dear edward book review guardian

clock This article was published more than  4 years ago

In ‘Dear Edward,’ the world’s most famous orphan finds something to live for

Don’t read this book on a plane. Or if you ever hope to fly again.

Ann Napolitano’s new novel, “Dear Edward,” opens with the crash of a sold-out flight from New York to Los Angeles. A conspiracy of freak weather conditions and pilot error sends the Airbus A321 rocketing into the ground somewhere in Colorado.

If that isn’t terrifying enough, in alternating chapters, the novel returns to that flight in its final hours, minutes and seconds. This allows us to get to know some of the doomed passengers — an old tycoon disgusted with his infirmity, a discharged soldier grappling with his sexuality, a young woman hoping to get married — until we experience their plane plummeting into the flatlands anew.

I read these fatalistic chapters in a crouching stance of dread. There’s something brutal about killing a planeload of people and then introducing a handful of them and killing them all over again. But the cruelty of this aspect of the novel’s structure is countered by the astonishing tenderness of other sections. Amid the wreckage of that downed jet, one passenger is found alive: a 12-year-old boy named Edward.

Napolitano, the associate editor of One Story magazine, has written a novel about the peculiar challenges of surviving a public disaster in the modern age. She shows with bracing clarity just how cable news and social media magnify misery and exposure as never before. Edward awakens in the hospital as the world’s most famous orphan. Broken and terrified, he must immediately shoulder a weird blend of trauma and adulation. Having lost his loving parents and a brother he idolized, he does not feel “lucky.” Despite being dubbed “The Boy Who Lived,” he wields no magic, but millions of Web pages claim otherwise. Mourning relatives, conspiracy theorists and morbid gawkers grab at him as though he’s in a zombie apocalypse of grief. Every day when Edward practices walking, a small crowd gathers on the other side of the street. “Worst parade ever,” he thinks.

Napolitano attends to this cultural context deftly, letting the world’s agony and curiosity play out largely on the sidelines of what remains a delicate story of one boy’s physical and psychological recovery. Although Edward has been abruptly expelled from childhood, he’s not yet an adult either. “We need to figure out what you are,” his therapist says, “so we can figure out how to help you.” One thing the boy knows instinctively is that the torrent of advice, wisdom and counsel raining down upon him is essentially useless. Suspended in a fugue of depression, he’s largely oblivious to his surroundings. His memories, Napolitano writes, appear “like a burglar bursting through a locked door without warning.” Bracing himself against such intrusions, he wills himself “to remember nothing, think nothing, until all that exists is a flatness — a flatness that he now identifies as himself.”

That blankness at the center of this novel could have become a kind of black hole absorbing all light and interest, but Napolitano captures the subtle shades of Edward’s spirit like the earliest intimations of dawn. Even trapped in the painful narcissism of bereavement, Edward remains attentive to certain frequencies of others’ sadness. He has “the sensation that he’s being followed by more ghosts than he can personally account for.” He senses immediately, for instance, that his aunt and uncle have set aside their own private sorrows to create a new home for him. They have no time to mourn their latest miscarriage. The unused nursery must be redecorated. The baby they were praying for has arrived as a 12-year-old boy trailing clouds of death.

I fear I’m making this sound repellently gloomy, but in Napolitano’s gentle handling, it’s persistently lovely. In fact, “Dear Edward” sometimes feels like Judith Guest’s “Ordinary People” reimagined in pastel colors. Much of that sweetness stems from her portrayal of Edward, who is indeed dear, but it’s a strange girl named Shay who really leavens the novel. With Shay, Napolitano captures the authentic quirkiness of a precocious adolescent. She lives next door to Edward’s aunt and uncle, and from the start she’s the only person who speaks to Edward with complete and cleansing candor. While everyone else tries to keep him happy in a little terrarium of normal life, Shay comes right out and tells him early on: “I heard a doctor on TV say that there was a zero percent chance of survival from your plane crash. . . . You’ll never be a normal kid.” From the summit of her own oddness, she understands Edward’s oddness.

“Shay feels like oxygen to him,” Napolitano writes. She provides exactly the atmosphere of clarity that this fractured boy needs to rebuild his life, and watching them do that together is one of the most touching stories you’re likely to read in the new year.

Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington Post and hosts TotallyHipVideoBookReview.com .

On Jan. 27 at 6:30 p.m., Ann Napolitano will be at East City Bookshop, 645 Pennsylvania Ave. SE.

Dear Edward

By Ann Napolitano

Dial. 352 pp. $27

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DEAR EDWARD

by Ann Napolitano ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 14, 2020

Well-written and insightful but so heartbreaking that it raises the question of what a reader is looking for in fiction.

A 12-year-old boy is the sole survivor of a plane crash—a study in before and after.

Edward Adler is moving to California with his adored older brother, Jordan, and their parents: Mom is a scriptwriter for television, Dad is a mathematician who is home schooling his sons. They will get no further than Colorado, where the plane goes down. Napolitano’s ( A Good Hard Look , 2011, etc.) novel twins the narrative of the flight from takeoff to impact with the story of Edward’s life over the next six years. Taken in by his mother’s sister and her husband, a childless couple in New Jersey, Edward’s misery is constant and almost impermeable. Unable to bear sleeping in the never-used nursery his aunt and uncle have hastily appointed to serve as his bedroom, he ends up bunking next door, where there's a kid his age, a girl named Shay. This friendship becomes the single strand connecting him to the world of the living. Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, we meet all the doomed airplane passengers, explore their backstories, and learn about their hopes and plans, every single one of which is minutes from obliteration. For some readers, Napolitano’s premise will be too dark to bear, underlining our terrible vulnerability to random events and our inability to protect ourselves or our children from the worst-case scenario while also imagining in exhaustive detail the bleak experience of survival. The people around Edward have no idea how to deal with him; his aunt and uncle try their best to protect him from the horrors of his instant celebrity as Miracle Boy. As one might expect, there is a ray of light for Edward at the end of the tunnel, and for hardier readers this will make Napolitano’s novel a story of hope.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-5478-0

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Dial Books

Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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SEEN & HEARD

BOOK TO SCREEN

THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s ( I Found You , 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Pub Date: April 24, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | SUSPENSE

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by Lisa Jewell

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Ann Napolitano

The web site of author Ann Napolitano

Dear Edward

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The Apple TV+ series starring Connie Britton, written and executive produced by Jason Katims (Friday Night Lights and Parenthood) now streaming.

One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them is a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured vet returning from Afghanistan, a septuagenarian business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. And then, halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.

Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place for himself in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a piece of him has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery–one that will lead him to the answers of some of life’s most profound questions: When you’ve lost everything, how do you find yourself? How do you discover your purpose? What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live?

Dear Edward is at once a transcendent coming-of-age story, a multidimensional portrait of an unforgettable cast of characters, and a breathtaking illustration of all the ways a broken heart learns to love again.

• Dear Edward debuted at #2 on The New York Times bestseller list!
• The novel is an Editor’s Choice in The New York Times Book Review.
• Dear Edward chosen as the January 2020 Today Show #ReadwithJenna book club pick.
• The Barnes & Noble Book Club selected Dear Edward as their January 2020 book.
• Books-A-Million selected Dear Edward as their 2020 President’s Pick .
• Dear Edward chosen as a December 2019 Book of the Month.
• Dear Edward chosen as a January 2020 Indie Next Pick .
• Library Reads selected Dear Edward as their number one pick of January 2020 books .
• An Amazon Best Book of the Month for January 2020.

Author’s Note

I never thought I would write a novel about a plane crash. I’m a nervous flyer, and fictionally I’ve always gravitated more toward family drama than novels filled with crashes and explosions. But in 2010, I became obsessed with a news story about a nine-year-old Dutch boy who was the sole survivor of the crash of Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771. I couldn’t stop thinking about this child who lost everything—his parents, his brother, his entire world—in one sweeping moment. My own sons were one and three years old at the time, and I needed to believe that if they ever had to endure such a loss, they would somehow be able to go on. I wanted to think that they could go to school, make new friends, fall in love. That need to believe in a path forward after unimaginable tragedy drove me to write one for my fictional Edward.

When I started writing, I realized that Edward’s story couldn’t include just what happened to him after the crash; it also had to describe what happened in the air. The plane journey was integral to Edward, and those hours in the sky would forever remain as real to him as his new life. I decided to set the plane chapters side-by-side with those depicting the years that followed. That meant writing in detail about the crash itself. It was important to me to portray those scenes accurately, so I did extensive research to understand the factors involved in a crash: I spoke to a retired pilot, studied National Transportation Safety Board reports, and read real black box transcripts. The mechanics of what happens to the fictional flight in Dear Edward are based largely on a real crash, that of Air France Flight 447, about which I found the work of journalist Jeff Wise to be vital. (I’m grateful to Jeff and to Hearst for giving me permission to incorporate his reporting into my novel.) And some of the cockpit dialogue in Dear Edward is drawn from the true black box recording of Flight 447.

My intention was to accurately and respectfully portray the human experience of such an event, both what happens in the moment and what follows for the people left behind. I hope I have honored the real people who have inspired my fictional work: Ruben van Assouw, Pierre-Cedric Bonin, Marc Dubois, David Robert, and all the passengers aboard Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 and Air France Flight 447. The more I learned about these flights, the more my compassion for the passengers, the crew, and their loved ones grew. I hope that compassion is reflected in the story of the fictional flight 2977.

I started writing Dear Edward in an effort to discover how someone “in this case, a young boy”can learn not just to survive, but to truly live. It took me eight years to write this story. In that time, I found that the empathy of others is essential in clearing a path through grief. I hope readers of Dear Edward discover similar wells of kindness in their own lives.

–Ann Napolitano, 2019

Praise for Dear Edward

“Napolitano’s fearless examination of what took place models a way forward for all of us. She takes care not to sensationalize, presenting even the most harrowing scenes in graceful, understated prose, and gives us a powerful book about living a meaningful life during the most difficult of times.” — The New York Times

“ Dear Edward is such an optimistic diversion that you might not even notice how important and finely made it is. Never soppy, the novel provides pitch-perfect understanding of human vulnerabilities. When you’re reading, you’re deep in the pleasure of good storytelling, but when you’re done, you know that you’ve experienced a brush with literary virtuosity.” — Newsday

“Exquisite . . . an insightful and moving testament to the indomitability of the human spirit.” — People

“A delicate story of one boy’s physical and psychological recovery . . . Napolitano captures the subtle shades of Edward’s spirit like the earliest intimations of dawn. . . . Persistently lovely . . . one of the most touching stories you’re likely to read in the new year.” — The Washington Post

“With its expert pacing and picture-perfect final page, Dear Edward is a wondrous read. It is a skillful and satisfying examination of not only what it means to survive, but of what it means to truly live.” — Booklist (starred review)

“Stunning . . . In  this life affirming tale, the downright unbearable blossoms into a testament to the power of love and grace.” — Vogue

“It’s hard for a novel to thoroughly capture a reader’s attention while simultaneously meditating on profoundly complex issues. In Dear Edward , Napolitano manages to achieve this. The delicate sparseness of her prose slowly peels back the layers to reveal a warm, fulfilling center that is a true reward for readers.” — BookPage

“Dear Edward is that rare book that breaks your heart and stitches it back together during a reading experience that leaves you profoundly altered for the better. It’s about the infinitesimal difference between being a victim and being a survivor, between living and being alive. Don’t miss this one.” — Jodi Picoult, NYT bestselling author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light

“From the first page of this heartwarming and heart-wrenching novel, I was dazzled. Napolitano weaves a story that brims with humanity–with joy and sorrow, love and friendship, survival and triumph, and a cast of unforgettable characters. Dear Edward is a masterpiece that should be at the top of everyone’s reading list.” — J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Saints for All Occasions

“ Dear Edward isn’t just a beautiful novel, clear-eyed and compassionate even as it pulls us into difficult terrain. It’s an examination of what makes us human, how we survive in this mysterious world, how we take care of each other. It’s the kind of book that forces you to trust that the author, who will break your heart, will also lead you toward something wondrous, something profound. After this brilliant novel, I will follow Ann Napolitano to the ends of the earth.” — Kevin Wilson, author of  Nothing to See Here

“Outstanding, beautifully written, a compulsive read. Dear Edward is the best book about a young person I’ve read since Emma Donoghue’s Room .” — John Boyne, bestselling author of A Ladder to the Sky and The Heart’s Invisible Furies

“Ann Napolitano’s writing is astonishing. I’m in awe.” — Marian Keyes, bestselling author of The Break and The Brightest Star in the Sky

“I loved  Dear Edward  so, so much. It made me laugh and weep. So many times I had to stop after reading a paragraph to acknowledge the beauty of Ann Napolitano’s writing. In Edward, his friend Shay, and the passengers on the airplane, Napolitano offers unforgettable characters, people you know you will miss after you’ve turned the book’s last page. Magnificent!” —Lily King, author of Euphoria

“From its breathtaking premise—a boy is the sole survivor of an airplane crash—to its absolutely rhapsodic finish,  Dear Edward is about the persistence of hope, the depth of love, and the unexpected, radiant moments that make up our lives. If I loved this stunning novel any more, I’d have to marry it.” — Caroline Leavitt,  New York Times  bestselling author of  Pictures of You  and  Cruel Beautiful World

“This is a stunning novel of courage and connection in the face of unimaginable loss. It’s beautifully written, with characters so intensely alive you will hold your breath as they break your heart—an extraordinary read.” — Helen Simonson, author of  Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

“Gripping and elegaic, this is a captivating novel about loss, love and growing up.” — Rosamund Lupton, bestselling author of Sister

“Weaving past and present into a profoundly beautiful, page-turning story of mystery, loss, and wonder,  Dear Edward is a meditation on survival, but more important, it is about carving a life worth living. It is about love and hope and caring for others, and all the transitory moments that bind us together.” — Hannah Tinti, author of  The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley   and  The Good Thief

“Eddie is an ordinary twelve-year-old, until a horrific plane crash turns him into the real-life Boy Who Lived. Ann Napolitano brings clear-eyed compassion to every character in Dear Edward , from Edward himself, caught between living and merely surviving, to his fellow passengers, who don’t have that choice. The result is a rich, big-hearted tapestry that leaves no one behind. Fans of Room and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close will be spellbound by Dear Edward , which explores trauma with the same honesty and tenderness as it does the crooked path to healing.” — Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

It’s Like ‘Little Women’ — but With Basketball

In “Hello Beautiful,” Ann Napolitano puts a fresh spin on the classic story of four sisters.

Credit... Kristina Tzekova

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• Published March 11, 2023 Updated Nov. 1, 2023
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HELLO BEAUTIFUL, by Ann Napolitano

“It is your God-given right as an American fiction writer,” Ursula K. Le Guin once said, to change point of view. But “you need to know that you’re doing it,” she warned, and “some American fiction writers don’t.”

Ann Napolitano certainly does. Taken together, her four novels, published over a span of nearly two decades, might be read as a career-long experiment in point of view. Each book fits the perspectives of its vibrant characters to the moral arcs of their stories in new and beguiling ways.

Napolitano’s debut novel, “ Within Arm’s Reach ,” included no fewer than six first-person points of view across three generations of an Irish Catholic family, each rendered in present tense yet with minute differences of register and tone. She followed up with “A Good Hard Look,” which enlisted Flannery O’Connor as part of a rich ensemble cast rendered in a close third person that perfectly suits the book’s themes of estrangement and desire.

Napolitano’s blockbuster third novel, “ Dear Edward ,” took more technical risks with point of view. One timeline roams through the cabin of an airplane in a daringly head-hopping third person as the doomed jet hurtles toward its fate. The relentless switches in perspective channel the unfolding catastrophe — until finally the narrative mirror breaks, and “the cockpit voice recorder stops” along with the little world the author has built inside the fuselage. The second timeline features the single point of view of Edward, the crash’s sole survivor, who floats in an eerie present tense between memory and oblivion.

There is a silent alchemy to point of view. The unsettling omniscience at the opening of Celeste Ng’s “ Little Fires Everywhere ,” the sublime rupture of perspective delivered a third of the way through Sarah Waters’s “ Fingersmith ”: In the hands of a great novelist, point of view can transport us from an eagle’s eye to a child’s mind to a victim’s dying thoughts in a flash.

“Hello Beautiful,” Napolitano’s radiant and brilliantly crafted new novel, begins in 1960 with the birth of a boy — though with an immediately tragic twist that is also a negation: “For the first six days of William Waters’s life, he was not an only child.” Though William himself won’t come to understand its implications for many years, the childhood death of his older sister will go on to shape his life in fundamental ways. His relationship with his shattered parents is cold and distant; he’s stuck with a mother who scarcely listens when he speaks, and a heartbreakingly remote father (“With his daughter gone, the man’s face never opened again”). By the time William leaves for college, he understands “that they’d only ever had one child, and it wasn’t him.”

William finds refuge and kin in basketball. First spotted by a gym teacher in fifth grade, and talented (and tall) enough by his freshman year to start for the varsity team, he eventually wins a scholarship to Northwestern University, and goes on to spend the rest of his life in Chicago — though “Hello Beautiful” isn’t a typical sports novel, tracing the predictable arc of an elite athlete’s triumph, downfall and redemption. William’s basketball career is sidetracked by mediocrity, failure and devastating injury, but it’s also buoyed by lifelong camaraderie with teammates who will help sustain him through his most difficult moments.

William’s fortunes turn for the better with his marriage to Julia, eldest of the four Padavano sisters, whose warm family offers him the kind of raucous and love-filled life his aloof parents could never provide. At the same time, Julia, a perfectionist with a 10-year plan, has certain expectations for William (perhaps he’ll be a writer, perhaps a professor) that set him up for another kind of failure.

At first all seems well, thanks in no small part to the warmhearted Sylvie, Julia’s bookishly romantic sister, who envisions herself as the impassioned heroine of a 19th-century novel and finds a model for later maturity in Walt Whitman’s “different attempts at excellence and beauty as he aged and loved and reconsidered everything.”

In a marvelous early scene, Julia and her sisters argue over their parallels to the fictional March girls in “Little Women.” As the eldest and most practical, Julia seems the logical Meg, though she and Sylvie both claim themselves as “the feisty Jo, and they were both right.” This is a clear sign of trouble, as is the scene’s hint of tragedy to come: “Whenever any of the sisters was sick or forlorn, she’d declare herself Beth. One of us will be the first to die , they would take turns telling one another, and all four girls shuddered at the thought.”

The italicized truism does its work, darkening the sisters’ youthful exuberance with misfortunes on the novel’s horizons both near and distant: an attempted suicide, alienation and betrayal, divorce, disease, early death. These are recurring themes in Napolitano’s work, which resists the easy satisfactions of the sentimental and never settles for simple answers to emotional predicaments faced by her characters.

Such quandaries help frame the book’s elegant structure. Chapters move along in the braided perspectives of William, Julia and Sylvie in an unvarying pattern that breaks only at the novel’s midpoint, as William and Julia’s marriage falls apart. Julia twice leaves us for seven chapters at a time, during her self-imposed exile from the Chicago Padavanos for a new life and successful career in New York with Alice, the daughter she shares with William.

Though only a handful of chapters come from Alice’s point of view, the first lands like an emotional grenade, beginning with a brutal if necessary fable about her origins and estrangement from her father — a lie Julia will repeat throughout her childhood. Upon hearing it for the first time, the little girl, only 5, reacts with the kind of understated stolidity she has inherited from William: “Alice put down her spoon and said, ‘Oh.’”

Though William gets the plurality of chapters, he is the haziest character of the bunch, adept in the game of emotional distancing taught him by his parents. At times, like his best friend and former teammate Kent, you want to shake the guy by the shoulders and show him everything he has going for him. “You can’t hide love,” Kent warns; William will learn this lesson too slowly. By the end of the novel (no spoilers), William is allowed to break through the emotional chrysalis Napolitano has created for him, finding a potential source of resilience in the very tragedies that have narrowed his life.

In a poignant final scene, he observes that sometimes we need a change in perspective to show us the difficult truths of our own stories — and to help us understand the limits of our own outlooks and angles on the world. Here, just as the novel resolves its key emotional conflict, Napolitano comments slyly on the affective capacity of shifting point of view.

Sometimes, William Waters says, “we need another pair of eyes.”

Bruce Holsinger teaches at the University of Virginia. His most recent novel is “The Displacements.”

HELLO BEAUTIFUL | By Ann Napolitano | 400 pp. | The Dial Press | $28

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Grab a tissue and get emotional with 'Dear Edward'

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Colin O'Brien stars in the Apple TV+ series Dear Edward. Apple TV+ hide caption

Colin O'Brien stars in the Apple TV+ series Dear Edward.

In the Apple TV+ series Dear Edward, a plane crashes, and there is only one survivor – a 12-year-old boy named Edward, who loses his whole family. He goes to live with relatives, and the web of people grieving loved ones who died in the crash grows and connects. The show was created by Jason Katims, who has a long history making high-octane emotional ensemble shows including Friday Night Lights and Parenthood .

What Jas Reads

A Review: “Dear Edward” by Ann Napolitano

I received this book as an add-on for a Book of the Month box. With mostly positive reviews on Goodreads , I had high hopes for this novel, but unfortunately, this one missed the mark for me.

“Dear Edward” is the story of Edward, a 12 year old boy who is the sole survivor of a plane crash. His parents and brother were victims, and in one moment, he lost his whole world. The book’s chapters bounce between different perspectives of Edward in the “present” — which takes place after the crash and his aunt and uncle take him in — and the “past” of going through airport security and what took place during the flight, using different points of view from various passengers. This hodge-podge of characters’ thoughts ultimately did not add much to the story. If anything, it made me connect less with all of them, including Edward.

My Verdict: “Dear Edward” by Ann Napolitano is Not Worth Reading

At 336 pages, the book was not super long but seemed to drag on in the middle. I kept wondering what the point of everything was. I felt bad for Edward as he had to adjust to a new home and new guardians (his aunt and uncle) while missing his family. There is some mention of him missing his brother and mom, but not much about his dad. During the flight, his mother sat in first class away from the rest of her family, which I found odd. Maybe it was explained at some point during the book, but I didn’t catch it. The only bright spot in Edward’s life is meeting his neighbor Shay who is around his age. They become best friends, and she is convinced that he has some sort of special powers like Harry Potter.

What muddled this book was some of the language used. I guess, it’s just the author’s writing style, but at multiple points throughout the book I felt like Edward did not really act like a 12 year old boy, nor did he have 12-year-old-boy thoughts. Sure, it could have been from dealing with the crash and grieving for his family, but throughout the book, he quickly grows into a young man, ending with him and Shay graduating from high school.

Spoiler alert! Do not read further if you are planning on reading this novel.

Ultimately, the book ends with Shay and Edward sharing their first kiss at 18 years old. There is a brief explanation that 10 years later, their daughter will be born. I thought this was a sweet ending, but I honestly did not get the feeling that Shay liked Edward romantically. There were a few moments where Edward notices she has developed breasts and has started looking more like a young woman, and he blushes a few times talking with her. But other than that, this was not a YA love story.

Additionally, the other characters on the flight were just so strange to me and seemed more like props in an attempt to make the story more interesting. There was a beautiful flight attendant one of the passengers hooks up with in the bathroom. There was also a closeted homosexual soldier returning from duty who was in love with another soldier in his platoon. It wasn’t clear whether the other soldier actually loved him in return. Another character was a woman who discovered she was pregnant while on the flight. I’m sorry, but if I suspect I’m pregnant, I’m not going to take a pregnancy test in an airplane bathroom. I just wouldn’t want that to be the memory I have later on in life. And then there was another woman who had been married a bunch of times who was trying to get out of an abusive relationship. She believed in reincarnation and that she had lived several lifetimes. It was just very strange, and I think her character was just there to describe the pregnant woman because they sat beside each other. There were about 190 people on the flight, but the author chose these particular characters to portray. I guess, I just wasn’t feeling it.

Of course, I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading this book! However, you may want to skip this one if you are looking for something more along the lines of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. As always, thanks so much for reading! If you’ve read this book, let me know what you thought of it!

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Dear Edward : Book summary and reviews of Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

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Dear Edward

by Ann Napolitano

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Published Jan 2020 352 pages Genre: Literary Fiction Publication Information

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About this book

Book summary.

A twelve-year-old boy struggles with the worst kind of fame - as the sole survivor of a notorious plane crash - in a heart-wrenching and life-affirming novel for readers of Small Great Things , Little Fires Everywhere, and The Immortalists .

What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live?  One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured vet returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor. Edward's story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place for himself in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a piece of him has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery—one that will lead him to the answers of some of life's most profound questions: When you've lost everything, how do find yourself? How do you discover your purpose?  Dear Edward is at once a transcendent coming-of-age story, a multidimensional portrait of an unforgettable cast of characters, and a breathtaking illustration of all the ways a broken heart learns to love again.

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Reader reviews.

"With its expert pacing and picture-perfect final page, Dear Edward is a wondrous read. It is a skillful and satisfying examination of not only what it means to survive, but of what it means to truly live." - Booklist (starred review) "Edward's intolerable losses and his eventual brave recovery is at first melancholy, but by the end, readers will feel a comforting sense of solace. Napolitano's depiction of the nuances of post-trauma experiences is fearless, compassionate, and insightful." - Publishers Weekly "As one might expect, there is a ray of light for Edward at the end of the tunnel, and for hardier readers this will make Napolitano's novel a story of hope. Well-written and insightful but so heartbreaking that it raises the question of what a reader is looking for in fiction." - Kirkus Reviews "Edward's father used mathematics to 'tie together pieces of the universe'; Ann Napolitano uses words to do the same in Dear Edward—a dazzling, tender novel about sorrow and despair, resilience and great love." - Shelf Awareness "Penetrating...What makes this narrative so effective is its alternating between the ordinary events unfolding on the flight and the aftermath of the crash...[A] vivid story of one boy's coming of age redirected by tragedy." - Library Journal "Ann Napolitano's new novel is the best book about a young person I've read since Emma Donoghue's Room , and if there's any justice in the world, it's going to be a phenomenon: outstanding storytelling, great writing, absolutely The Real Deal." - John Boyne, bestselling author of The Heart's Invisible Furies "From its breathtaking premise—a boy is the sole survivor of an airplane crash—to its absolutely rhapsodic finish, Dear Edward is about the persistence of hope, the depth of love, and the unexpected, radiant moments that make up our lives. If I loved this stunning novel any more, I'd have to marry it." - Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World "From the first page of this heartwarming and heart-wrenching novel, I was dazzled. Napolitano weaves a story that brims with humanity—with joy and sorrow, love and friendship, survival and triumph, and a cast of unforgettable characters. Dear Edward is a masterpiece that should be at the top of everyone's reading list." - J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Saints for All Occasions

Author Information

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Ann Napolitano Author Biography

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Ann Napolitano is the author of Dear Edward , which was an instant New York Times bestseller, a Read with Jenna selection, and is now an Apple TV+ series. She is also the author of the novels A Good Hard Look and Within Arm's Reach . For seven years, Napolitano was the associate editor of the literary magazine One Story , and she received an MFA from New York University. She has taught fiction writing at Brooklyn College's MFA program, New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and Gotham Writers Workshop.

Author Interview Link to Ann Napolitano's Website

Name Pronunciation Ann Napolitano: na-poll-ih-TAH-no (first syllable like 'ap' in apple)

Other books by Ann Napolitano at BookBrowse

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Dear Edward

60 pages • 2 hours read

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Part 1, Chapters 3-5

Part 1, Chapters 6-8

Part 1, Chapters 9-10

Part 2, Chapters 1-3

Part 2, Chapters 4-6

Part 2, Chapters 7-10

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Part 3, Chapters 4-7

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Summary and Study Guide

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano was published in 2020. It is the story of a 12-year-old boy who is the lone survivor of a plane crash that kills 191 others, including his family. As Edward struggles to cope with the tragedy , letters from others affected by the crash spark a journey of healing and self-discovery. Although the novel is fiction, it was inspired by true events.

Ann Napolitano is a resident of New York City. After earning her Master of Fine Arts from New York University, she began teaching in several fiction writing programs, including NYU, Brooklyn College, and Gotham Writers Workshop. Before Dear Edward , she authored two other novels, A Good Hard Look and Within Arm’s Reach .

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Dear Edward takes place in two timelines: Edward’s life after the crash is interspersed with flashbacks to the hours before the tragedy. Both timelines are in the present tense; the third-person prose is omniscient , as it explores the experiences and emotions of many characters.

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Edward Adler and his family—his parents and his older brother, Jordan—board Flight 2977 from Newark, New Jersey, to Los Angeles. They are moving from their home in New York City for his mother’s writing career. Before reaching its destination, Flight 2977 crashes. Everyone but Edward dies. After recovering from his injuries, Edward moves in with his aunt and uncle, Lacey and John. Edward becomes disturbed to learn that he is meant to stay in the house’s nursery; the room sits empty after Lacey suffered multiple miscarriages.

Edward meets his neighbor, Besa, and her daughter, Shay . Immediately drawn to Shay, Edward visits her at home that night and finds that he is finally able to fall asleep. Edward continues to sleep on her bedroom floor nightly. Edward becomes a celebrity because of the crash. After his first day of public school, students and strangers trying to touch him and take photos bombard Edward. When his family’s belongings arrive at his new home, Edward begins wearing his and Jordan’s old clothes. Months later, the boyfriend of Linda Stollen , who died on the flight, approaches Edward after school. Edward recognizes the man’s pain, and he begins to understand the wide-reaching nature of the crash.

After arriving in Washington, DC, for a hearing to learn more about the crash, Edward’s anxiety overwhelms him, and he decides not to attend. John goes in his stead. Edward finds out that an artist built a memorial to the tragedy at the crash site, but he chooses not to attend its unveiling.

Two years after the crash, Besa tells Edward that he can no longer sleep on Shay’s floor, which devastates him. He feels distant from his only friend and further isolates himself. While on a walk alone one night, Edward enters John’s garage. Inside, he finds folders with pictures of the plane crash victims and two locked duffel bags.

Edward and Shay open the bags to find piles of letters from people who lost loved ones on Flight 2977. They are all addressed to Edward, and most of them make requests for Edward to pursue the hobbies and lifestyles of those who died. Edward and Shay find a letter from a man named Jax, whose businessman brother died on the flight and left him seven million dollars. Jax includes a check for the same amount, but Edward doesn’t decide if he’ll accept the money.

Edward and Shay take a bus to New York City to meet Mahira, Jordan’s secret girlfriend at the time of the crash. After returning to the garage, Shay falls asleep, and Edward feels his first romantic attraction to her. When John finds them, he confesses that he hid the letters to protect Edward. After learning Jax has died, Edward asks for Lacey and John’s help in using the money to benefit the people who wrote him letters. The family also repurposes the empty nursery.

The final letter Edward opens is from the paramedic who rescued him in the plane wreckage. In the novel’s epilogue, Edward and Shay drive to the crash memorial site. Seeing the healed landscape allows Edward to find closure. Readers learn that Edward and Shay will start a family together years later.

Chapters that take place on Flight 2977 intercut the plot. These chapters explore the lives and problems of several other passengers; they work to deepen the themes and foreshadow the experiences of Edward’s journey. 

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Book Club Questions for Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

This post contains links to products that I may receive compensation from at no additional cost to you. View my Affiliate Disclosure page here .

Book club questions for Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano covers all the key events and themes in this moving coming-of-age story. There will be spoilers so for more context about the book, check out my spoiler-free review . 

Dear Edward was inspired by the true story of Ruben Van Assouw, the sole survivor of a plane crash in 2010. In this interview with Library Journal , the author Ann Napolitano explains why the story grabbed her:

I think I couldn’t let go because I was both deeply worried about Ruben and deeply curious about how he could go on after such a terrible tragedy. His aunt and uncle did an amazing job of protecting Ruben’s privacy once he was released from the hospital, but that meant I couldn’t know that he became okay. I had to create a set of circumstances under which a little boy in that situation could believably become a whole person, in spite of—or even because of—what he’d lost. I needed him to be okay, so I had to write my way into believing that was possible.

The synopsis: 

One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.

Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a part of himself has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery—one that will lead him to the answers of some of life’s most profound questions: When you’ve lost everything, how do you find the strength to put one foot in front of the other? How do you learn to feel safe again? How do you find meaning in your life?

Dear Edward is at once a transcendent coming-of-age story, a multidimensional portrait of an unforgettable cast of characters, and a breathtaking illustration of all the ways a broken heart learns to love again.

Book Club Questions for Dear Edward

• The story starts off when the Adler family arrives to Newark airport to board a flight from New Jersey to LA. It’s very mundane. But, we the readers, know that all the characters are soon heading to tragedy. Let’s talk about this opening chapter.
• The characters we meet in this chapter are: Bruce and Jane Alder (Edward’s parents); his brother Jordan; Crispin Cox, an elderly wealthy man; Linda Stollen, a young pregnant woman; Florida, a hippie woman running away from domestic life; Benjamin Stillman, a complicated military vet; Mark Lassio, a brash businessman and Veronica, a flight attendant. What was your initial impression of all these characters?
• The story alternates between the plane ride and the aftermath. What did you think about this writing style of the different timelines? Were you more engaged with one timeline over the other? 
• After the crash, Edward stays with his aunt Lacey and Uncle John. But it’s a somewhat awkward and stilted dynamic. Let’s talk about their dynamic at the beginning of the novel. Do you think the constant grief and memories of loved ones is a reason why they all were so closed off to each other?
• Edward is depressed and can’t sleep. He goes to his next door neighbor’s house where Shay, a girl his age, lives and ends up sleeping on her floor for a long time. Why do you think Edward was more comfortable with Shay than being with anyone else?
• Let’s talk about the dynamics of Edward and Shay. How did they both find solace with each other? 
• Of all the plane passengers, which storyline were you most engaged with? Which one the least?
• Gary, who is Linda’s boyfriend, drives across the country to meet with Edward. He hopes that maybe Edward had seen or interacted with Linda on the flight. After that, Edward and Shay discover hundreds of letters addressed to Edward from the family and spouses of loved ones who perished on the flight. This is a really key section so let’s break it down more. First, why do you think they all felt a need to write letters to Edward? What did Edward represent them?
• Why do you think it was important for the people to tell Edward to become what their loved ones couldn’t do (such as write a novel, move to London, become a standup comedian, etc.)? What they’re really asking for Edward is to continue their loved ones legacy—let’s talk about it. 
• When Edward reads the letters, it’s understandably a lot but is also eventually provides a bit of closure for him. Why do you think those letters had that impact on him?
• Toward the end of the novel, Edward runs into his therapist and he mentions he still thinks about the crash all the time. His therapist says to him: “What happened to you is baked into your bones, Edward…what you’ve been working on, since the first time I met you, is learning to live with that.” Let’s discuss this. 
• Edward and Shay eventually go back to the crash site in Colorado. We also learn of that future together. Let’s talk about the ending. 

What to Read Next

Hope you enjoyed book club questions for Dear Edward ! Here are some more recommendations along with links to book club questions. 

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler

In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who’s headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans—a family with new money and a secretly troubled teenage daughter—raze the house and trees next door to build themselves a showplace.

With little in common except a property line, these two families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie’s yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers. A Good Neighborhood asks big questions about life in America today—what does it mean to be a good neighbor? How do we live alongside each other when we don’t see eye to eye?—as it explores the effects of class, race, and heartrending love in a story that’s as provocative as it is powerful.

You can order the book on Amazon here . Check out my book club questions here . 

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come.

Ask Again, Yes is a deeply affecting exploration of the lifelong friendship and love that blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next 40 years. Luminous, heartbreaking, and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story, while haunted by echoes from the past, is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace.

Happy reading!

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‘Dear Edward,’ Adapting a Hit Novel, Can’t Find Its Way Out of Grief: TV Review

By Daniel D'Addario

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“ Dear Edward ” is the sort of show that makes you understand why the great middle — the set of works that don’t feature aliens or superheroes, and that are intended for grown-up audiences — has fallen out of the theatrical moviegoing business. That’s because in any era other than this one, this smart but unshapely literary adaptation, full of good intentions and interesting characters but bloated beyond recognition at 10 hours, would have been a comparatively lithe movie.

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Lacey’s storyline is nicely drawn, with Schilling getting the opportunity to show real range: She is simultaneously grieving her sister, adjusting to a new and unsteady arrival in her home, and pondering whether this might, after years of fertility struggles, be the version of parenthood she gets to experience. But other corners of the show feel less successful and not entirely germane. It grows hard to understand what various other loved ones of crash victims have to do with the story — or, really, what the story is.

Other of the storylines more directly address characters’ sorrow but fail to hold attention for different reasons, including, perhaps, that there simply isn’t much of an organizing idea to the show. Without the connective tissue that makes us understand what these characters mean to one another aside from shared experience through coincidence, it feels uneasily random. Anytime it leaves Edward’s side, it doesn’t give us much justification beyond the fact that it’s time to move.

The only performer who seems to be having much fun is Connie Britton , who devours scenery as Dee Dee, the widow of a crash victim who is, in bereavement, discovering things she never knew about the nature of her marriage. Outfitted in a big tri-state accent and even bigger hair, Britton, a collaborator of Katims’ on “Friday Night Lights,” is as close as this series gets to an outright good time — a welcome dose of levity, given the indignities her character is suffering. And in Britton’s corner of the series, at least, other characters do intersect in a grief support group. But Dee Dee’s grasping nature, seeking to prolong the conversation and to know her fellow sufferers better, feels less like a character beat than a neglected warning for the show itself. The connections around Dee Dee flicker away before much can be drawn from them.

If the characters are to be this siloed, other structures suggest themselves — why not an anthology series, in which each week brings us a little story of hurt and healing? Instead, undifferentiated emotion runs together, anchored by a boy who’s more symbol than person. O’Brien is assigned a task that would challenge any actor, and clears the bar, although certain elements of Edward’s wise-child persona rankled even so. (Late in the series, my ear twitched at hearing this preteen describe himself as having lived through a “fugue state.”) This fairly undisciplined television show stretches Edward’s story to its limit, but O’Brien renders well the character’s humanity, his confusion, his guilt and desire for a moment’s break from pain. All of this is recognizable and real. It’s not that the rest of “Dear Edward” isn’t, exactly, but the endless juxtaposition dulls the impact of any one character beat. It all just comes to feel like so much confusing and overly complicated incident — a shame, given how strong and evocative are the story’s fundamentals. One might, in another era, have even called them cinematic.

“Dear Edward” will premiere the first three episodes of its first season on Friday, February 3, on Apple TV+, with new episodes to follow weekly.

Apple TV+. Ten episodes (all screened for review).

• Production: Executive producers: Jason Katims, Jeni Mulein, Ann Napolitano, Fisher Stevens.
• Cast: Colin O’Brien, Connie Britton, Taylor Schilling , Amy Forsyth, Eva Ariel Binder, Brittany S. Hall, Idris Debrand, Carter Hudson, Maxwell Jenkins, Jenna Qureshi, Audrey Corsa, Anna Uzele, Ivan Shaw, Dario Ladani Sanchez.

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Dear England review – touching, funny retelling of Gareth Southgate’s quiet revolution

National Theatre, London It’s a game of two halves, but James Graham’s dramatisation of Southgate rescuing a languishing England team delivers tension and movement

J ames Graham’s story of the beautiful game and the travails of the England squad has some beautiful moments. It traces the team’s fortunes from the moment their diffident, upstanding and quietly revolutionary manager, Gareth Southgate (Joseph Fiennes, bearing an uncanny resemblance), comes into their lives.

It traces real world events, from penalty shootouts that bring a life-like tension to the aftermath of losing a game. The meat of the play is Southgate’s inspirational leadership of an England squad that’s languishing when he first takes over, and to which he gives new life, leading the team all the way to the semi-finals in the 2018 World Cup and onwards.

But as endearing as it is, the production, directed by Rupert Goold, takes time to really lift off the ground, focusing on story rather than drama in the first half – and it does seem like a game of two halves.

Southgate brings the psychologist, Pippa Grange (Gina McKee), into their training sessions and for a little too long there are fairly static classroom scenes showing Pippa and Southgate encouraging the lads to keep journals, to talk about their fear, to face it. It is touching, and has some very funny lines too, but lacks quite enough drama or conflict, despite Es Devlin’s incredible set – luminous ovals simply yet excellently signifying a stadium, and plenty of movement within it.

Better known for fictionalising the power play in politics, Graham cannot resist infusing football with politics too, with comic cameos from the likes of Theresa May and Boris Johnson, which are very amusing, almost Spitting Image-style imitations.

There are quick glances to the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement too, along with an interrogation of Englishness and the flag – a little too brief though. Racism – within the footballing community or between team members – is touched upon rather than explored.

There are not enough dramatic moments in the first half that grip: it is 50 minutes in, when Southgate recalls his terror at taking and missing a penalty in the Euro 96 semi-finals, that we feel we enter into his emotional world. We want and need more of this – and perhaps more conflict and drama between players themselves – rather than the Dead Poets Society-style “seize the moment” lectures.

Fiennes’s Southgate is slightly geeky, full of earnestness and quiet integrity, and channels more than just an impersonation. But we never really get beneath the skin of Southgate even though he is almost ever-present on stage. We only get snatches of his backstory – such as how he fell in love with the game by kicking a ball against a wall as a kid in Crawley.

The players themselves are endearingly drawn, with actors doing very keen imitations of their real-life counterparts in the first half. Together they represent a group of talented, accidentally funny, immature boys rather than men in the first half, but gain individuality and depth in the second.

The second act as a whole brings more emotional drama over simply telling the squad’s story. The players come to life too, from the sweet, laconic Harry Kane (Will Close) to impassioned Raheem Sterling (Kel Matsena) and good-natured Marcus Rashford (Darragh Hand). We see them in their most nerve-racking moments of penalty-taking – the exhilaration or sense of failure afterwards – and the play implicitly unpicks a kind of masculinity that asks the men to swallow down their difficult emotions.

In Southgate’s reshaping of the squad, we also see something of a re-appraisal of what makes a good leader, too: he is the opposite of the strongman, and his argument is against strongman leadership.

There is power in seeing the story of football told on the biggest stage of the National Theatre , with rousing moments in the second half, and it is beautiful from start to finish in its optics. So it scores, ultimately, even if it does not quite bend it like Beckham.

Plays until 11 August at the National Theatre

• Gareth Southgate

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