self, and I saw much that was familiar in the book's observations. And much of what I saw was hard to look at. The following all seemed to be reflected back at me:

• My own mortality and the mortality of people I love - imagining if I were the protagonist and Cindy were the wife, or that she were the love interest from earlier in the novel.
• My own sin - What dark deeds and thoughts lurk below the level of my consciousness? Are there things I've done that I'm afraid to admit--to confess--even to myself, let alone to God before a priest?
• My fear of dementia/losing my memory/being physically alive but decresingly able to communicate and connect with people around me, especially my wife.
• My unwillingness (out of laziness? out of fear? out of indifference?) to do the long, taxing work of repentance. Vodolazkin's protagonists tend to do something awful when they're young but then spend the rest of their lives in active, humble (even humiliating) penance. Am I even sorry for my own wrongs?

On a completely different level (perhaps), my reading of this novel in light of having read Crime and Punishment, with which it shares some thematic and geographic elements--makes me want to visit St. Petersburg in the same way that I so long wanted to visit London. I don't want to do a big touristy tour--I want to feel and smell the streets, parks, bridges, churches, cemeteries. Its a longing that may pass. But I feel it, deep down.