Synopses & Reviews
It was fifty years ago that young Peter Leroy unintentionally pulled a fast one on the people of Babbington, New York. With a design ripped from the pages of
Impractical Craftsman magazine, he built a flying aerocycle in his parents' garage. Then, before a breathless audience, he took off into the skies on the contraption, flew to New Mexico and back, and returned a hero. Now, Babbington has fallen on hard times, and his hometown is being transformed into a theme park commemorating Peter's flight. The time has come for Peter to return, to set the record straight, and to tell the people of Babbington that his feat of aviation spanned only about six feet.
The first book in a trilogy, Taking Off plays at the intersection of Proust and Rushmore, it is a hilarious story of hoaxes, digressions, DIY mechanical engineering, and the wilds of memory.
Review
"Wildly inventive . . . Beneath Eric Kraft's bright surfaces and dazzling comic antics, there's some serious investigation going on into the interactions of memory, reality, and invention. . . . A splendid start to the promising Flying trilogy."--
The Seattle Times
"Hilarious and charming . . . Sweetly philosophical and archly literary, this is one very smart, tender, and funny novel."--Booklist
"The only American author since Pynchon to completely erase the line between the literary novel and the spit-out-your-coffee comedy."--The Washington Post
About the Author
Eric Kraft is the author of ten books. He lives in New Rochelle, New York.