I am not necessarily recommending "Aloft", just making you aware of it.

"Aloft," released in March, has become a best seller, its film rights sold to Warner Bros. and producer Scott Rudin.

The narrator is Jerry Battle (shortened from Battaglia), an Italian-American on the eve of his 60th birthday. Jerry is married to Daisy, an Asian, who has "passed on", and has two children, Theresa and Jack.

Jerry is mourning the break-up of his relationship with Rita, a Puerto Rican princess,and is pondering his responsibilities to his irascible father, Hank, stewing in a retirement home.

Theresa, the daughter, is an overeducated professor, also cursed with thinking too much, and is engaged to Paul, an Asian-American poet.

Jack, the son is a solid guy, married to an All-American blonde named Eunice.

Chang-Rae Lee, the author, is a Korean American, married in real life to an Italian American. Lee was named by The New Yorker as one of its 20 writers for the 21st Century. In two previous novels, Native Speaker and A Gesture Life. Both novels won numerous awards, including Best First Novel, the Hemingway PEN Award, the American Book Award and the Asian-American Literary Award, among others.Lee is a professor at Princeton University.

In Aloft, Lee revisits alienation, a fractured family, mixed heritage and the quest for identity.Lee's model for Jerry is his Italian-American father-in-law, who until recently lived on Long Island. "A loose inspiration. Quite loose," he says, laughing.

One critic states, "Lee has expanded his range and proves himself a master storyteller, able to observe his characters' flaws and weaknesses and, at the same time, celebrate their humanity. Aloft is an unforgettable portrait, filled with vitality and urgency, of a man who has secured his life's dreams but who must now figure out its meaning".

Other reviewers, criticize the lack of knowledge of Italian American experience, the thinly drawn Ethnic characters that rely on readers stereotypes too heavily.

AP Wire | 05/12/2004 | Novelist Lee Pens Highly Praised Novel
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