Sky Daddy

Folk (Out There, a story collection) fuses Moby-Dick with J.G. Ballard’s Crash for a blistering debut novel about a woman’s sexual and mortal obsession with airplanes. “Call me Linda,” begins the narrator, who rides the AirTrain around San Francisco’s airport to lust after fuselage and marvel at wingspans when she’s not busy toiling as a content moderator for a social media platform. Her job entails training the AI that will eventually replace her, but she’s not worried about the future, so long as she can fulfill her dream of “marriage” to a plane (she hopes to consummate her passion with a “big boy” passenger jet in a fiery crash, “a carnage that would meld our souls for eternity”). Recognizing that her plan might take time, given the low probability of plane crashes and her limited funds for air travel, she tries dating pilots, the next best thing, and her spirits briefly soar after she finds pilotdate.net. Unfortunately, her only matches are bots and imposters, causing her to swear off men in favor of a plane’s “aluminum embrace.” Still, while on a flight to Houston, she’s turned on enough by the jet’s “girthy central spine” to fool around with her ketamine-addled colleague Dave, and their actions have surprising and farcical consequences. The allure of an inanimate object has seldom been so touchingly rendered than in Folk’s wry, tender, and sweetly odd narrative. It’s an unforgettable ode to the pursuit of desire. Agent: Emma Patterson, Brandt & Hochman. (Apr.)