Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes (Iowa Short Fiction Award Series) »

Merrill Feitell, a native New Yorker, received her MFA from Columbia University in 2000, was the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference's Margaret Bridgman Fellow in Fiction in 2003, and was chosen as one of Fiction's New Luminaries by the Virginia Quarterly Review. Her fiction has been published in Book Magazine, Glimmer Train, and the Best New American Voices 2000. She currently resides in Brooklyn.

The stories in Merrill Feitell’s award-winning collection, Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes, examine the fleeting and unexpected moments of human connection, reminding us of the indelible impact we have on one another no matter how insignificant or anonymous we might feel under our huge, collective sky.

Feitell’s characters deal with shifting dynamics in relationships—whether they be best friends, lovers, family, or even strangers—that consistently leave them torn between two places or commitments. In the title story, Janie has undergone a painful childbirth experience and her group of friends must pioneer new dynamics while she wonders how to bring her old self back. In “Bike New York!” amid thirty thousand cyclists, a man on the brink of marriage meets a young girl who, in a tiny Brooklyn bakery, affirms both who he has been and who he is going to be. On this short detour from normal life he comes to understand “the funny thing about finding your way in the world. There was a place laid out for you . . . and even as you stepped into it, happy for the chance to rest, you wondered how you ever ended up there.”

Funny, big-hearted, and deft, Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes navigates the reader through the life that happens when you’re planning other things. It is a collection of experiences, roads not taken, and the intense and unforeseen sparks of connection we hope for.

Publishers Weekly

Feitell chronicles impulsive life decisions, crucial moments of self-reflection, lost loves and intimate connections in her skillful debut, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction award. In "Bike New York!" an uncertain groom-to-be half-mistakenly flakes on his friends' planned bike-a-thon/pub crawl/bachelor party, only to find himself peddling along with a teenage girl whose hopeful youth sparks a "shift in lighting, a re-alignment of compositions as he slipped from the point of focus in his own life." In the poignant "The Marrying Kind," a woman on the eve of her 33rd birthday endures the nuptials of her college love who also happens to be the father of her unborn child. The gem here is the delightful "Our Little Lone Star," in which a slightly neurotic 62-year-old woman's encounter with "some kind of cowboy" inspires her to stop living a life of regret. There are some slight missteps: the familiar Thanksgiving meet-the-parents theme and a few heavy-handed metaphors weaken "It Couldn't Be More Beautiful," while "Such a Big Mr. England" relies too heavily on its frame of Princess Diana's death at the cost of developing more fully the character of a memorabilia collector watching his son slip away to a cold daughter-in-law. But the collection as a whole boasts confident, astute prose as Feitell explores life's surprising moments with generosity and truth. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.