''I Was Amelia Earhart'' is

Jane Mendelsohn Jane Simone Mendelsohn (born 1965) is an American writer. Her novels are known for their mythic themes, poetic imagery, and allegorical content, as well as themes of female and personal empowerment. Mendelsohn's novel ''I Was Amelia Earhart'' was a ...

’s debut novel, published by Knopf in 1996. It tells a fictional account of what happened to

Amelia Earhart Amelia Mary Earhart ( , born July 24, 1897; disappeared July 2, 1937; declared dead January 5, 1939) was an American aviation pioneer and writer. Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many oth ...

and her navigator, Fred Noonan, after they disappeared off the coast of New Guinea in 1937. The book was shortlisted for the 1997

Orange Prize for Fiction The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously with sponsor names Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)) is one of the United Kingdom's m ...

and appeared on the

New York Times Best Seller List ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. John Bear, ''The #1 New York Times Best Seller: intriguing facts about the 484 books that have been #1 New York Times ...

for fourteen weeks.

Synopsis

Narrated alternately in the third person and in the voice of Earhart herself, ''I Was Amelia Earhart'' tells the fictional story of the time following the famous aviator’s mysterious disappearance in 1937. Earhart and her raffish navigator, Fred Noonan, crash-land on a desert island. They fight, skirt the edges of insanity, adapt to their environment, and fall in and out of love. Flashbacks tell the story of Earhart’s life: her childhood desire to become a heroine, her love affair with flying, and her difficult marriage to the man who pushed her further in her career and closer to danger. Meanwhile, Earhart experiences a personal transformation and rebirth, breaking through the limitations of her celebrity persona.

Reception

''I Was Amelia Earhart'' was critically acclaimed for its poetic, lyrical, and mythic qualities. Michiko Kakutani wrote in '' The New York Times'', “In this lyrical first novel...Ms. Mendelsohn has chosen to use the bare-boned outlines of the aviator’s life as an armature for a poetic meditation on freedom and love and flight…. The resulting novel...invokes the spirit of a mythic personage, while standing on its own as a powerfully imagined work of fiction. Ms. Mendelsohn invests her story with force of fable.”

Daphne Merkin Daphne Miriam Merkin (born in New York City) is an American literary critic, essayist and novelist. Merkin is a graduate of Barnard College and also attended Columbia University's graduate program in English literature. She began her career as ...

wrote in '' The New Yorker'', “

he book He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

appears like a flash of silver in the leaden skies of contemporary fiction. It is a haunting and delicate piece of guesswork…. Mendelsohn is the sort of writer who takes the oyster as her world rather than the other way around: her book outlines a small space for itself to inhabit and then goes about filling in this space with shadowy patches, daubs of bright color, and areas that seem to be the prose equivalent of white paint. Her novel is, indeed, drenched in visual effects…. Its quiet air of astonishment lends the shine of newness to everything it touches.” '' Harper’s Bazaar'' said, “Not to be missed. It is an immediately addicting book, as telegraphic as those of

Margaret Duras Margaret is a female first name, derived via French () and Latin () from grc, μαργαρίτης () meaning "pearl". The Greek is borrowed from Persian. Margaret has been an English name since the 11th century, and remained popular througho ...

, and as charged with longing.” ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...

'' wrote, “Strange, slight, but wonderful: a modest portrait that manages to create moments of exceptional intensity and power of feeling.” ''

The School Library Journal ''School Library Journal'' (''SLJ'') is an American monthly magazine containing reviews and other articles for school librarians, media specialists, and public librarians who work with young people. Articles cover a wide variety of topics, with ...

'' said that the novel “...unfolds with the surreal precision of a dream and that marks first novelist Mendelsohn as a writer to watch…calculatedly lovely and moving,” and the ''Newark Sunday Star-Ledger'' wrote, “Mendelsohn san exquisite crafter of prose…. Brilliant...is not too strong a word to describe what Mendelsohn has done…. Her novel will hold you spellbound.” '' The Village Voice'' called it “Insinuating and even addictive...a vehicle for dreaming.”

Synopsis

Reception

References

Further reading