Alexander Maksik proves a LAX thriller can work in National Book Award contender ‘Passengers’

With its crashing terminals, frustrating delays, and long lines for everything from security checks to coffee, LAX can be the place where patience dies. A place many people dream of escaping to; Instead, Los Angeles-born novelist Alexander Maksik takes readers to the airport, bearing witness to both the discomfort and common humanity of the people passing through.

Maksik’s new novel, “Passengers,” which is longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for fiction, is set in the sprawling halls of the airport. The story follows Ivan and Nina, a distant father and daughter, who meet to fly to Paris. For 75-year-old Ivan, this is a chance to show his daughter where he once lived. For 29-year-old Nina, it’s a free ride and a chance to finally understand the parents she barely knows. When their flight is delayed, and then delayed again, the frustration shifts from the departure boards to the fault lines between them.

Speaking via video conference from his home in Paris, Maksik said he had always planned for the book to be about a father-daughter duo. “When my daughter was born, I realized, like many new parents, that I could only think in stereotypes and didn’t try to resist them,” she says. “But as time went on, I began to think about the idea of ​​writing a novel about a father and daughter in which the fight against cliché would be central, of great, even life-saving importance.”

The author also plays with the idea of ​​nostalgia. “Nostalgia brings you closer to the edge of real emotion without forcing you to confront the weight, power, and terror of real emotion. It’s so easy to get caught up in the false comfort of the past.” One of the things airports remind us of, he says, is change. Restaurants and boutiques close and open regularly. At one time, people used to search for bookstores; in the other, they are looking for headphones and a portable charger.

“For a long time, airports felt like places where civilization happened,” says Maksik. “I remember having real conversations with strangers in a bar or various waiting areas. There was hope, possibility, and warmth in such interactions. Now an airport is one more place to look at your phone.”

As Ivan and Nina walk, talk, drink tequila, and observe their fellow travelers, those travelers observe them, too. One of the strongest conceits in the book occurs when the duo leaves an airport venue and readers catch the perspective of a person serving or overhearing them. For example, a character named “an elegant woman with long gray hair in a braid” thinks of her dead husband when she notices Ivan and Nina: “It was impossible for the woman to see two people, indeed any two people, together and not feel his absence.” There’s another guy who thinks he can say that the father and daughter are “the kind of people who are always looking for a way around the rules, who think waiting is for suckers like him.” Each emphasizes that strangers can influence and even change each other (just as our own children do).

Another thing Ivan and Nina share is physical labor. Ivan has been a building contractor for decades, and Nina is a masseuse who goes to clients’ homes and “didn’t like the idea of ​​going back to the same place over and over again. She wanted to travel, look inside different lives.” Maksik himself held service positions for many years, and that experience gave him a different perspective than some of his colleagues at the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which he entered at the relatively old age of 38.

“I was intrigued by people in Iowa who were writing about worlds away from literature and academia,” he says. “Maybe it’s because I’ve worked so many different jobs. I’ve washed dishes. I’ve been a bartender. I’ve cooked. I’ve delivered pizzas. These experiences were lively and interesting and at least as formative for me as a writer as the things I learned in the classroom. Writing well about business is something I greatly admire.”

Of course, Maksik writes fiction, and he can write about all kinds of lives, including the life of a teacher, as in his critically acclaimed 2011 novel “You Don’t Deserve Nothing” about the relationship between an American teacher and a French high school student. As far as he knows, there is a shadow over that book because one of his students claimed that the story describes Maksik’s relationship with him when he was 17.

“I will always have to accept my own history and how I came to write this novel,” he says. “And there will always be people for whom that acknowledgment means nothing. Perhaps that’s as it should be. I’m certainly not proud of that period of my life, and frankly I’m not very proud of the novel anymore. Yet it will always be an integral part of my history, and I have no intention of pretending otherwise.”

As Ivan and Nina grapple with their own emotional truths, ranging from the departure of his mother Nora from their lives to Ivan’s clumsy recounting of Nina’s childhood antics, something alarming is brewing. Nina cannot make or receive calls on her phone. The two realize that others cannot make calls either; a restaurant loses its payment interface; and everyone is running cables around to keep devices charged when service arrives.

Something is definitely wrong and no one seems to know what. Soon Nina sees that her father is tired and weak, despite copious amounts of water and food; He becomes convinced that he needs fresh air. When they try to leave the airport, they encounter barriers set up and armed soldiers telling them that no one is allowed out.

The sense of discomfort Maksik captures the sense of disconnection among all the trapped people, from a rude young woman wearing bunny slippers and giant headphones to an elderly couple huddled under produce shelves: “We’re trying to sleep… Can’t you see that?” says someone. This LAX fosters alienation and fear, unlike the island of civility and manners Maksik remembers from his childhood.

The author laughs ruefully when accused of his version of nostalgia and admits that the version of the airport he created is closer to today’s reality. Coincidentally, Maksik will also be flying from France to Florida soon and joining fellow author Lauren Groff’s First Editions Book Club. How does he feel about this?

“Our daughter was born in late 2019, and then the pandemic hit. Every day since then seems more dangerous than the last. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found myself stranded in an airport due to climate change, artificial intelligence, or one of the grumpy maniacs running the world.”

Patrick is a freelance critic and author of memoirs”Life B.”