Airmail

AMAZING! I absolutely loved this book from word go! When I was asked to review this by Ms. Bulger, I was thrilled. Mostly I read pdf's, I'm all for saving an author postage (lol), but she was so kind to send me a physical copy - I was ecstatic.The cover, I thought was so fantastic. I loved how it looked like one of the letters to Mr. Solomon.The story itself was very intriguing to me as well. As I got towards the last few chapters of the book, I found myself holding my breath, I was flipping through the pages, at what felt like lightening speed. I just wanted to know how it ended.Airmail is a fast read. At 103 pages this was a novella of a different kind.I don't want to include any spoilers, but I'll give my brief synopsis:G.L Solomon is a lonely old man living in Sydney, Australia. The "highlights" of his day, are putting out the trash, watching the soaps, having a glass of whiskey, and checking the post every day at 4 o'clock. The only real excitement he had, was every fortnight (two weeks for us American folks) his pension would be in. He would fancy himself up and go down to Stanley Street, where he laughed, drank, and smoked like a young man again.Anouk is young woman living in New York who claims she is being stalked by a fat woman in a velour pink track suit. She corresponds with Mr. Solomon through letters, that range from humorous, to bizarre, to down right unnerving. G.L. leaves the comfort of his daily routine to travel to New York to find Anouk. It is here that he unravels the mystery of what is her, along with re-discovering a few things about himself.Just superb.

3.75/5Airmail was a quick, quirky, fun little read. I really enjoyed both the main characters Anouk and G.L. Solomon. Anouk was so unpredictable and half the time it sounded like she was just going crazy. She seems to have insomnia most of the time so it really did make me wonder if she was in fact going bonkers. Then there is G.L. Solomon whose life up until he receives Anouks letters sounds really predictable. There is even a chapter or two describing how his days and weeks go by. Both of them were really likeable characters in my opinion which made me always happy to pick up my copy of Airmail and read some more.Anouk's letters were definitely my favourite part of the story. I really felt like I was reading somebody's letters - like a real person and not the author of this story was speaking to me. They went by quickly and I was always looking forward to the next one. Sometimes we get the play by play from her perspective and then sometimes we see things from G.L.'s perspective and get the story in letter format. Not knowing how the next installment of Anouk's run in with the lady in the pink tracksuit - a storyline that glues all the pieces together - will come next always kept me on my toes and I believe is one of the reasons that makes it a quick read. Then there are the things that Anouk sends G.L. along with her letters and it was so fun to see what they'd be and how G.L. would respond to them. One of these items, being a set of three marbles was totally off the wall weird. I don't want to spoil any part of the story so I'll just leave you a teaser - the marbles tell stories of their own. Yeah...you read that right. The marbles tell G.L. some pretty interesting stories. And it's here where I realise that maybe Anouk isn't crazy but the whole world is just topsy turvy. Well, this is magical realism after all.Overall, reading Airmail felt like a dream. Everything felt so realistic, yet there was also something so off beat about the world that I knew I had to be missing something,like I wasn't in the real world but I couldn't quite figure that out. When I got to the end of the story and found out about what was really going on with the lady in the pink tracksuit, that's when I knew...I had to be dreaming. And it was okay to wake up but I'd probably remember bits and pieces of it when I did. I am still pondering a little bit, wondering if my interpretation of the dream is the right one. But then, those things take time.

Part epistolary confession, part "Alice and Wonderland," part journey into madness, this quirky little book winds up being quite the philosophical handful. When I first began reading it, it reminded me of a clay animation film titled "Mary and Max" about an eight-year old Australian girl who randomly begins to write to an obese middle-aged man from New York with Asperger's syndrome. In Air Mail, the main character is a young woman, an ex-patriot from Australia living in New York City, randomly writing to a retired gentleman in Australia whom she chose from the phone book. Yes, seems very similar, and it is to a degree. Anouk relives all the depressing details of her life through her letters to Mr. G.L. Solomon, but when she thinks she is being stalked by a fat woman in a pink tracksuit, things take a more fantastic turn, Anouk's looking glass being the marbles that hold the stories of her life, stories that are being manipulated in a much larger universal game in which pink tracksuit is only one of many storytellers who may or may not be what they seem reminiscent of the angels in "A Life Less Ordinary."Anouk is a psychologically fragile young woman, and she finds solace in her unsolicited scribbling to Solomon. Her writing style is much the same as we often see in psychiatric patients. Solomon is intrigued, but generally unmoved by the letters and gifts until he receives the marbles. Routine is all Solomon knows, and he is comfortable with the way the twilight of his life is playing itself out, until one day Anouk writes him from the "other side," proclaiming that she is dead. This is the trigger, and promptly Solomon buys a plane ticket to NY and leaves his entire life behind. He believes Anouk is in trouble, and he believes he can help her. He can, but not in any traditional sense of the word help.The story is very well written, full of the fantastical, the surreal, and the philosophical themes I love so much in this sort of story, yet it still stays grounded in the realities of mental illness without being overbearing about the subject matter. Anouk could be suffering from schizophrenia or any number of psychological issues, and Solomon clearly has a severe case of OCD. Or do they? Maybe their souls are simply on a journey. We can ask, do marbles hold the stories of our lives to be played and manipulated by a bunch of intellectual hippy-angel storytellers? Who knows. This sort of story is left to reader interpretation, as it should be. The characters were well developed, and the letters, sometimes frightening, were never overly sentimental. The "yes" letter being the most disturbing and the most telling in the entire book.The book has been called charming, funny, quirky, profound, and yes, it is all those things. It is also very dark and insightful and compelling. I have to say, this is one of the better books I have read all year. Easily done in one sitting, but a much better read if taken slowly. As for presentation, the cover is lovely and the interior formatting is pleasing to the eye. Very well done. You know that old philosophical saying: A life unexamined; well, here is a perfect example of the miraculous things that can happen when a life is.This book was reviewed from a submission to The Podpeople Indie review Blog.