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Fearless
Rafael Yglesias’s New York Times–bestselling novel of trauma, loss, and the bonds formed between victims of catastropheMax Klein suffers from many anxieties—including a terrible fear of flying—but after surviving a plane crash his worries vanish and he suddenly believes himself invincible. Back home, a psychiatrist puts him in touch with Carla, a victim of the same crash who lost her infant son and suffers from a morbid, debilitating depression. Now Max and Carla begin a relationship that is sometimes intimate, sometimes painful, and perhaps the only path to recovery for both. Fearless is a brilliant portrait of trauma and its aftermath—the shock of loss and the sometimes unexpected ways that people learn to cope with disaster. This ebook features a new illustrated biography of Rafael Yglesias, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.
339 pages, ebook
First published April 1, 1993
54 people are currently reading
404 people want to read
About the author
Rafael Yglesias
17 books34 followersRafael Yglesias (b. 1954) is a master American storyteller whose career began with the publication of his first novel, Hide Fox, and All After, at seventeen. Through four decades Yglesias has produced numerous highly acclaimed novels, including the New York Times bestseller Fearless, which was adapted into the film starring Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez. He lives on New York City’s Upper East Side.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
September 30, 2022
“[T]here was another, even louder boom. This time there were a few shrieks when it happened. [Max] thought they were human, but they could have been from the craft itself. For one strange blessed moment there was no consequence…And then they fell. The floor seemed to drop away and they were following it down. Max arched up against his seat belt as if he could hold up the plane by himself. He saw a businessman, three aisles ahead on the left, open his mouth wide. The man was dressed coolly in a seersucker suit. Since takeoff he had held a Wall Street Journal before him, folded into a tall column of print, like a soldier carrying a banner into battle. He continued to fly this flag during the free-fall, although he also appeared to be screaming. Max couldn’t be sure since all interior sound was muted by the straining noise of the wing engines. A flight attendant came hurtling through the first-class curtain and dropped onto the cabin floor. Immediately after her the metal food cart rolled out and whacked her in the head…”
- Rafael Yglesias, Fearless
The first few chapters of Rafael Yglesias’s Fearless absolutely belie the novel’s title. Set inside a doomed airplane – one engine gone, its hydraulics shot to hell – there is a lot of fear. For the first thirty-eight pages, as a maimed DC-10 spirals downward, Yglesias maintains relentless tension, his unerring eye zeroing in on unforgettable – sometimes graphic – details: a mother desperately trying to get her squirming toddler strapped into his seat; a worried copilot racing towards the back to check the damage; an injured flight attendant trying to stand; a man furtively changing into new clothes after defecating in his pants; the glimpses out the window, with the earth rushing up to meet them at a strange angle. The claustrophobia, the chaos, the helplessness becomes almost unbearable, yet you cannot look away.
It is inside this badly wounded aircraft – based on the real-life saga of United Airlines 232, which cartwheeled into a cornfield in Sioux City, Iowa – that we are introduced to our two main characters: Max and Carla.
Max is a middle-aged architect, relatively successful, attractive, and content. Carla is a young housewife devoted to her family.
Both will survive the ensuing crash landing, changed in unpredictable ways. It is their ultimately-intersecting journeys that form the spine of Yglesias’s novel.
***
Fearless is a book entirely consumed with trauma, grief, and recovery. With all due respect to certain diagnostic models, these things do not occur along a linear progression. The manifestations of post-traumatic stress are often random, can seem nonsensical to outsiders, and can occur and reoccur without warning. Yglesias seems to understand this intuitively, as his two emotionally damaged protagonists are both sympathetic and prickly. They have escaped certain death only to find themselves in a kind of solitary confinement, entirely alone even though surrounded, their friends and family unable to understand what they’ve been through.
During their long fall to earth, Max and Carla have intensely different experiences. Max finds himself strangely at peace with the end, and goes to sit with a boy traveling alone. Carla, on the other hand, becomes panicky, to an extent that she will later question her actions during the accident itself. In the aftermath, Max decides that he is impervious to death, while Carla is almost prostrated, unable to leave her house.
The care that Yglesias takes in creating these two characters is impressive. It would have been easy to turn Max into a simplistic, redemptive archetype, the forty-year-old who starts life anew, with a fresh perspective. Instead, Yglesias allows him to be kind of boorish and insufferable, even an asshole at times. I didn’t always like how he acted, yet his actions seemed a natural extension of his lived reality, which made him compelling. Meanwhile, Carla initially seems resolute in her refusal to rejoin life, unable to see a way forward. She is further hampered by a selfish husband and intrusive family who cannot empathize with her plight.
Yglesias narrates Fearless in the third person, but mainly limits the perspectives to Carla and Max. As he toggles back and forth, I found myself far more invested in Carla than Max, simply due to Max’s off-putting personality.
Eventually – through the intercession of an airline psychologist – Max and Carla meet. Though their relationship eventually devolves into a kind of “save-each-other” triteness, there are some real sparks of friction and attraction that keeps the plot engaging. There is, for example, a beautifully weird segment in which Max and Carla grope for catharsis by purchasing Christmas presents for dead loved ones.
***
In terms of secondary characters, Yglesias goes for emphasis rather than dimension. The aforementioned psychologist, Dr. William Perlman, isn’t fleshed out, but certainly delivers an impactful cameo, especially during a fraught group therapy session. Max’s lawyer, Steven Brillstein, is initially a limp cliché, the amoral attorney who – shockingly – wants to be paid to perform his job. Even so, Yglesias makes him just quirky enough to keep you from feeling comfortable about where things are going. Much of Fearless is about collisions, not simply the plane with the earth, but between people.
***
Fiction in the western world generally follows the dramatic structuring of the Greeks. We are introduced to the conflict, we build to a climax, and then we reach the conclusion.
Fearless ignores this arc entirely.
Instead of parceling out the plane crash in fragments, or saving it for a big flashback, Yglesias puts his biggest – and best – scene right at the start. It creates for a memorable hook, one that compels you to finish the book. Unfortunately, it also results in a certain top-heaviness, revving to an emotional pitch that cannot be replicated. To be sure, there are some very strong post-crash sequences, including Carla’s time in the hospital, and a disastrous Thanksgiving filled with recriminations and arguments about Ken Burns’s The Civil War. Still, in overall effect, it’s like starting on the summit of a mountain, and then walking down. It makes Fearless into a study in diminishing returns. By the time we reach the abrupt, anticlimactic end, Yglesias seems exhausted, and eager to type the final period.
In a way, Fearless is a victim of its ambitious opening gambit, setting the dramatic bar far too high. The extended aftermath can be inconsistent and frustrating, poignant and powerful moments interspersed with others that fell flat or felt false. The imperfections keep this from attaining a more exalted status. Nevertheless, there is a lot to be said for a novel with one great set-piece and four or five really good ones.
- Rafael Yglesias, Fearless
The first few chapters of Rafael Yglesias’s Fearless absolutely belie the novel’s title. Set inside a doomed airplane – one engine gone, its hydraulics shot to hell – there is a lot of fear. For the first thirty-eight pages, as a maimed DC-10 spirals downward, Yglesias maintains relentless tension, his unerring eye zeroing in on unforgettable – sometimes graphic – details: a mother desperately trying to get her squirming toddler strapped into his seat; a worried copilot racing towards the back to check the damage; an injured flight attendant trying to stand; a man furtively changing into new clothes after defecating in his pants; the glimpses out the window, with the earth rushing up to meet them at a strange angle. The claustrophobia, the chaos, the helplessness becomes almost unbearable, yet you cannot look away.
It is inside this badly wounded aircraft – based on the real-life saga of United Airlines 232, which cartwheeled into a cornfield in Sioux City, Iowa – that we are introduced to our two main characters: Max and Carla.
Max is a middle-aged architect, relatively successful, attractive, and content. Carla is a young housewife devoted to her family.
Both will survive the ensuing crash landing, changed in unpredictable ways. It is their ultimately-intersecting journeys that form the spine of Yglesias’s novel.
***
Fearless is a book entirely consumed with trauma, grief, and recovery. With all due respect to certain diagnostic models, these things do not occur along a linear progression. The manifestations of post-traumatic stress are often random, can seem nonsensical to outsiders, and can occur and reoccur without warning. Yglesias seems to understand this intuitively, as his two emotionally damaged protagonists are both sympathetic and prickly. They have escaped certain death only to find themselves in a kind of solitary confinement, entirely alone even though surrounded, their friends and family unable to understand what they’ve been through.
During their long fall to earth, Max and Carla have intensely different experiences. Max finds himself strangely at peace with the end, and goes to sit with a boy traveling alone. Carla, on the other hand, becomes panicky, to an extent that she will later question her actions during the accident itself. In the aftermath, Max decides that he is impervious to death, while Carla is almost prostrated, unable to leave her house.
The care that Yglesias takes in creating these two characters is impressive. It would have been easy to turn Max into a simplistic, redemptive archetype, the forty-year-old who starts life anew, with a fresh perspective. Instead, Yglesias allows him to be kind of boorish and insufferable, even an asshole at times. I didn’t always like how he acted, yet his actions seemed a natural extension of his lived reality, which made him compelling. Meanwhile, Carla initially seems resolute in her refusal to rejoin life, unable to see a way forward. She is further hampered by a selfish husband and intrusive family who cannot empathize with her plight.
Yglesias narrates Fearless in the third person, but mainly limits the perspectives to Carla and Max. As he toggles back and forth, I found myself far more invested in Carla than Max, simply due to Max’s off-putting personality.
Eventually – through the intercession of an airline psychologist – Max and Carla meet. Though their relationship eventually devolves into a kind of “save-each-other” triteness, there are some real sparks of friction and attraction that keeps the plot engaging. There is, for example, a beautifully weird segment in which Max and Carla grope for catharsis by purchasing Christmas presents for dead loved ones.
***
In terms of secondary characters, Yglesias goes for emphasis rather than dimension. The aforementioned psychologist, Dr. William Perlman, isn’t fleshed out, but certainly delivers an impactful cameo, especially during a fraught group therapy session. Max’s lawyer, Steven Brillstein, is initially a limp cliché, the amoral attorney who – shockingly – wants to be paid to perform his job. Even so, Yglesias makes him just quirky enough to keep you from feeling comfortable about where things are going. Much of Fearless is about collisions, not simply the plane with the earth, but between people.
***
Fiction in the western world generally follows the dramatic structuring of the Greeks. We are introduced to the conflict, we build to a climax, and then we reach the conclusion.
Fearless ignores this arc entirely.
Instead of parceling out the plane crash in fragments, or saving it for a big flashback, Yglesias puts his biggest – and best – scene right at the start. It creates for a memorable hook, one that compels you to finish the book. Unfortunately, it also results in a certain top-heaviness, revving to an emotional pitch that cannot be replicated. To be sure, there are some very strong post-crash sequences, including Carla’s time in the hospital, and a disastrous Thanksgiving filled with recriminations and arguments about Ken Burns’s The Civil War. Still, in overall effect, it’s like starting on the summit of a mountain, and then walking down. It makes Fearless into a study in diminishing returns. By the time we reach the abrupt, anticlimactic end, Yglesias seems exhausted, and eager to type the final period.
In a way, Fearless is a victim of its ambitious opening gambit, setting the dramatic bar far too high. The extended aftermath can be inconsistent and frustrating, poignant and powerful moments interspersed with others that fell flat or felt false. The imperfections keep this from attaining a more exalted status. Nevertheless, there is a lot to be said for a novel with one great set-piece and four or five really good ones.
August 15, 2016
4.5 stars
A novel based on the 1989 crash of United Flight 232 into a Iowa cornfield after the loss of hydraulic power due to a mechanical failure, this story is more about the aftermath of the disaster in the lives of two survivors. The fictional survivors are also based on real people and real events during the crash (with names and some details changed), although their subsequent lives in the book are totally fictional.
A novel based on the 1989 crash of United Flight 232 into a Iowa cornfield after the loss of hydraulic power due to a mechanical failure, this story is more about the aftermath of the disaster in the lives of two survivors. The fictional survivors are also based on real people and real events during the crash (with names and some details changed), although their subsequent lives in the book are totally fictional.
December 11, 2024
"Max war ein ängstlicher Typ, immer auf der Hut vor drohendem Unheil, doch als das Schicksal schließlich zuschlug, fühlte er sich merkwürdig entspannt."
Der Architekt Max Klein erlebt wie in Trance einen Flugzeugabsturz, überlebt nahezu unverletzt und rettet mehrere Menschenleben. Jedoch schwer traumatisiert sieht er sich fortan als unverwundbar und setzt sich immer wieder angstlos lebensgefährlichen Situationen aus. Sein bisheriges Leben ist ihm gleichgültig geworden. Während er sich von seiner Frau und seinem Sohn zunehmend entfremdet, wendet er sich Clara zu, einer weiteren Überlebenden des Absturzes, die sich die Schuld daran gibt, dass sie ihr 2jähriges Kind nicht retten konnte und ihr Heil in Abkapselung und Religion sucht.
Es gelingt Max (auf dramatische Weise), sie von ihrer Schuldlosigkeit zu überzeugen und Clara findet zurück ins Leben. Für Max wird seine Erdbeerallergie lebensentscheidend.
Eine spannend erzählte Geschichte über posttraumatische Störungen und die seelischen Spätschäden von Katastrophenopfern, die Auswirkungen auf die Angehörigen und den Umgang damit.
Eindrucksvoll und bewegend verfilmt von Peter Weir mit Jeff Bridges in der Rolle von Max und der Musik von Henryk Górecki.
Rafael Yglesias hat das Drehbuch nach seinem Roman dafür geschrieben.
Ich hatte "Fearless" in den 90ern im Kino gesehen und danach den Roman gelesen.
Jetzt nach erneuter Lektüre 30 Jahre später war ich wieder gefesselt von der Geschichte und der Thematik, die nachdenklich macht. Auch wenn man den Film kennt, ist der Roman auf alle Fälle lesenswert.
Der Architekt Max Klein erlebt wie in Trance einen Flugzeugabsturz, überlebt nahezu unverletzt und rettet mehrere Menschenleben. Jedoch schwer traumatisiert sieht er sich fortan als unverwundbar und setzt sich immer wieder angstlos lebensgefährlichen Situationen aus. Sein bisheriges Leben ist ihm gleichgültig geworden. Während er sich von seiner Frau und seinem Sohn zunehmend entfremdet, wendet er sich Clara zu, einer weiteren Überlebenden des Absturzes, die sich die Schuld daran gibt, dass sie ihr 2jähriges Kind nicht retten konnte und ihr Heil in Abkapselung und Religion sucht.
Es gelingt Max (auf dramatische Weise), sie von ihrer Schuldlosigkeit zu überzeugen und Clara findet zurück ins Leben. Für Max wird seine Erdbeerallergie lebensentscheidend.
Eine spannend erzählte Geschichte über posttraumatische Störungen und die seelischen Spätschäden von Katastrophenopfern, die Auswirkungen auf die Angehörigen und den Umgang damit.
Eindrucksvoll und bewegend verfilmt von Peter Weir mit Jeff Bridges in der Rolle von Max und der Musik von Henryk Górecki.
Rafael Yglesias hat das Drehbuch nach seinem Roman dafür geschrieben.
Ich hatte "Fearless" in den 90ern im Kino gesehen und danach den Roman gelesen.
Jetzt nach erneuter Lektüre 30 Jahre später war ich wieder gefesselt von der Geschichte und der Thematik, die nachdenklich macht. Auch wenn man den Film kennt, ist der Roman auf alle Fälle lesenswert.
April 21, 2010
Don't read this if you have to go on a plane in the near future.. you'll start hearing every noise of the engine and feel every turbulence 100fold. A great book though...
September 12, 2020
[review to follow...]
November 20, 2021
This is the tale of two people who are opposite in almost every way, except that they are both New Yorkers. Max Klein is a upper-class architect along with his partner, Jeff. Carla lives on Mulberry Street in Little Italy taking care of her husband and baby. Then one day, both Carla and Max are involved in a plane crash and their lives are forever changed. In this moving story, Max helps bring Carla back to life and then Carla does the same for Max. This is a great story about relationships and life after having a near-death experience. I enjoyed it very much. It was well-written and the characters thoroughly believable.
August 8, 2013
I bought this book because Amazon had it on their discount list one day, and because it is set in NYC which right now is one of my passions. However, I did not expect to like this book as much as I did. It's a story of trauma and recovery that centers around two people who have survived a plane crash that killed dozens. I was afraid it might be too graphic, but Ylgesias did a wonderful job of giving just enough details to understand the carnage, but not so much that I felt ill reading it. And, his characters are so REAL! I totally understood them and felt connected to them. This is a story of hope and forgiveness, and how true, unselfish compassion can help heal when love is not enough.
July 1, 2019
The first half was riveting, but depressing (and I read a lot of ‘depressing’ books). It kind of derailed near the end. This book was one of those that you can tell was written by a man. We get a description of every female character’s breasts, and every woman inexplicably wants to have sex with the male narrator. And so on. Worth reading though.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 20, 2016
One book definitely as good as the movie, and the movie was excellent. Jeff Bridges was stellar in his performance.
June 8, 2020
Who are we and where are we going? Is our life just a joke, a random sum of various cases? Or maybe everything that is happening around us has its deeper sense, the sense that we cannot understand? Finally, how to deal with the awareness of the inevitable end of our existence in the face of the above questions?
Reflection on the above dilemmas has always accompanied not only writers, but art in general. The variety of visions of ultimate matters extends from the infinite divine fate accompanying the characters of the ancient Greek dramas of Sophocles, to the absurd helplessness in which Albert Camus placed his heroes, building a picture of a 20th century city affected by the plague epidemic. Somewhere between both these shots, both chronologically and semantically extreme, is the vision that Yglesias had in his book.
San Francisco architect, Max, and his friend Jeff fly to Houston to sign a very lucrative contract. Carla and her little son travel by plane. The machine breaks down as a result of serious technical problems. Max, who survives the catastrophe manage to save several passengers. Unfortunately, both his friend and Carla's son are dead. After this tragedy, Carla and Max, under the care of a psychologist, try to return to a normal life.
Yglesias immediately throws the reader into the middle of the story. From the very beginning, he has focused on the characters, basing his drama not on the vivisection of the catastrophe, but on the observation of the spiritual experiences of its participants. The word drama is not accidental here, because it is the catharsis that Max experiences in the face of traumatic experiences, is the starting point for the entire narrative of the book. Why is he behaving like this? We will ask sometimes, when we read about an unnaturally calm hero, deliberately distancing himself from the world around him, and at the same time resorting to things that his loved ones often find crazy.
Reflection on the above dilemmas has always accompanied not only writers, but art in general. The variety of visions of ultimate matters extends from the infinite divine fate accompanying the characters of the ancient Greek dramas of Sophocles, to the absurd helplessness in which Albert Camus placed his heroes, building a picture of a 20th century city affected by the plague epidemic. Somewhere between both these shots, both chronologically and semantically extreme, is the vision that Yglesias had in his book.
San Francisco architect, Max, and his friend Jeff fly to Houston to sign a very lucrative contract. Carla and her little son travel by plane. The machine breaks down as a result of serious technical problems. Max, who survives the catastrophe manage to save several passengers. Unfortunately, both his friend and Carla's son are dead. After this tragedy, Carla and Max, under the care of a psychologist, try to return to a normal life.
Yglesias immediately throws the reader into the middle of the story. From the very beginning, he has focused on the characters, basing his drama not on the vivisection of the catastrophe, but on the observation of the spiritual experiences of its participants. The word drama is not accidental here, because it is the catharsis that Max experiences in the face of traumatic experiences, is the starting point for the entire narrative of the book. Why is he behaving like this? We will ask sometimes, when we read about an unnaturally calm hero, deliberately distancing himself from the world around him, and at the same time resorting to things that his loved ones often find crazy.
February 16, 2023
I am stunned by the lower ratings on Goodreads. I loved this novel. One of the perspectives took longer for me to get into than the other but I just felt like it was such a great depiction of the feeling of grief and loss and even an accurate acid trip. I cried intermittently. I didn’t love all of the characters or their actions but I loved the story. I did not know it was a movie.
August 14, 2025
La culpabilité de celui qui échappe à ce à quoi d’autres ont été soumis.
La distance qui sépare des êtres proches lorsque l’un a traversé une terrible épreuve.
Le deuil et l’inéluctabilité de la mort.
Mais attention : ce n’est pas un livre triste ni morbide, et il ne laisse pas le lecteur sans réponse.
La distance qui sépare des êtres proches lorsque l’un a traversé une terrible épreuve.
Le deuil et l’inéluctabilité de la mort.
Mais attention : ce n’est pas un livre triste ni morbide, et il ne laisse pas le lecteur sans réponse.
February 16, 2017
Beautifully written...Powerful yet subtle story. No hooks.
August 25, 2018
Read in 1998
Read
July 28, 2020Obscure underrated gem.
December 18, 2022
Sooooo boring
June 18, 2023
Very interesting book. Never a dull moment. A good read
October 23, 2023
Very funny book with a grim topic. I learned that in 1993 PTSD was not a household word. (Irrelevant to the review, a lot of typos in the ebook!)
December 23, 2024
so difficult for no reason. he writes in squiggles. would not rec.
December 27, 2016
"Max lived scared, always alert to the threat of disaster, and yet when disaster finally arrived he was relaxed."
This is the story of survivors of a plane crash told in third person narrative. It shifts between Max Klein's point of view and Carla Fransisca. During the crash, Max saves two kids and comes to be known as the Good Samaritan; Carla loses her two-year-old son. Because Max saved so many others, he believes he is indestructible. His behavior becomes increasingly self-destructive as he searches for someone who can save him.
It was a good book, dealing heavily with the psychological ramifications of the crash itself and their actions that follow. Max comes full circle through the book as denoted by the last line of the book: "I'm alive, he rejoiced. I'm alive. And I'm afraid."
This is the story of survivors of a plane crash told in third person narrative. It shifts between Max Klein's point of view and Carla Fransisca. During the crash, Max saves two kids and comes to be known as the Good Samaritan; Carla loses her two-year-old son. Because Max saved so many others, he believes he is indestructible. His behavior becomes increasingly self-destructive as he searches for someone who can save him.
It was a good book, dealing heavily with the psychological ramifications of the crash itself and their actions that follow. Max comes full circle through the book as denoted by the last line of the book: "I'm alive, he rejoiced. I'm alive. And I'm afraid."
February 8, 2017
Very engrossing detailed experience of a commercial plane crash from the point of view of a man who survived unscathed. He finds himself unafraid of anything, crossing in front of incoming traffic and telling his family and coworkers EXACTLY what he thinks, no sugar coating, causing them to think he's lost his mind.
August 10, 2014
This is a beautiful story full of intense drama. The reactions of the characters to surviving the trauma of a plane crash are realistic: one, a middle-aged man acting in reckless abandon, feeling invincible while reflecting a resentment of his life before the accident; the other a young mother whose two-year old died in the crash, debilitated by a guilt made more intense by her Catholic upbringing.
At times the writing is a bit weak,but this is more than balanced by perceptive descriptions of human emotion. Actually, the novel deserves 4 1/2 stars. I would give it that if I could.
At times the writing is a bit weak,but this is more than balanced by perceptive descriptions of human emotion. Actually, the novel deserves 4 1/2 stars. I would give it that if I could.
June 3, 2010
This book is full of surprises: the characters are not predictable in any way. Neither is the plot. Yes, if you fly it could be scary to think about, but to me the book is more about learning to live life without fear. Rafael Yglesias' writing is first rate. I'm looking forward to reading another of his books...and I've just learned that his mother Helen Yglesias is also a novelist.
September 19, 2008
I really liked the movie, and I think I like the book even better. There are some minor changes that really allow you to spend more time in the two main characters' heads. I liked it so much I read Yglesias's "Dr. Neruda" book, which pretty much sucked hard core.
September 13, 2010
Follows two characters after their experience in an airplane crash. Don't read this if you have any fear of flying. The first 3 chapters would do you in. The story is entertaining but, as usual for me, the end is a disappointment.
January 23, 2012
Not as good as "Story of a Marriage". This had an interesting and unique story line, with odd yet compelling characters.
May 29, 2011
Fascinating read on life after a near-death experience. Better to read before seeing Jeff Bridges brilliantly portray the protagonist.
April 14, 2012
Great writing.
June 16, 2012
Great re-view of life.
June 6, 2013
Beautiful, quirky story of two individuals who survive a plane crash.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews