FLYING HERO CLASS

by Thomas Keaneally ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1991

History's discontented have long claimed Keneally's attention; here, a hijacked aircraft is the setting for a kind of laboratory experiment in which two very different beleaguered groups (Australian aborigines and Palestinians) are thrown together. The Barramatjara are a Western Australian tribe whose painting and dancing draw an exceptional power from their belief in a spirit world. Five Barramatjara dancers, having taken New York by storm, are flying to Frankfurt, Germany, along with their white manager Frank McCloud and his wife, Pauline, when their plane is hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. McCloud, an amiable but naive and self-centered liberal, is the viewpoint character; his main interest in New York was selling his novel. This he did, though at the cost of neglecting his dancers and alienating Pauline. But his problems are just beginning: the Palestinians provide evidence that diamond-drillers and the CIA are carving up the tribal lands while the dancers are out of the country; McCloud is falsely accused of being in cahoots with the land-grabbers, and he is forced to strip and kneel beside two other ""guilty"" passengers, a Jewish American businessman and a right-wing British journalist. Meanwhile, the Palestinians give the dancers a crash course in revolution; four of them reserve judgment on McCloud, but the fifth--the wild-living, high-strung Bluey Kannata--is ready to condemn McCloud as the man who ""confused him with Hiltons and dope."" Before the flight is over, there will be a show trial, an execution, and, for McCloud, an infusion of courage that will convert him from victim to man of action (and save his marriage). The parts here are better than the whole; Keneally's various purposes never quite mesh. There are dollops of suspense, and the dancers are caught brilliantly; Bluey, the self-described ""bloody nomad,"" is a genuinely tragic figure. But the problem is the Palestinians. Keneally tries hard to rescue them from stereotype--to show how their ""hijacking transactions were. . .as much rooted in name and location as was the dance and painting of the Barramatjara""--but the strain is evident and the voicing erratic. An honorable defeat.

Pub Date: April 8, 1991

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Warner

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991

Categories: FICTION