Landing – Emma Donoghue (2007)

Landing by Emma Donoghue, published in 2007, is a transatlantic love story that unfolds between two women from radically different worlds. Donoghue, known for her emotional insight and historical precision, crafts a contemporary narrative rooted in distance, identity, and human connection. This novel centers around the unlikely meeting of Jude Turner, a grounded museum curator from small-town Ontario, and Síle O’Shaughnessy, an urbane Irish flight attendant. Their meeting aboard a plane—under unusually charged circumstances—sparks a bond that challenges both women’s sense of place, love, and belonging.

Plot Summary

On the last morning of the year, Jude Turner wakes in her childhood home in Ireland, Ontario, a small Canadian town nestled in deep winter. At twenty-five, she leads a steady, if inward, life – a curator at the local museum, a smoker of hand-rolled cigarettes, a woman who has never flown in a plane. But a call from her aunt Louise in England unsettles her calm. Rachel, Jude’s fiercely independent mother, has been visiting her sister in Luton, and something is off. Louise is vague, whispering about Rachel not being herself, pressing Jude to come. Reluctantly, with misgivings and a sense of impending dread, Jude tapes a sign on the museum door and prepares to cross the Atlantic for the first time in her life.

The flight from Detroit to London is a trial in itself. Jude is cramped, nauseous, and panicked, surrounded by strangers in an unfamiliar mechanical world that hurtles through darkness. Her seatmate, a weary older man, soon becomes unnervingly still. When his head slumps onto her shoulder, Jude alerts a flight attendant – a tall, composed Irishwoman with tawny eyes and a braid long enough to sit on. Síle O’Shaughnessy, the purser, checks the man and silently confirms what Jude already fears: he has died in his sleep.

They do not make a spectacle. Síle makes a judgment call and lets the old man rest as he is. In the quiet grief of midair, something tender forms between the grounded Canadian and the airborne Irishwoman. Jude, shaken, rides the descent into Heathrow with a new awareness of life’s impermanence and its strange collisions.

After landing, Jude and Síle share a stiff, surreal moment by the baggage carousel. The weight of what just happened is too large for language, but Síle, with practiced grace and spontaneous warmth, invites Jude for a coffee. In the brasserie of the airport, beneath flickering fluorescent lights and between sips of watery brew, something human and unexpected begins. Their conversation roams from folk legends and personal losses to travel, technology, and the strangeness of life. Jude reveals her rooted existence in Ontario, her love of motorcycles, her disdain for email. Síle, in turn, shares glimpses of her world of long-haul flights, on-again off-again relationships, and life on the move.

They part with laughter and a scribbled address on a napkin. Jude presses Síle’s card into her wallet, not sure what it means to carry a new name in her pocket.

In Luton, Jude finds her mother mostly well. Rachel blames a bad egg for her stomach upset, and seems unfazed by the stir her sister caused. But Jude notices the subtle changes – the uncertain walk, the moment when Rachel forgets her own brother-in-law’s death. Louise, defensive and distracted, pretends it was all a misunderstanding. Jude, disoriented by jet lag and emotional fatigue, wonders whether she’s witnessing the first fray in her mother’s mind.

Though the trip is brief, the emotional charge lingers. Rachel, unaware of the significance, suggests Jude should sightsee in London. Jude declines. The museum needs her, and her mother needs her more. But something has shifted. The return flight does not hold the same dread. The girl who feared flying has already crossed a line.

Back in Dublin, Síle returns to her life of perpetual movement – bustling airports, clipped conversations, and polite intimacy with strangers. She lives in a cozy but sparse townhouse, her long-term partner Kathleen anchored in a separate apartment, their relationship shaped by convenience more than passion. They share dinners and exchange texts, yet Síle remains untethered, emotionally adrift despite the structures of a well-traveled life.

A month later, the memory of Jude surfaces more often than expected. Over drinks with friends in a city pub, Síle jokes about the absurdity of airline bureaucracy and the reprimand she received for not defibrillating the already-dead passenger. Her friends laugh, unaware that her mind drifts elsewhere – not to the dead man, but to the woman beside him. A woman she never expected to remember.

Jude, meanwhile, resumes her days in the museum. Snow falls steadily in Ireland, Ontario. Her mother resumes her routines, though Jude watches her more closely now, her hand hovering whenever Rachel fumbles with names or stares a moment too long at the kettle. The memory of Síle stays tucked in her mind like a pressed leaf in a book. It was just a coffee in an airport, but the encounter lingers like the warmth of someone’s coat after they’ve gone.

Letters arrive – not emails. Jude writes on thick paper with a careful hand. Síle, despite her digital life, reads them with the patience of someone listening to a slow song. The letters form a trail, each one a step toward something not yet named. Síle visits Ontario on a whim – or perhaps not a whim at all – and the small town surprises her. The intimacy of it, the clarity. Jude guides her through snow-covered streets and introduces her to the museum’s modest relics. They talk over homemade bread and drink coffee that Jude swears tastes better unfiltered.

When Jude visits Dublin months later, the roles reverse. Síle shows her the bustling markets, the long, rain-polished streets, the crowded pubs. Jude listens, observes, absorbs. What was once foreign becomes fascinating. The world grows smaller, not through maps or machines, but through the joining of lives.

Still, it is not simple. Kathleen, Síle’s partner, is not gone. She lingers in Síle’s apartment and in her past. There is no explosive confrontation, no clear line between old and new. Only the slow, aching realization that comfort is not the same as love, and familiarity not the same as intimacy.

Jude and Síle do not settle immediately. Their geographies are vast, their differences real. Jude’s fear of flying does not vanish, and Síle’s habit of constant departure cannot be unlearned overnight. But through letters, visits, and a stubborn kind of hope, they learn to navigate the distance. Not erase it, but live with it.

Somewhere between Dublin and Ontario, between sky and soil, between motion and stillness, they begin to build something. Not a sudden landing, but a series of soft descents. A relationship composed not of certainty, but of the brave act of choosing again and again.

Main Characters

• Jude Turner: A 25-year-old museum curator in the fictional town of Ireland, Ontario. Jude is introspective, principled, and deeply rooted in her quiet, rural life. She has never flown before and is wary of change, reflecting a broader discomfort with technology and modern conveniences. Her sudden journey across the Atlantic to check on her mother becomes a metaphorical and literal dislocation, pushing her into new emotional and geographical territories. Her quiet depth and understated vulnerability contrast strikingly with Síle’s flamboyance.

• Síle O’Shaughnessy: An experienced, cosmopolitan Irish flight attendant nearing forty. Síle is polished, witty, and emotionally guarded, navigating a demanding job and an on-again, off-again relationship with her partner Kathleen. Though she thrives on movement and interaction, there’s an underlying loneliness in her life. Her encounter with Jude is both refreshing and unsettling, forcing her to reckon with emotional possibilities she’s long dismissed.

• Rachel Turner: Jude’s mother, a no-nonsense, self-contained woman who begins to show subtle signs of cognitive decline. Her confusion and missteps act as emotional triggers for Jude, urging her to reevaluate her fears and her willingness to confront change.

• Louise: Jude’s aunt living in Luton, England. Her vague warnings about Rachel’s health catalyze Jude’s impromptu flight across the ocean. Louise plays a minor but pivotal role, serving as a catalyst rather than a fully fleshed-out character.

• Kathleen: Síle’s longtime partner, a polished hospital administrator. Kathleen’s absence of emotional intimacy contrasts with Jude’s open curiosity, highlighting the emotional void in Síle’s current relationship and setting the stage for her inner conflict.

• Marcus: Síle’s close friend and confidant, a quietly witty technical artist. His decision to abandon Dublin for rural Leitrim mirrors the novel’s underlying tension between rootedness and escape.

Theme

• Displacement and Rootedness: The novel revolves around the physical and emotional tension between movement and stillness. Jude, averse to travel, represents groundedness, while Síle embodies a life in motion. Their relationship compels each to reassess where and how they belong.

• Communication and Miscommunication: From Jude’s dislike of email to Síle’s reliance on tech gadgets, the novel explores modern communication’s gaps and failures. Letters, gestures, and misread signs all contribute to the emotional currents between characters, reflecting deeper anxieties about connection in a digital age.

• Mortality and the Unexpected: A death on the airplane is the novel’s inciting incident, casting a shadow over the entire narrative. Mortality is not just about death but about confronting life’s unpredictability. This theme subtly permeates personal choices and emotional risks.

• Queerness and Identity: The novel delicately portrays the nuanced spectrums of queer life. Jude’s subtle, emerging queerness contrasts with Síle’s confident sexual identity, and their intergenerational dynamic gives depth to how queerness is lived and understood differently across time and geography.

• Memory and Forgetting: Rachel’s early signs of dementia become a motif for broader fears of forgetting – of relationships, of origins, of meaning. This theme echoes through conversations and internal monologues, especially as characters confront change.

Writing Style and Tone

Emma Donoghue’s prose in Landing is elegantly plain but deeply observant, marked by acute psychological insight and a restrained lyricism. She captures emotional truths with fine detail, choosing not grand gestures but the everyday accumulations of feeling – a shared pastry, a lingering glance, a hand accidentally held. Her style is peppered with gentle wit and intimate, almost tactile realism, particularly in her depictions of physical space and gesture. Dialogue flows with natural cadence, anchoring characters’ inner lives to their social worlds.

Donoghue employs dual perspectives to contrast Jude’s cautious self-sufficiency with Síle’s urbane confidence, and in doing so reveals their mutual vulnerabilities. The tone is tender but unsentimental, humorous without being flippant. Even the more melancholic elements—grief, aging, fear—are treated with empathy and subtlety. The narrative is both grounded in realism and gently romantic, never indulging in melodrama. This creates a tone of quiet poignancy and emotional richness, inviting the reader into a love story that feels honest, complex, and utterly human.