Landing Gear Reading Group Guide

Questions for Discussion

1. How did the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajkull, in 2010 mark a turning point
in the lives of Harriet, Michael, J ack, and Emily? Was the eruption a catalyst for change in these
characters lives, or a symbol of the changes to come?
2. Parenting is a complex theme in the novel. How does Harriet act as a mother figure to Emily
before they actually meet? How is this different from the relationships between Harriet and J ack,
and Emily and her adoptive father? How does the bond between Michael and J ack compare to
the one between Michael and Yacub?
3. Consider characters aging in Landing Gear: how are Harriet and Michael feeling their age
throughout the novel? How do J ack and Emily approach and/or achieve adulthood over the
course of the book? How does Yacub?
4. Do you think its luck, coincidence, or fate that guides the characters of the novel, for
example, as J ack narrowly avoids taking the drugs that killed David McDonald, and Yacub
misses the airlift back to Pakistan? Explain your reasoning.
5. How does the use of technology, such as Facebook, email, and text messaging, advance the
story?
6. Michael and Harriet each experience their own version of a midlife crisis. Why does Michael
choose this time to take things further with Marina, when hes had several opportunities over the
years? Why does Harriet choose to contact George Sigo just as her life is falling apart?
7. What kind of man do you think J ack will grow up to be? How have the events of the novel
have accelerated him into adulthood?
8. Who's the hero of this story? Does Yacub save this family, or do they save him? What about
Emily?
9. How does friendship play a role in the novels events? Consider the different kinds of
friendship: Barry and Harriet, Yacub and J ack, and Michael and Marina.
10. Yacub says during his first interview for Emilys documentary: The Smiths took me in.
They have been so kind to me. Its as though because they were at war with each other. How
did Yacubs arrival provide relief to Harriet and her family?
11. J ack calls Ruby the Essence of Girl. What does Ruby represent to J ack? How does she
change him?
12. How does Emilys documentary affect each of the characters? How does the process provide
closure for each of them?
13. One of the main themes of the novel is how we make our own families. Consider how
Harriet denied herself her own family as Emily was denied hers: why does she do this? How
does this change when Harriet builds her own family with Michael and J ack? How do you think
Yacub would define his family?
14. Think about the title, Landing Gear: how have each of the characters landed in their own
way?

Enhancing Your Book Club

1.Explore FlightPaths.net with your book club, the original networked novel that was an early
incarnation of Landing Gear. What has changed in the final novel? What is delivered in the
digital platform that isnt in the novel?
2. Visit KatePullinger.com to learn more about the author, her other projects, and her blog.
3. Consider what a documentary of your lifes major events might look like: what scenes would
you include? Who would you interview? What would you consider for a title?

A Conversation with Kate Pullinger

You say in your authors note that you first came across the stories of landing gear
stowaways in an article in The Guardian newspaper in 2001. What was it about that
article that stuck with you? What made you want to explore it further?

Sometimes I read something that really strikes a chord for me, and that chord reverberates for a
long timeIve had this happen with the inspiration behind other novels and stories. The
original article was so interesting; the journalists journeyed to Pakistan to attempt to figure out
who the man was, they interviewed his family, they looked at the phenomenon of airplane
stowaways. For me, it was the image of this man falling into the parking lot of an upscale
supermarket in a wealthy part of London juxtaposed with his aspirations as a migrantto fall to
your death in the very place you long to bethat I found so tragic and compelling. Once I had
the idea that my stowaway would survive, the story wouldnt go away.

In doing research for the book, did you come across any facts or stories of particular
importance to you that did not make it into the final draft? Would you share some with us?

The research into airplane stowaways led me on to research about the vast numbers of people
who are attempting, often failing and, worse, dying in the process, to move around the globe in
search of better lives, but none of that was suitable for the book. I was also invited to Pakistan
while I was writing the book to run creative writing workshops in Karachi and Lahore. In
Pakistan I found an amazing, large, vibrant, and sophisticated middle class that does not conform
in any way to the stereotypes of Pakistanis that exist in our media, where they are most often
depicted as either downtrodden or extremist. While Yacub is not a member of that well-educated,
media-savvy Pakistan, I hope that my expanded understanding of what it means to be Pakistani
in the twenty-first century helped with developing him as a character.

Framing the novel through the lens of Emilys film gave the story a sense of completeness
and harmony. How did you decide to give Emily this obsession with her documentary and
filming? Did you know how central it would become to the story?

Initially, my idea was that someone filmed Yacubs fall accidentally, because we capture so
much of life on film nowusually on our phones. The character of Emily developed from that
the moment where Harriet finds the still image that Emily has tweeted of Yacub falling was one
of the first scenes I wrote in the novel. So, no, I didnt know how central it would become, but
one thing led to another.

With your background in both digital and traditional print platforms, why did you want to
turn Flights Paths into a novel? What could you express in these pages that you couldnt in
the previous life of this project?

From when I first started working on Flight Paths I knew I would also write a novel. I felt that
the story was bigger than what we were able to do in Flight Paths. Although I love working in
digital media, I love the novel and the way that the novel has room for layers of psychological
depth and insightthe way people think. No other art form can do that.

How do you think American readers may approach the story differently from British
readers? What might be lost on them? What about the story is universal?

I hope that the story is universal. Apart from UK vs. Canadian vs. US spelling, there were only a
few very minor changes that I made for the American edition. There was one instance where the
word jumper, meaning sweater or pullover, was confusing. And then there is the joke that
Michael makes to himself about the phrase dress pants which is truly hilarious to an English
personsnazzy underwear is probably the nearest translation. I also had to do a fair amount of
work to clarify the scenario of a typical constituency ballot count on an election night in
Britainthere really is a Monster Raving Loony Party that fields candidates across the country
in the same way that the Conservative Party does! But Id be very interested to hear the views of
American readers on the story in the larger sense, if there is anything that really does not make
sense.

Emilys day job is in the mildly ridiculous world of reality television: what interests you
about reality television? How do you think this phenomenon has changed our expectations
of real life, as Jack experiences in his expectations for dating Ruby compared to the real
thing?

One of the things that amazes me about reality TV is that so many people agree to take part in it!
I also think that it is tough in television now for documentary-makers, in the old-school sense, to
survive in the face of the plethora of reality TV formats. The best reality TV does function as
documentary (in the UK there is a reality TV series set in an Emergency department in a large
London hospital that is a truly extraordinary view into life and death) while the worst . . . well,
we all know what that kind of TV does, and why we watch it. I think reality TV might have an
effect on the expectations of young peopleteenagers in particularbut that once youve lived
a little you soon realize that life is not like it is on TV, and that reality TV is a crafted and edited
narrative.

With such a wide cast of characters in this novel, how did you start to develop each
character? Do you start with their background stories, or is there another entry point for
you?

I had Yacub and Harriet pretty firmly developed because of Flight Paths. If Harriet was at the
supermarket shopping, she needed to have a family to shop for. Why was she shopping in the
middle of the daywas she unemployed? And Yacub, tucked up in the wheel wellwhy would
anyone think that was a good idea? So with Landing Gear, having these two characters already
in place allowed me entry into their worlds, their families, their backstories.

Youve created a lovely, diverse cast of characters in Landing Gear. Which character was
the most challenging to write? Which was your favorite?

J ack was challenging because hes a teenager and it is very easy to get teen culture badly wrong.
However, my secret weapon there was my own teenage son: if I begged him, hed give me
snippets of info. Yacub was challenging, of course, because his experience is so far from my
own. I dont have a favorite, but I really enjoyed writing the scenes where J ack and Yacub are
together: they are like mirrors of each other, really, from their names to their differing heights
J ack is too tall, Yacub is smaller than the average Swatito their family circumstances.

As you say in your authors note, this novel started from something that you had read
about in the news: why did you choose to interweave the story of Harriet and Emily and
Jack with the falling man? Why not just tell Yacubs story?

If you fall out of a plane onto a car, that car belongs to somebody. If you witness a man falling
out of the sky, your life will be altered in some fundamental way. One story leads to another.

Your last novel, The Mistress of Nothing, was based on historical figures. How was writing
this contemporary family novel different from writing historical fiction? What are the
challenges of each?

While I never find writing a novel a straightforward task, Landing Gear was much easier to write
than The Mistress of Nothing. The latter required a huge amount of historical research into areas
I knew nothing aboutEgypt in the nineteenth century, Egyptian Islam in the nineteenth
century, English domestic servants. I even attempted to learn some Arabic. And when you are
writing a novel based on historical figures, it is important to make the details of their lives as
accurate as possible. For Landing Gear there was very little research in comparison. As well as
that, because Id been developing the story for many years, I knew the characters well. Landing
Gear was a walk in the park compared to The Mistress of Nothing.