‘Into the Current,’ by Jared Young
A young man’s life flashes before his eyes while suspended in time and space
Jet flying Daniel Solomon is somewhere in the stratosphere between Tokyo and Bangkok when he is jilted awake by a catastrophic midair event. There’s a loud FTANG as each seat holding a passenger is, “Detached, ejected, flung aside, plunging, gone.”
Trying to comprehend what is happening, Daniel is suddenly catapulted thousands of metres above the earth while still strapped to his seat. Then everything freezes in place. “The plane, the flames, the smoke, the clouds, the wind, the waves, the rotation of the earth…,” just stops.
“But that, my love, isn’t even the weird part,” writes Canadian author, Jared Young. The narration unfolds with
past memories sporadically relived– which take the form of a letter imagined by Daniel to an unnamed figure, whose identity is only revealed at the end. Daniel discovers what it means to have your life flash before your eyes while stranded in the sky. He dives into the past and re-experiences memories. But what’s odd is that Daniel can control these memories, and manipulate his movements, although he is helpless to change the present.
In this time-capsule, sometimes it’s the moments we don’t always expect that define us. Memories are pieced together to paint a picture of the main character. The gravity-defying novel comes packed with elaborate fantasies, sometimes reflections on relationships, friendships, sad childhood events, death, regrets and “what if’s.”
We learn Daniel has been deported from Thailand after political turmoil in the country, plus he is suffering the agonizing pain from taking a merciless beating, and he has left Carrie Franklin, pregnant. These are the main events that led him to take this (doomed) flight, now wreckage in the sky.
After glancing back over his 23-year span, he begins to understand the plethora of potentially life-altering events and connections he overlooked along the way. His journey ends, where all true journeys should end, with a greater measure of peace and understanding.
This adult fiction, a little overly descriptive in parts, confirms that you can survive from your past, but you can never escape it.
Ottawa writer, Jared Young, has appeared in numerous publications such as the Toronto Star, the Bangkok Post, and the Ottawa Citizen. Young is the co-founder, as well as a regular contributor to the film-writing website Dear Cast and Crew. This is his first novel, one that defies the traditional conventions.