Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Megan Mayhew Bergman (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 6, 2012

From a prizewinning young writer whose stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and New Stories from the South comes a heartwarming and hugely appealing debut collection that explores the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world.

Megan Mayhew Bergman’s twelve stories capture the surprising moments when the pull of our biology becomes evident, when love or fear collide with good sense, or when our attachment to an animal or wild place can’t be denied. In “Housewifely Arts,” a single mother and her son drive hours to track down an African Gray Parrot that can mimic her deceased mother’s voice. A population control activist faces the ultimate conflict between her loyalty to the environment and her maternal desire in “Yesterday’s Whales.” And in the title story, a lonely naturalist allows an attractive stranger to lead her and her aging father on a hunt for an elusive woodpecker. 

As intelligent as they are moving, the stories in Birds of a Lesser Paradise are alive with emotion, wit, and insight into the impressive power that nature has over all of us.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2012: Megan Mayhew Bergman’s collection of stories contains all of the elements that, it could be said, make up the very best in short fiction: each story is beautiful, full of palpable pain or joy--sometimes both--all loosely connected and based on the types of figures we’ve all known in our lives. But what sets this collection of stories apart is that each sentence feels sturdily crafted, each ending feels satisfying in a way short fiction rarely does. Mayhew Bergman does something exceptional with Birds of a Lesser Paradise--she quickly constructs a world filled with animals and nature and family who hate and love and mostly need one another--and it feels complete. --Alexandra Foster

Review

“Birds of a Lesser Paradise is an astonishing debut collection, by a writer reminiscent of such greats as Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout and even Chekhov. Expertly delivered, Bergman's stories bloom from the minutiae of life. They confirm the inescapable power that nature--and our own biology--has over us.”

– Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants

“Megan Mayhew Bergman apparently possesses, all in one sensibility, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s love of a back-to-the-land self-sufficiency, Amy Hempel’s infinite tenderness towards animals, and Tillie Olsen’s fierce sense of the emotional intensities of motherhood. Birds of a Lesser Paradise features characters who, even understanding it as well as they do, want to mother the world, and their stories are rendered with dazzling compassion, intelligence, and grace.”

– Jim Shepard, author of You Think That’s Bad

“A big-hearted collection of stories—each one a precise and compassionate study of human life, the changes and obstacles—all carefully housed under the miracles and marvels of nature. Megan Mayhew Bergman is a brilliantly gifted writer who recognizes and highlights life's fragilities in a way that will leave your heart aching while also finding those bits of hilarity and absurdity that bring uniqueness to each and every creature.”

– Jill McCorkle, author of Going Away Shoes

“I predict that astronomers will soon be renaming the star Sirius to Megan Mayhew Bergman. Birds of a Lesser Paradise offers us a spectacular new voice in the world of American short fiction. The characters in these stories—each one—perform as beacons on who we are and how we should act, all without pretense or exhortation. This is a first-rate collection.”

—George Singleton, author of The Half-Mammals of Dixie

"Bergman's excellent stories are hard-earned and well-honed. Her characters speak as if their very lives depend upon getting it right, getting it down, facing the toughest stuff that tumbles down with equal toughness and enduring resilience. A very fine and impressive debut."

–Brad Watson, author of Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

"Readers will be shocked, amazed, and always entertained by the work of this accomplished writer of short fiction." --Booklist

"A top-notch debut... that deserves big praise. The beginning, one suspects, of a fine career." --Kirkus

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1 edition (March 6, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1451643357
• ISBN-13: 978-1451643350
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #498,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was raised in North Carolina and now live on a small farm in Vermont with my veterinarian husband, two girls, and a menagerie of animals. I teach literature at Bennington College and am a Justice of the Peace for my small town of Shaftsbury.

Thanks for your interest in my book. You can learn more about my work at www.mayhewbergman.com.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Animals and the Earth - Their Bond with Humankind March 6, 2012

By Bonnie Brody TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman contains several very fine stories, especially the first three. Most of the stories are about animals and humans and how they interact. For instance, in the title story Ms. Bergman states that "I was taught that at the heart of all people, all things, lay raw self-interest. Sure, you could dress a person up nice, put pretty words in his mouth, but underneath the silk tie and pressed shirt was an animal. A territorial, hungry animal anxious to satisfy his own needs." On the surface, this story is about a woman of 36 who has been raised by her widowed father in the swamplands where he has a birding business. Isolated, Mae becomes entranced by a handsome customer who ends up putting her and her father in a dangerous situation while in search of the extinct ivory-billed woodpecker.

'Saving Face' is about a once beautiful veterinarian who gets bitten on the face by a wolf who comes out of anesthesia too soon. She feels her loss of beauty along with the pity that follows her. She has postponed her marriage, not letting her fiance touch her. "She regretted the care with which she tugged the quills from the dog's lips - the same lips that opened to reveal brutal teeth that had torn into her face with an almost feral abandon as the dog unexpectedly came to."

'Yesterday's Whales' is about Malachi who runs an organization dedicated to advocating the end of humankind, sacrificing the human race to let nature reclaim the earth. No more breeding of humans. When his girlfriend gets pregnant, discord ensues. Malachi believes that every human life drains the earth's limited resources.... His girlfriend, in deciding what to do about the baby, muster up hope about the world's future. "We wanted the same thing, I think, an earth less taxed by human presence. But giving up on life now, I felt, was like leaving the party early."

In 'Night Hunting', a young woman is dealing with her mother's impending death from breast cancer. She learns about her own strength in the face of predators. "The best predators, I realized, had no empathy."

'The Two-Thousand Dollar Sock' tells of a family's dog who has an intestinal blockage from eating a sock and they don't have the $2,000 for the veterinarian to do exploratory surgery. Despite the dog being at death's door, he is able to chase a predatory bear away from the house and protect his family.

My favorite story in the collection is 'Housewifely Arts' which I've read previously in The Best Short Stories of 2011. A woman is taking a 9 hour drive to visit her deceased mother's parrot. While living, her mother and she had a complicated relationship. Now the daughter misses her mother and realizes that her mother's voice resides in her mother's parrot who can perfectly mimic her. The daughter has trouble remembering what her mother sounded like and realizes that the parrot has more of her mother inside her than she does. "...We're driving to a small roadside zoo outside of Myrtle Beach so that I can hear my mother's voice call from the beak of a thirty-six year-old African gray parrot, a bird I hated, a bird that could beep like a microwave, ring like a phone, and sneeze just like me."

In 'Every Vein a Tooth', Gray decides to leave his girlfriend, an animal activist, because her home is filled with animals and it's just too much for him. When given the choice, she chooses her animals over him.

All of the stories are about the relationship of people to the natural world, mostly through their relationship with animals. In some stories, the animals know their people better than any human does. Ms. Bergman, who is married to a veterinarian, has obviously studied and been with animals. Her stories are palpably about nature and the food chain, the relationship that humans have with the earth and the animals that reside here beside us. Most of the stories are wonderful but a few are weak and could have been left out of this collection. The first three stories in the collection are the strongest and the book is worth reading for these alone. Read more ›

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfectly Pitched; Excellent Book for Quick, Enjoyable Reads March 8, 2012

By AZ Reader

Format:Hardcover

Strongly recommend. In my packed work weeks, and weekends of family,house projecting and normal busyness, I have only a few moments to enjoy reading, and strive (and fail, sometimes) to find something well-written, imaginative and engaging to make the most of the moments... This book is a winner, one that I can enjoy over 15 minutes with a cup of tea or just before bed, or in the stolen, wind-down moments from a busy day where 15 minutes turns into an hour. I've picked up Birds of a Lesser Paradise a dozen times in the past week, reading different stories, being brought into Mayhew Bergman's solidly crafted, interesting characters and well-developed story arcs.

As it did with me, I think the stories Mayhew Bergman writes will appeal to nature and animal lovers, mothers, families; there's appeal to all in her varied, home-centered narratives. Even though the lives of people in the book are a distant cry from my day to day life sometimes, I feel I can relate to them, carried into their lives and struggles through the welcoming pages of Birds of a Lesser Paradise.

Enjoy this book!

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great new literary voice! March 12, 2012

By Jaime H.

Format:Hardcover

In this collection of short stories, Bergman weaves together a series of intimate stories, each with their own focus of effects and influence of nature in our daily lives. The stories explore birth, death, and the living that comes in between. In what amounts to a solid and intricately woven collection, each story easily stands alone. Bergman achieves what is difficult to do with a short story: the ability to full articulate each history, while allowing room for the possibility of the characters to grow into a full story of their own.

While all the stories were interesting and equal in rhythm, there were two that really stood out to me. The first was "Yesterday's Whales," in which the main character is a proponent of population control, and discovers she is pregnant. She is forced to explore her entire belief system, and figure out how the new knowledge can fit within her current framework- or if she can even live the same life anymore. The other standout was "Saving Face," with a character whose face has been scarred and learns what it means to be treated differently because of something that is out of her control. She must learn to rethink her idea of beauty, learn to love herself, and learn to let others in again. However, the price of being scarred on the inside is far greater than the scars on the outside.

Throughout the collection, Bergman explores the relationship between humans and nature, the concept of nature versus nurture, and how the idea of human nature relates to it all. The idea of the cycle of life, and how we deal with birth and death are prominent throughout as well.... Birds of a Lesser Paradise achieves what many short stories collections struggle with: each of the stories are intrinsically and intimately connected, yet they tell a story that is all their own. Each voice is clear and distinct, yet together they collaborate into a common voice of questioning everything and not taking anything for granted.

The question remains as to whether Bergman intends to continue as a short-story author, or if perhaps one of the characters within the pages of Birds will find a larger voice in a full-length novel of her own. Either way, there is sure to be an audience for the quietly powerful new author. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Delicately polished, resonant fiction May 30, 2013

By S. Idell

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

BIRDS OF A LESSER PARADISE is a pretty stunning collection. Imagery is cropped both delicately and precisely, parents and children drift apart and meet again, struggling to understand one another. Couples break up and reunite, but the end result is never quite as important as the emotional mechanics, the resonant thought patterns which pull these stories to their inevitable conclusions. Bergman is immensely talented at plotting out specific parts of the psyche, and possesses a wonderful ability to draw out warmth and hope in even washed up characters. This is really lovely work.

My one major complaint is that these stories seem to echo over and over again within the same thematic space. I'm fine with fiction not offering solutions and only exploring issues, emotions, but exploring the same set of ideas again and again does grow grating after 200 pages. Still, this is strong, powerful fiction with precise language.

Worth reading for any fans of the modern short story.