In the opening pages of Turbulence, a woman in her seventies, who is visiting her sick son in Notting Hill, thinks how easy ‘it was, these days, to acquire a plane ticket’. Instead of a ticket to take us around the world, we have David Szalay’s novel, which takes us across continents in a series of 12 connected stories. The chapter headings are the acronyms of international airports; thus the first chapter is LGW-MAD and the last BUD-LGW. Each episode arises from a personal connection to a character in the previous one. Szalay might have been conscious of Forster’s dictum: ‘Only connect the prose and the passion.’
He is a clever craftsman. Named in 2013 one of Granta’s 20 best young novelists and with his All That Man Is shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, he innovates in this ingenious new book.
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