Robert SabbagBesprekingen

An account of Zachary Swan's career as a cocaine smuggler in the 1970s. A host of colorful characters get involved, although none quite as intriguing as Swan himself. In between various byzantine schemes to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. while maintaining the safety of the 'mules', the reader gets an glimpse into a very strange, occasionally very dangerous world. Very engaging.½

Disappointment. I thought this would be an interesting book about a plain crash but it was more about what happened after. (He tried to find some survivors 20 years later) which could be very interesting but it wasn't. probably because he jumped from one thing to another. Some stuff was very detailed which i did not care for. Skimmed the second part.

Tells the tale of Allen Long dope smuggler supreme of the 1970's,from his early exploits in Mexico to his serious marijuana smuggling from Colombia.Easy read,pretty interesting,make a good holiday book.½

Superb. Hilarious. Scary. A real page-turner. The 'Columbia Gold' coffee scam alone is priceless!½

An interesting read that captures the author's thoughts and experiences after the crash. Th work would have been more complete with more cooperation from the other survivors but a well told account of the events and its aftermath.½

A personal quest to recall the events of a summer night in 1979, when Sabbag was one of the survivors of a Cape Cod plane crash. By reconnecting with others who were on the flight or experienced its aftermath, Sabbag seeks answers to the questions that have haunted him since the night of the crash. Often repetitive and clearly colored by the author's personal connection with the events. Another spin around the editing room wouldn't have gone amiss.

Pretty good story, needs some pace-balancing to keep the flow though.

In March 2009, a commuter air flight crashed trying to land in a winter storm in Buffalo NY. Poor pilot training, lax standards, bad weather, and a fatigued pilot were cited in the NTSB report. No one survived. Robert Sabbag chronicles a similar incident thirty years earlier on a foggy night on Cape Cod. The causes are disturbingly similar. The difference: most of those on the flight lived.

If readers look for a "just the facts" account, they may be disappointed. They get much more. This account of a plane crash, and the near, middle, and long term after effects on the passengers/crew become a meditation on writing, hindsight (maybe not being 20/20, and the sympathy for all involved. And he doesn't ignore the confluence of errors preceeding it's final moments. Almost all survivors agreed to be interviewed. along with reporters, hospital and rescue personell (there were over 80 police and firemen). Sabbag treats with sympathy and understanding the wish of three sisters injured in the crash not to be contacted.

The DeHaviland Twin Otter -workhorse of the Air New England fleet- went down "around midnight" in a near virgin forest, dense enough to require a herculean effort to pry open the escape hatches. One female passenger fought her way through this woods, flagged down a car of young people returning from a party, and got a ride to the airport. She barged into the Air New England office. Up to this point, two hours after the crash, Air New England was not even admitting to people waiting for it's arrival that there had been a crash!!! And rescuers hadn't reached the plane. I hope this give a sense of the drama. I won't spoil it with more detail. A good read.

Just before his 33rd birthday, when he was, as he says, “half-famous” because his first book, Snowblind, had become a bestseller, Sabbag was on his way to Cape Cod in a small turboprop plane. Due to pilot error, the plane came down in a thickly wooded area. The pilot paid for his mistake with his life, but the co-pilot and eight passengers survived.

So this short (214-page) memoir is about the crash, looking back over a 28-year interval during which Sabbag just tried to get on with his life, coping with the physical aftermath of extensive injuries and the psychological trauma of being a survivor. As Sabbag relates, the incident cut his life into two: the before and after phases. Not surprising, really.

Memoirs, of course, are all about the great I, and therefore usually come across as a bit narcissistic. I don’t think Down Around Midnight is an exception to the rule. Still, there’s a certain fascination in knowing what it’s like to survive a plane crash, especially if, like me, you board every plane with the absolute certainty that it’s going to drop out of the sky. The story begins with the crash, and ends with the scar left in the woods where the crash happened, a fitting metaphor for the scar that cuts across the lives of the people on board. Sabbag explores both the causes of the accident and the bond that exists between those passengers and rescue workers who are able to deal with talking about it; not all are.

I suppose that if you’re involved in a traumatic incident, and you’re a writer, sooner or later you’re going to deal with that incident in writing. I have the impression of a man who knows his time on this earth is finite and needs to face the defining moment of his life once and for all; but for all that, there’s a certain defensiveness and pushing back in the text. At those moments, the writing becomes brash and journalistic, not at all to my taste.

Sabbag is at his best when he’s being honest about his ongoing emotional reaction to the crash, in particular his guilt that he may have exacerbated the injuries of the passengers he insisted be removed from the plane, afraid that it would catch fire. Once he reaches that admission, something seems to be released and the writing just takes on a deeper and more personal tone.

There were points in this book when I felt that I was only continuing with it because it was short and because I wanted to review it. It sometimes seemed meandering, and the variations in writing style were a little off-putting. But the last twenty pages or so redeemed it for me.

Where in the world was he going with this book? What was the point? The message? The idea? Sorry, but this thing rambled like it's author was imbibing the funny stuff talked about in his first book. Thank God it was short. The guy can write though. I'll give him that. Not my cup of tea. Irritating also, because I felt like Sabbag spent most of the book contemplating his navel, and I felt like there was so much more to tell about this event. If Sabbag talks like he writes in this book, its no surprise that the father of the three young girls hung up on him. Made me want to slap him and growl, get to the point, dammit!!! The two stars are for the good writing. The no stars are for the no point. Sigh.

This book--captivitating, honest, poetic and well written--will live on for me for a long time because I read it aloud to my husband on our trip home from our vacation in southeastern Pennsylvania. The driving time was 8 hours, and as my son happily watched a movie on his DVD player, I read this haunting memoir aloud from cover to cover. We were both mesmerized. I finished just as we were heading up Boltinghouse Road into Bloomington and into our own driveway.

Robert Sabbag experienced a nightmare in the summer of 1979. He was returning to Cape Cod by plane when without warning the plane crashed into a vast forest. He and his fellow survivors--there were 9 including the co-pilot--waited in the dark injured and bleeding and in various states of consciousness for hours before rescue arrived. Then they all convalesced and went their separate ways. Robert tried to put it behind him until 30 years later he felt he he had to investigate the event and write his story. He managed to locate 4 of his fellow passengers from the horrible nightmare and a number of EMT's and hospital personnel who were on duty that night.

This story, as any good memoir reader or writer will tell you, is not a tale told in a linear fashion. It is a catastrophic event meant to be viewed from all sides as a whole piece of truth. The story and it's aftermath is witnessed mainly through Robert Sabbag's reliable eyes (or are they reliable?), but he does a great job of interweaving the stories of the families who were waiting at the airport and the pilot who should not have been flying and the paramedics who bushwhacked their way into the forest and had to carry them on stretchers a mile out of the forest.

This is also the story of a very particular place: Cape Cod. He creates a loving portrait of the peninsula he has come to call home, and as he is re-creating his story of crash and recovery he does it with the backdrop of this historic and eccentric place. I have been to the Cape only twice, but I felt the essential life of the Cape coming through in all the chapters.

This book was pure poetry and Robert Sabbag is a fantastic writer. It is worth noting, that the most haunting parts of the story are naturally the ones he could not tell--the four people from the crash--three young sisters and the co-pilot--who he did not get the opportunity to interview for the book. I hope they read it and understand.

This book also does a great job of presenting and talking about PTSD. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) Not too much clinical information or psychological babble, but the poetry of living with PTSD.

I highly recommend this book. It is a fast and enjoyable read.

One of the rare memoirs that actually has something to say beyond "poor me". Robert Sabbag waited thirty years to examine what happened the night the commuter plane he was in crashed short of the runway on Cape Cod. The simple question of why the airplane crashed is answered in the NTSB report. The tougher questions - how did it impact the survivors, what does it mean to be lucky, etc - have no easy answers but Sabbag's search through his own life and his conversations with fellow survivors are illuminating. Sabbag has written a book not only worth reading but worth savoring.

Wow. You would think this book would be interesting. It's about a terrible crash that came close to killing everyone onboard. There's a plane screaming to a halt in a woods cloaked with dense fog and no moon. The author, Robert Sabbag, has his back broken as the seat belt he wore stayed buckled, but the seat itself was thrown free of it's connections to the fuselage. He and the other injured survivors stagger out into the black night, doused with aviation fuel.... Huddled, blind, and having no means of knowing where they are, they find themselves alone for hours. These events were ultimately so traumatic that the author couldn't write about it for decades. And when he did, he went back to talk to the people who had been there.

You would think it would be interesting... but it's not.

I chose this book because I have recently read some stunningly good autobiographical books. One was Donovan Campbell's "Joker One". Another was Tori McClure's "Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean". In the first case the story was about a Marine Platoon in Iraq. In the second, McClure's story about rowing across the Atlantic. Yes rowing. And it was so good. So I figured a plane crash, a seasoned author, that had drama, pathos, and be worth reading. I thought that after decades of consideration that the author's analysis would be deep and thoughtful-- that I could learn something about humans in terrible situations.

What I found was reporting. A too brief explanation of what occurred that night followed by too much detail about the wrong things. I didn't, and don't care, for example, about the subsequent careers of the young people on board that flight. I was happy for them that they graduated from University X and that they now had more than one house, but honestly I was looking for more about the consequences of what they, uniquely, experienced. There is an effort to dig out this information. Sabbag knew what he was looking for, but how he presented the information left me cold and unaffected. I was not drawn in to care.

I hate being so negative about a book, so please let me add two facts. The first is that any particular book is not for everybody. Some people don't like Moby Dick; I didn't like "Down Around Midnight". And second, for the sake of honesty I have to say that I did not read the entire book. Couldn't. I skimmed and skimmed after the first few chapters looking for a reentry point, but couldn't find one.

This is a fact filled, mostly unemotional account of the authors experience of a plane crash in 1979.
It was a foggy night and after a delay, Air New England Flight #248 flight left LaGuardia airport, bound for Hyannis.

When the plane went down, killing the pilot and critically injuring the co-pilot, there were ten passengers on board, including Suzanne. She was to play a significant part in the rescue of the survivors. She was in fact, quite a hero that night. The author Robert Sabbag played an important role himself, but this is described dispassionately and with no self importance.

This book, written so many years after the actual event, gives us a unique perspective into how a single event can affect lives forever. The author began by speaking with his own family about the crash, something that had never really been done in the days immediately following. He then found and interviewed other passenger, as well as rescue personnel. The result being one of the most intriguing books I have ever read.

I recommend this book . It is an easy read, and an interesting, if not fascinating topic.
Truth is of course stranger than fiction, and some of the events described here bear that out.