ReviewWhat is sleaze? Who is sleazy? Does it matter? A teenager with lust in her luggage heads to Alaska to find out
- Sent to stay with an aunt in Alaska and learn the value of hard work, Mira, the teenaged narrator of The Seaplane on Final Approach, falls for a step-cousin
- As she dreams of spending the rest of her life with him, she sets off to find out everything she can about sleaze – and spots it in some strange places
The Seaplane on Final Approach by Rebecca Rukeyser, pub. Granta Books
What she really wants, of course, is sex. And plenty of it.
Mira is the narrator of this, Rebecca Rukeyser’s debut novel, set in the unforgiving Alaskan backcountry. More than merely a perceptive observer of the usually decent but sometimes despicable traits of her short-term colleagues at an island holiday retreat, she’s also a horny teenager planning the rest of her life with the man of her dreams. And considering his brief strut across the stage of her personal drama, that’s pretty much what he is: a dream.
But before she can settle into imagined, happily-ever-after domesticity, Mira undertakes a mission: to find out everything she can about sleaze. What is it? Where does it come from? Who’s sleazy? Who isn’t? Why does it matter?
It’s a strange quest, one matched by the chosen arena: why Alaska? Why doesn’t Rukeyser send her heroine to Wan Chai or Shinjuku (either seems feasible, given the book’s occasional references to Asia)? Perhaps the point is that sleaze can be found everywhere, even in places one might imagine to be frigid and pure; everywhere, that is, where there are humans.