Rating: 
Summary: save your money
Review: This book has been completely overhyped. I bought it because I heard about it on Don Imus's radio program. This book is a piece of fluff. Save your money, buy it in the discount bin at the front of your local bookstore.
Rating: 
Summary: Elegant, lyrical prose
Review: This book is all about creating beautiful, dream-like images. When I first started it, I was annoyed by the shifts between first and third persons. When I returned to it I was in a quiet place at a quiet time. I was able to focus uninterruptedly upon the language and images. It was then that the full force of the book revealed itself. If you stand back and evaluate the plot alone it seems implausible and a little silly. But within the dream world Mendelsohn creates Amelia's thoughts are enlightening. When I finished it I turned back to page one and began reading it out loud. It was as if I experienced rather than read this story.
Rating:
Summary: Elegant, lyrical prose
Review: This book is all about creating beautiful, dream-like images. When I first started it, I was annoyed by the shifts between first and third persons. When I returned to it I was in a quiet place at a quiet time. I was able to focus uninterruptedly upon the language and images. It was then that the full force of the book revealed itself. If you stand back and evaluate the plot alone it seems implausible and a little silly. But within the dream world Mendelsohn creates Amelia's thoughts are enlightening. When I finished it I turned back to page one and began reading it out loud. It was as if I experienced rather than read this story.
Rating:
Summary: A lyrical and transcendent book.
Review: This book is for everyone who finds poetic and lyrical prose inviting. If you enjoyHerman Hesse or any author who writes prose that takes your breath away, this is it!!
Rating: 
Summary: A haunting story beautifully and simply told.
Review: This book snuck up on me. I liked the author's style and images right away -- I felt pulled into the world of Amelia Earhart. The story was so beautifully and simply written that I tumbled on page after page not wanting to stop. I continued to be haunted by the events that were happening -- were they real, is she dreaming, am I reading about an Amelia that exists on the spiritual plane now? I loved the quality of how much space Amelia needed to finally feel truly happy. I also loved that her solitude made her potential rescue seem like a capture -- how hard to return to the world of society and conventions. Very haunting read.
Rating: 
Summary: Quick Read - Not Captivating
Review: This book was interesting but not the kind of book that you can't put down. The plot was a fabulous concept, but it just wasn't that exciting. I think Mendelson could have made Amelia's journey much more exciting and interesting--the fiction could have been taken to greater lengths.
Rating:
Summary: A love story which resonates
Review: This is a tale of sadness and grandeur. A tale improbable and yet terrifyingly possible. Amelia Earhart is an unhappily married, misunderstood, generally dissatisfied woman whose only true joy comes from flying. In the sky she is alone and she is free. But even her flying can be overshadowed by her greedy, unsympathetic husband, who is also her manager. She has never related well to men, or to anyone, for that matter. Since childhood, she has admired lengendary lone women, the martyrs, the pioneers. And she became one. The book devotes much attention to the days before she embarks on her celebrated round-the-world flight. Her outlook on the world, and on herself, is shared with us intimately. We come to know those whom she trusts, and those whom she doesn't. We learn the technical details of her flight, and of catastrophic mistakes made in her preparations. We are with her in the cockpit, at 5:56am, as she takes off from Florida. And then she is lost. Her life on the deserted, uncharted atoll is a piercing psychological portrayal. Her ruminations are barbed, comical, and eloquent. Her survival of the crash is both miraculous and cursed. Her navigator, Fred Noonan, has also survived the crash. She never thought too highly of him to begin with, and now he has become her Adam in a South Pacific Garden of Eden. They are not very compatible. All they share is their flight experience, and their fate. But maybe that's enough. Yes, a love grows between them, a love of thorns and petals, of alternating silences and verbosity, of hostility and tenderness. Mendelsohn paints not an idyllic island existence, but an honest one, with a rapture and a wretchedness few of us will ever know. But above all that, Mendelsohn writes a love story which resonates.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Book That Rings True Over & Over Again
Review: This is my favorite book of all time. Live through an incomprehensibly intense love that puts an ocean between you and the daily social froth and at the same time slams you on the glorious beach of being genuinely alive - and then this book will make total sense. And yes, Jane, it does continue.
Rating:
Summary: The magic of flying and being human...
Review: This is not the greatest novel ever written, nor does it ever pretend to be. However, it has been one of the very few contemporary stories that flirts with originality and exploits imagination. I read this book on a long, long direct flight from New York to Tokyo a few months ago. Perhaps the way I read this book had alot to do with its impact on me. Had I read it on the ground I would have surely perceived it differently. I have always loved airplanes, I have always been in love with something and I have always, always (don't quite know why or how) been fascinated by the disappearance of this remarkable woman. So take it on your next long flight. Pick a window seat and enjoy it. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in aviation, the vagueries of love and Amelia Earhart. I do not really see it as a novel, but it very well may be a profoundly eloquent, lengthy and enduring poem. One of the best in my recent memory.
Rating:
Summary: A Gorgeous Read
Review: This story was sensual and evocative, the writing lush and exquisite. It was a pure prose poem from beginning to end, and I loved it. It's a regular on my great gifts list. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves the sheer force of well-crafted language.
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