Customer Reviews

Birds in Fall: A Novel

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The novel starts inside the plane. Eighty minutes into the flight, just as the jet curves over the Gulf of Maine toward Nova Scotia and the moonlit Atlantic, a few passengers sense that something's wrong. The lights flicker. There's "a curious chemical smell, not exactly burning, more like a dashboard left to bake in the sun." The narrator, an ornithologist, babbles on about birds until his seat mate, a cellist, tells him to shut up. She knows what's coming; she writes her name --- in lipstick --- on her arm. The plane shudders, shakes, tumbles, explodes. And disappears into the sea.

A plane crash. No survivors. And the main character of the novel with the metaphor-drenched title is the ornithologist's wife, another ornithologist. Who then travels to an inn on Trachis Island, off Nova Scotia, to identify his remains, if any. Man-made birds. Birds in nature. Birds as mythic figures. So many birds you brace yourself for a novel so sensitive you're really not deep enough to read it.

"Birds in Fall" is a better book than that. Much better. Oh, it has its arch and learned references, but then, the passengers we briefly meet on that plane were accomplished professionals. And, more importantly, so are the surviving victims: their family members, whose lives we follow for five years. And so is Kevin Gearns, who --- with Douglas, his lover --- runs the inn where the widows, widowers, parents and others will gather.

There is a kind of book I loathe more than any other: a rural retreat, a gathering, late nights by moonlight, candles and campfires --- and a secret is revealed. This book draws on those elements, but it is not that book. For one thing, Kessler is a master of place and time. His inn is as real as my neighborhood. And if you read this novel as I did --- sitting by an open window, at night, in warm weather --- you can easily transport yourself to an island in the first week of September, where glory is anywhere you look.

And the people! The focus is on Ana Gathreaux, expert on the migratory patterns of sparrows and now, stuck in time, as the survivor of a 15-year marriage. I felt I knew her right away; later, I learned how much more there was to know. The minor characters are just as vivid: a silent Bulgarian, Taiwanese parents, an Iranian exile, Dutch teenagers. A sprinkling of humanity, linked only by grief.

And then there are the birds. Ana's knowledge is impressive --- I mean, Brad Kessler's is. I have not the least interest in the details of Nature, but I do not mind learning, in the course of a taut story, that "at the end of summer, migratory birds grow restless." How high-flying migratory birds show up on pilots' screens as "radar angels." And about the myth of Alcyone and Ceyx and the phrase "halcyon days." [Homework: Go to page 235. Or Google.] Even the metaphor doesn't grate. When Ana's hope that her husband will be found alive finally gives, it's like "a tiny twig, a bird bone, toothpick thin." Yes, okay.

As we watch the characters deal with their loss on a minute-by-minute basis, there is welcome relief. Some of it is trivia. Did you know that Elizabethan women kept apples in their armpits, later to give them to their lovers? And some of it is tabloid ghoulishness, like the "bottles of corked seawater" that have been prepared for the families to take home.

There are pages here as beautiful as anything I've ever read. To cite just one example, late one night a week after the crash, the Bulgarian sits at the inn's piano, playing Chopin's Nocturne, number 19, in E minor. He's like the Pied Piper. From all over the property, the mourners are drawn to this music --- Ana most of all, for this was her husband's favorite piece. The man without words gives them eloquence beyond eloquence. When he finishes, Ana squeezes his hands, whispers thank you. "The Bulgarian bowed stiffly, formally, the way he would in a concert hall."

"How is a story like a bird?" Kessler asks, near the end. "It keeps us aloft. It flies. It goes from one place and lands at another, seemingly at random. But its movements are carefully choreographed, and if you look closely, you'll know exactly where it will next perch." In a lesser book, I would have read this and thought, "Ouch." In this book, like Ana, I just said, "Thank you."

A gem of a book. As a therapist who works with patients who have experienced loss, grief and trauma, I love the beautiful way that Kessler explores the ways we respond in the face of tragedy, the strength of the human capacity to overcome even the most terrible thing and to heal. Bravo. One of the best written books I've read in a long, long time.

This little gem is by far the best fiction book I've read in some time. It is poetic, and gentle, and does not overwhlem the reader with useless information or filler; rather is beautifully crafted so that there are no wasted words or ideas. Kessler seems to have an insiders knowledge of pure, clear grief, and his characters' suffering is deeply accessible by the reader. He loves his characters and has created each of them with the most tender care. His writing about the sea and the natural landscape is just beautiful, and right on. I loved the book and cried when it was over.

I just read this for a book club, and feel that most of the glowing reviews for it are greatly overblown. The prose is mostly quite lovely, and Kessler has created a fine assortment of characters whose responses to the trauma of losing loved ones in a plane crash are plausible enough. But good fiction requires more than realistic depictions of fictional characters and some nice prose. It requires a compelling *story* or *significance*, and in the end those are what this book lacks. The many classical analogies and musical references (e.g., the book is in 23 sections, to mirror Strauss's "Metamorphoses for 23 solo strings") utlimately have no payoff. So while it made me feel smart because I knew about the Ceyx/Alcyone myth and who the women of Trachis were and which Auden poem was being quoted, there didn't seem to be any narrative purpose for my knowing any of these things, since these allusions had no obvious resonance within the novel. Even as a trauma narrative, the book doesn't say very much about trauma; it simply depicts it. While it is an accomplishment to do so plausibly (hence the 3-star rating), I know plenty of trauma victims whose real-life stories I can hear if I want that sort of thing. A trauma novel needs to say something more about grief and healing than that they happen over time and in different ways for different people, which is pretty much all this book says about the matter.

This is an elegantly written, character-driven novel that reminds one of Melville in its depth of learning. Brad Kessler (farmer, birdwatcher as well as writer) is a major new talent in American literature. This is a book that will be read many years from now in university survey courses in American literature. Yet it's immediately accessible and a rewarding read. If you care about the novel, you owe it to yourself to read this one.

Brad Kessler's novel begins with a disaster in the air when, like Icarus, a jet plane plunges into the sea somewhere up in the Maritimes. At a nearby B&B, a pair of gay guys are closing down for the winter, but they keep the place open to accommodate a growing swarm of relatives, people whose nearest and dearest have gone down to a watery death.

Kessler's book, like many hotel novels, brings together a critical mass of people from all walks of life, enough of a sample so that we seem to be experiencing humanity en masse in all its messy complexity. Kevin, the hotelier, throws himself into the work of mercy with a fierceness born of a desire to forget about mounting boyfriend problems, and indeed of a whole New York life decimated by the death of all of his friends to AIDS. Here in Trachis Harbor, he and Douglas are patronized and resented by the locals, but under the pressure of emergency all things change, and Douglas becomes more of a Maritimer than the Maritimers.

Kessler's particular focus is on Ana Gathreaux, a Manhattan bird scientist who has lost her husband. As Ana remembers meeting Russell, they were in a museum for dead birds, and "Russell told her one night in the empty halls of the museum, that if you listened carefully, you could hear all the dead birds in their display cases communing with each other. "What does it sound like? Ana asked. "Esperanto," he said. "Only for avifauna."

This turns out to be one of Russell's little jokes, but her sorrow is all-encompassing. There is also her opposite number, Pars Mansoor, an Iranian firebrand whose niece he hasn't seen for many years, since he's been in exile trying to lead a new life. From Iranian folklore Kessler derives many of his most telling metaphors, particularly the superstition that the soul is a bird that lives in the nape of the neck. After awhile reading this book, you too will believe that everything is bird-related.

When Ana and Pars bond together in the gay B&B, they are brought together first by mutual loss, then by a growing sense of new life beginning for them, perhaps together. Their attraction is too delicate, even unseemly, to put into words exactly, but some strong drink puts paid to their inhibitions, and--but I better not let spoilers ruin Kessler's lovely buildup to this middle-age romance. I say, get Barbara Hershey and Naveem Andrews (from LOST) to play these two--a real life Hollywood couple for the inevitable movie version.

Another pilgrim is Diane Olmstead, who practices a sort of Wicca magic and sees signs everywhere, even in the banal. She's huge and fat like Mrs. Moore in A PASSAGE TO INDIA, and like Mrs. Moore she sees through the seeming side of the real, into the realm where birds and humans fly together through lit mead halls. She reads the TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD and seems like our ambassador into mystic places, just as the very young people who have come to the island, a Dutch punk girl and her disaffected brother, allow Kessler to show us how horror and death look to those who have never before experienced either.

The Dutch girl, Claartija de Jong, wears a tattoo on her arm that reads "Grone eieren met ham" (Green eggs and ham) but when pressed to say if she's a Dr Seuss fan, she responds only, "Not particularly." She's sort of cold, but warms up under the magic of Kevin's cooking.

Maybe calling the Bulgarian musician "Orfeo" was a little symbolic, but the passage where he and Mrs. Liang stand together in the naval yard examining the debris of the crash, hoping to find something particular to their loved ones, is very powerful stuff.

Kessler is one of today's most poetic voices working in the novel form. Is his book an allegory? Almost always. Reading it is like experiencing sunrise and sunset within one's own brain, as the pictures change, fade, grow, and one's private world stands revealed as but a tiny piece in the vast mosaic of political, social and spiritual life, against which we must seem like tiny sparrows freezing in the sun. BIRDS IN FALL is an astounding book, a gift from the gods, not a mirror so much as a lantern, possibly a flight map.

PS, I don't know, but day after day Kevin works his ass off cooking delicious 4 star cordon bleu meals, and his house filled with sad people just picks at them. Is it a class thing? Where I come from, people who are upset do not turn down food. They go for it with gusto, it gives us something to distract ourselves from grief. Up on Trachis Island, they're all, to a man, "Oh no thanks, Kevin; maybe I'll have 1 and a half crackers."

My father happened to come across this book while researching "cello cases" on my behalf (I am hoping to buy a new one soon). The book came up on the search because it starts out describing a Bulgarian cellist who is flying with her cello strapped into the seat beside her. As I play cello, my father thought I might identify with this character, so he sent me a copy of this book. Maybe the good reviews of the book also encouraged him to send me a copy.
As it happens, when I opened Kessler's book, I had only days before just finished writing a paper about the French baroque composer Marin Marais for one of my music classes. For those of you who liked Birds in Fall, and for that matter, Ovid's Metamorphosis (which, I admit, I haven't read - yet), or just kingfishers or birds in general, you might consider acquiring a copy of Marin Marais's most popular opera, Alcione, which has been recorded by Marc Minkowski and the Musiciens du Louvre. Why? Because this opera (or tragedie lyrique, to use the technical term) is based on the same tale about kingfishers [from Ovid's Metamorphosis] which has a somewhat prominent place in Brad Kessler's novel. The libretto, by La Motte, apparently takes a few liberties with the Ovid version of the kingfisher story, but the essence of it is there. Yes opera can be dull, but this one, as long as you read the libretto while you listen so you know what's going on, is absolutely beautiful and very exciting and moving in parts. Marais is known today very much for his connection to viola da gamba music--thanks to the film Tous les matins du monde--but try to find and give this opera a listen. If you enjoyed the themes of birds, loss, and reincarnation in Birds in Fall you may well find Marais's opera a (bittersweet) pleasure, too.

This is a beautiful novel both in its lyrical writing and in its profound sentiments. It doesn't shy away from the gravity and repercussions of a large disaster; at the same time, it offers a redemptive grace to those lives wounded by tragedy. And like any great book, it is a compelling and entertaining read. This book will enhance your life.

It was only about forty minutes into the flight when Russell begins to smell something burning, a strange almost acrid odor reverberating through the cabin. The pilots - thinking that it's a problem with the air-conditioning system - tell the passengers to sit tight. Just as the hostesses are run up and down the isles, checking for tightened seat belts, the in-flight entertainment system seems to flicker and die.

Suddenly, the entire cabin falls dark, a strange silvery light pouring through the plane and "lathing the aisles in a luminous, oddly peaceful glow." The woman sitting next to Russell, a Bulgarian cellist asks him what is wrong. Passengers begin to grow restless and uneasy, and there's a certain edgy movement in the air. Several men crane their necks to look around the cabin; exchange searching looks, and then embarrassed, look away.

The plane starts sinking fast, the nose dipping downward, the smell gets worse, the smoke seeping in slowly, the smell of burning plastic. Someone throws up. The cabin rattles, the bulkhead shakes, and the overhead bins pop open. Twenty minutes later the aircraft plunges into the sea about twenty miles from Trachis Island, just off the coast of Nova Scotia.

American innkeeper Kevin Gearns - who moved to the picaresque, island several years ago with Douglas, his long-term partner - is the first to witness the crash, the sight and sound of it forever etched in his memory. He'll always remember what he saw that night, two, three miles offshore: "the bottom of a fuselage lit up in a ghastly red glow, enormous, groaning, something not meant to be there, that low, in that place."

Ana, Russell's ornithologist wife is living in New York at the time of the crash. The next day, when Russell fails to ring from Amsterdam, Anna begins to worry. Obviously she's devastated when she learns the truth and along with the other relatives of the victims, she arrives on Trachis Island, hoping there will at least be some survivors.

For the first few nights Ana doesn't sleep a wink. She wants to be closer to Russell and to the ocean, to feel its pull. For it seemed possible even then - despite the evidence otherwise - that Russel might somehow be alive. Yet feeling the proximity of so much death, the outpouring of love that surrounds her is as undeniable, just as the grief is real too.

The other relatives of the dead are equally as traumatized. An elderly lady mourns her sister, grieving for her and all the others for the last terrifying moments of their lives, and for those they'd left behind. There's also a Dutch brother and sister who have lost their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Liang, an elderly Chinese couple mourning their only daughter, and Pars, an Iranian man who has lost his niece and with whom Ana forms a close connection.

They have all come to see the ocean, the wreckage, and to see more pointedly, what isn't visible. Kevin tries his best to make them all as comfortable as he can, spending his days cooking and cleaning, unable to erase the image of what he's seen from his head, "nor the horrendous crunching sound." Douglas is no help. Ever since the crash, he's been galvanized, preferring to spend his days at the Government dock, working side-by-side with the search and rescue volunteers.

As the days wear on, Kevin refuses to even discuss the crash, complaining about all the things Douglas isn't helping with. No doubt these people have come to Trachis Island for closure, but for Kevin it seems as if nothing will ever close, "that it was all just opening a wound, barely begun."

For years he'd been drifting apart from Douglas and it's as though they were "two pieces of plankton floating farther and farther away." Perhaps then, this terrible crash is a type of mechanism for change in Kevin and Douglas' relationship, a chance to move on, just as the relatives of the crash victims have to do.

In some of the most subtle and nuanced prose I have ever read, these people, who are bound together from all corners of the globe, slowly begin their journey towards healing. Author Brad Kessler beautifully translates the human condition - life, death and rebirth - slowly and sensitively bringing forth the aftermath of this terrible accident.

His characters are certainly damaged, and bereaved and also haunted by visions of their relatives, especially Ana who wonders what has become of Russell's leather satchel, his luggage, and his passport, not to mention the man himself. Whilst Mrs. Liang, ever since arriving on the island, is obsessed by images of her daughter, waking from dreams of the young Tien wearing a dress stitched entirely of seaweed and pearls.

Clearly inspired by Swiss Air Flight 111 which crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1998, Birds In Fall concentrates on the emotional healing long after the crash is but a memory. For most, life goes on as before - because it has to, but the event also causes all these people to cling to the brittle recollections of that deceptively calm and moonlit night, even five years on.

Obviously, it is impossible to imagine what those passengers went through in those final crucial moments, and Kessler in deeply considerate prose, tunes into the very real subtleties of what might have happened in the cabin of the airliner that fateful night.

Inserting into his story Greek myths and legends and paralleling the lives of the victims with the world of avian migration, the author has written an exquisite and deeply moving portrait of loss and personal heartache. Mike Leonard July 06.

This book is brilliant story telling. I'm not related. I don't know Brad Kessler. I never met him. So, I have no ulterior motive
in championing this book.He weaves the different stories into a magic carpet. It is brilliant, soulful, poetic. Read it!