Someplace To Be Flying

We are our stories. But more that, our stories are inextricably intertwined, knotted, woven and spliced into the stories of those around us and then into a larger story. This is what Charles de Lint reminds us in Someplace to be Flying, one of his richest and most complex novels to date.

The book opens in the Newford slums when Hank, a jazz-loving cab driver, stops to save a woman being violently assaulted in a dark side-street. When her assailant shoots him as he gets out of his cab, the scene changes. In a flurry of darkness and the sound of beating wings, two mysterious young women appear out of nowhere, killing the man and healing Hank's wound. It is a moment that will change the world for Hank and Lily, the woman he has stopped to save, forever. Slowly they are introduced to a world of magic which has always existed around them, unseen and unknown, one peopled by figures of myth and legend, where trickster Coyote and Raven are real, and where it is possible for a young woman to wish her twin sister out of existence.

No brief summary, however, will adequately describe this complicated novel. De Lint introduces his reader to a large, diverse cast of characters plus an entire mythological system he explains only incidentally, and moves those characters across a number of different stages through a number of different times. It is a story that begins with the birth of daughters to a country woman who has slept with one of the Corbae—sort of animal people who have been around since the creation of the world—and how she and her daughters are treated. It is also the story of how Raven loses the cauldron he used to create the world, and how it must be recovered. And it is the story of how a ragtag group of people living in a violent and rundown world create a community amongst themselves.

Charles de Lint's strength is his obvious love for his characters and empathy for people generally. His characters live up to their potential rather than down to it. He brings to life the human frailties of his characters and the spirit with which they cling together. De Lint is a romantic; he believes in the great things, faith, hope and charity (especially if love is included in the last), but he also believes in the power of magic or at least the magic of fiction to open our eyes to a larger world. And he knows that a good story is worth a thousand sermons.

This is a powerful story about the power of story, intensely moving and gripping. It is nearly impossible to read it without being changed in some subtle and important way, with a deeper inner recognition of our own stories and where they connect to each other.