Customer Reviews

The Bird Catcher

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Bird Catcher will heartbreakingly catch your heart. Its prose is simple, yet complex. It is rich in symbolism, but the symbolism does not get in the way of its good story. Told partly in the present and partly in flashback, it is the story of a young woman who makes unusual choices, on the one hand, and traditional choices, on the other. It demonstrates the strength of the bond between women as well as the strength of the bond between a man and a woman. I unabashedly cared about what happened to the Bird Catcher, and I loved, fretted and grieved right along with her. I highly recommend this book. It would make a perfect gift, too.

"The Bird Catcher" brings to mind both "The Tatoo Artist" and "The Incredible Lightness of Being", all three books managing to capture the poignance and elusiveness of life on this planet in all its forms. I found myself re-reading particularly beautiful passages several times. The metaphor of birds as souls, the wonderfully visual descriptions of the "bird catcher's" art, the sensory evocation of New York City's hidden pockets of wildness and unseen tragedies, the depiction of betrayals, losses and connections were all beautifully handled. I would definitely read this book again and, in fact, will add it to my library of "special books" bought for that purpose.

Margret Snow is passionate about birds, a feeling she shares with her husband, Charles. For Margret, bird-watching represents more than an escape from her uninspiring job as a window-dresser at Saks Fifth Avenue, and the artificiality of the Manhattan social scene. Observing the beauty, fragility, and innocence of these wild creatures gives her access to another kind of window, into the uncharted regions of her soul, and the mystic communion between man and beast that survives, improbably, amid the concrete and steel boxes of the modern urban landscape. So when tragedy strikes Margret, uprooting her comfortable existence and sending her into a tailspin of grief, it is natural that she seeks solace in her lifelong hobby. But what begins as a quest to make sense of her loss turns into something far more dangerous -- and potentially life-changing -- when Margret embarks upon a project to save fallen birds from oblivion, unleashing an artistic vision that becomes a metaphor for rebirth and the resilience of the human spirit.

In The Bird Catcher, Laura Jacobs has written a haunting, lyrical tale that deserves to be read, if not cherished, by bird-watchers and fiction lovers alike.

This book is totally engaging: it's beautifully written and the characters are wonderful. It's a very poetic story.

Margret Snow is lonely and figuratively lost at sea. After the tragic loss of her husband, Charles, she loses interest in her promising job of dressing windows at her friend Emily's art gallery and at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City. Instead, she is a secret, amateur taxidermist by night, finding small dead birds in the city parks and near buildings to take home and stuff. "[She] always had a Baggie in her pocket, just in case she found something fallen." Marget's fascination with birds started with her Grandfather Milton who was a birder and entomologist who took her bird watching when she was young.

Jacobs' writing is poetic and very descriptive, especially in the way she describes Margret's love of birds. "To find them and lift them off the ground. To hold them weightless in her hand. To smooth with the side of a finger the nape of a broken neck. It filled Margret, this ownership of something that cannot be owned."

This is a novel about a woman with an unusual hobby, but the story is good and encourages you to find out what happens to Margret and her bird collection. I also enjoyed the detailed descriptions of Margret's window dressing projects. A fascinating job unto itself.

Thank you to Laura Jacobs and LibraryThing's Early Reviewers for giving me the opportunity to review this book. You may find more information on Laura Jacobs at [...].

Grief is personal. Coping with grief is also personal. We all have our own methods of coping with the grief of losing a loved one. Grief can be so consuming that it leaves one unaware of how our grief changes the way we treat our friends and family, and also how the behavior of those who love and care about us shifts to make allowances for the self-centeredness we sometimes unthinkingly wallow in.

I loved this book. It was quiet. It was poignant. It's the story of a woman who dresses windows in Saks and who loves birds. It's a story about a woman and her relationship with her grandfather, her soulmate and her best friend. It's a story of a woman who finds herself adrift after a tragic event. As certain events in her life appear to spiral out of her control, it's also a story of a woman who gradually finds her way again and sees light at the end of a dark tunnel.

There are some good descriptions of birds found in Central Park, NY and incredible details in the art of taxidermy - at least the taxidermy of birds which I found fascinating, but which I can see might revolt those with a lighter stomach for this art.

I liked how the story focused on this one woman, Margret, and her love of birds, and how her thoughts and fears were gradually shared. We know she has a secret with the birds she looks for, but we're not quite sure what she's doing. There are little hints that all is not well in her life at the start of the book, but we're not given the full details until much later, after we've already started to suspect a tragedy and we're already starting to feel we want to wrap her in our arms. While we may not whoop out loud at the end of her journey, there is a definite lift in our spirits as we see her start to straighten her shoulders, lift her head and look forward with clear eyes and a spring in her step.

Bird watching is a very subtle hobby. Birders focus on the small things that are around us all the time, ignored by the masses of people who may be nearby. Birders have patience and a quiet, inquisitive mind that enables them to pursue a specimen in any kind of weather, and go where ever the search may take them. In Central Park, it's especially imaginative to think of these bird lovers spending their free moments searching, admiring, and carrying nothing away but their memory.



This is the backstory to The Bird Catcher. The lead character Margaret falls in love with a fellow birder, a man named Charles who is actually one of her professors. They spend their early courtship exploring birds in Manhattan. In her real life, she's a window dresser for Saks, and she assists her friend Emily in acquiring unique pieces for an art gallery. These three form the backbone of the book, and each of them are well-developed characters. The story doesn't fall into any expected formula, and the characters are actually very interesting. Jacobs manages to display each characters unique personality by showing what they say and do. While the main characters are female, I wouldn't dream of calling this "chick lit"; it has more depth and more complexity by far.



Conceptually, this is a great book. However, I had numerous issues with the story itself. First, we learn early that Charles has passed away, but we aren't told how or when, which builds a curiosity as you read. Margaret seems to be explaining her relationship with him in flashbacks, but it's never entirely clear what is past and what is present. Even through the end, when you discover what happened to Charles, the explanation feels too brief to understand her resulting grief. Their relationship appears perfect, and the cynic in me can't imagine everything that wonderful. In addition, for a talented woman, she spends a terribly large amount of time worrying over her parents approval (she didn't finish college). She also seems strangely reserved around other people, which is odd because she describes herself as an extrovert.



A few other things struck me as off: while the descriptions of the art of window dressing for sales is fascinating, her description of her gay coworkers plays to stereotypes and is insulting in its own way. All of them appear flighty, silly, babyish, and primadonna queens. She seems to want to describe this professional career but ends up mocking the workers who put it together with such art. Additionally, she and her friend Emily are very fluent in the high-brow culture scene in New York: art, opera, and fashion. I consider myself having a good basic knowledge of popular art, but I understood maybe a tenth of the references to current artists. All of this almost feels like she's telling the reader "if you don't understand, you're an imbecile", since so much of the story is dependent on understanding the art references or the works of a particular obscure designer. It's never a good idea to make your reader feel stupid! Sure, I could have looked them up, but there were so many, I really didn't feel like doing the homework. It felt a tiny bit pretentious.



On a positive note, her explanations of the actual window dressing is interesting, and her friend's art gallery holds interest as she explains how the provenance of different objects can be manipulated for profit. The biggest bit of unexpected knowledge is Margaret's interest and decision to learn taxidermy, and the details of this further hobby are more interesting that I'd expected. This isn't a bad novel, and the quick pace makes it very readable...at times I did get overwhelmed by names and brands, but I finished it with a sense of contemplation.

Jacobs has written a gorgeous novel in which she deftly demonstrates how the impulse to create mingles and co-exsits with the need to grieve. A stunning achievement; read it and weep.

I hoped this would be a story of the life of someone who really loves birds and appreciates them. However, I found a story of a shallow woman, poorly written, jumping all over the place with story lines and then the shocking reality of her collecting dead birds. This book is just creepy.