Baker, in his deft and engaging debut novel, takes as his premise an unwritable thing, and rather like Houdini, wriggles impressively out of the trap he has set himself. Planes, set in 2004, unfolds in two distinct and carefully rendered settings ... This might easily devolve into a straightforward, issue-based story—we can all imagine the film we might watch on a plane. And to an extent, this is indeed the novel you expect it to be. But Baker, as if tiptoeing through a minefield, manages to circumvent cliché. He knows his characters well, and his interest lies not in manipulating them, but in following their reactions to the circumstances in which they find themselves ... Baker’s prose is clean and vivid, his characters movingly and effectively evoked. His decision to avoid tackling torture directly, and to navigate instead the everyday lives of those peripherally affected, feels, in this moment, both quaint and ultimately wise. Accustomed to seeing explosive footage, we often pay less attention to the quieter internal damage that ensues. Following the repercussions of extraordinary rendition for a young wife in Rome and a middle-aged mother in North Carolina illuminates urgent questions in unexpected ways. As the aphorist and poet Novalis wrote, 'Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.' Baker understands that these are the stories that don’t appear in history books, the uncertain, complex, ordinary lives that must find a way to continue in spite of crisis.
... understated ... It's not initially obvious why these women are in the same book, an unhurried tale that features some small, satisfying twists. That's by design. Baker has structured these narratives as independent entities. Though each could be a satisfying novel of its own, they overlap and fruitfully complement one another ... Baker opts for a restrained narrative voice. His sentences don't include inessential words or draw attention to themselves; nor are they particularly quotable. But his prose is an apt delivery system for a subtle portrait of two women who've been robbed of things they might never recover.
... beautifully written ... In a tale that unfurls like a thriller across these two narratives, Baker is subtly indignant about the entire neoconservative project. This assured debut is a timely reminder of the traumas caused by many post-9/11 policies.
Baker delicately crafts the internal lives of these very different people, whose longings for connections beyond themselves are forever missing the mark ... Melanie remains in the background of her own story, quietly letting difficult conversations pass her by and second-guessing both her intuitions and actions. While passivity of this kind might be true to life, portraying it like this in fiction — generally and without counterpoint — pulls energy from the narrative at large ... In pleasing contrast to the American couple, who seem flattened by their self-delusion, the couple in Rome are brought off the page by their complexity. Baker’s Rome is vivid and gritty, and unrecognizable to the casual tourist. The author is careful to withhold much of Ayoub’s experience, wisely avoiding voyeuristic details of the extradition or torture. Instead, we follow a man who suffers but also seeks a path forward, however narrow and winding ... I felt for her the immediate empathy one feels for a well-written character, and it is clear that Baker did, too. How we take that empathy forward is up to us; fiction only makes the introductions.
... subtle and unsettling ... Complicated questions of complicity and responsibility emerge alongside planned local protests, yet the insistently uncomfortable thing about “Planes” is the ease with which these questions are put to the side. Although torture and extraordinary rendition are the novel’s headliner issues, almost all of its dramatic tension is bound up in whether or not Melanie’s husband will find out about her affair with Bradley. This discrepancy is, I believe, a feature rather than a bug, as it implicates the reader in a broader complacency. How smoothly are the politics in Planes overshadowed by the familiar excitements of a domestic crisis! The novel’s slyly muted ending is, perhaps, even more damning than any imagined confrontation.
Propulsive ... What an indictment of our politics of care, which can never throw off the shackles of self-interest. What an indictment of our politics, full stop ... The novel, with its own canny intelligence, seems to know something that no one else does. In that sense, it elegantly captures how one might move through the world visible, too visible, but not seen at all.
... arresting ... Baker masterly juggles the two concurrent story lines, never losing the urgency of either as Amira and Melanie grapple with hard truths and seek justice and indemnification. Along the way, the author digs deep into the nuances of love, pain, betrayal, and the promise of deliverance. This moving debut buzzes with relevance.
... affecting ... Baker, a Chicago-based writer, alternates chapters mainly between the two women, and the resulting diptych is inescapably unbalanced. Mel’s troubles can seem almost comically petty compared with Amira’s. That may be unavoidable, but it’s compounded by the fact that the North Carolina activists had nothing to do with Ayoub’s release. Don’t read those as flaws. In the real world, too, activism depends on preoccupied, ambivalent people like Mel and sometimes doesn’t seem to make a difference. And sometimes it does ... A thoughtful look at the small-scale fallout of an international issue.
