Midair (Magill Book Reviews)

In the title story, “Midair,” Sean is shown at different stages in his life. In 1942, at the age of six, he and his nine-year-old sister are abruptly taken out of school one afternoon by their insane father. At home, the father’s irrational actions frighten the children. Finally, the father, in trying to escape the hospital attendants who have come for him, runs to a window with his young son in his arms. For a moment, before the attendants reach them, he suspends the boy out the window to view the street scene four stories below. Though Sean later forgets the incident, it influences his entire life until finally, more than thirty years later, when stuck in a malfunctioning elevator, he calms a frightened young man and, at the same time, suddenly understands his own life.

The concluding story, “The Sense of the Meeting,” concerns Kirby and his relationship with Alan, his son from his first wife. Kirby returns to his alma mater, a Philadelphia college, where he meets his old college roommates, but more important, where he watches his son play in a college basketball game. The game is a disaster; Alan, after fumbling the ball, spends most of the game on the bench. The next week, Kirby attends the dreaded rematch, but the second game shows Alan at his best as he orchestrates the team’s winning plays. The story explores the changes in the father-son relationship that take place as the boy matures. Kirby initially feels that he must protect his son, and he fears that he might not live up to the boy’s expectations. Yet later the father’s love changes to one based on respect, acceptance, and equality.

Many of the stories, including “Midair” and “The Sense of the Meeting,” contain a juxtaposition of past events with the present, and the incidents of the past are shown to influence and explain the present. In “Car Games,” a young boy’s infatuation with cars later explains his death at the wheel of his Aston Martin. In addition, a few of the stories flirt with the supernatural. In “Transit,” the events in a subway station have no rational explanation, and in “The Mysterious Case of R,” the disappearance of a patient could indicate the insanity of a psychiatrist or the more probable but less rational explanation that the patient was an angel, as he had stated.

The stories are engrossing and well written. Readers of Frank Conroy’s only other book, the well received autobiography STOP-TIME (1967) will not be disappointed with this one.