The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel [Hardcover]

Gayle Brandeis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 29, 2003

Winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize, an award in support of a literature of social responsibility, The Book of Dead Birds is an intimate portrait of a young woman at a defining moment in her life, who stands at the intersection of two cultures and races.

Ava Sing Lo has been accidentally killing her mother's birds since she was a little girl. Now, having just finished her graduate work, Ava leaves her native San Diego for the Salton Sea, where she volunteers to help environmental activists save thousands of birds poisoned by agricultural run-off.

Helen, Ava's mother, has been haunted by her past for decades. As a young girl in Korea, Helen was drawn into prostitution on a segregated American army base. Several brutal years passed before a young white American soldier married her and brought her to California. When she gave birth to a black baby, her new husband quickly abandoned her, and she was left to fend for herself and her daughter in a foreign country.

With great beauty and lyricism, The Book of Dead Birds captures a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her mother's terrible past while she searches for her own place in the world. This moving mother-daughter story of migration, survival, and reconciliation resonates across cultures and through generations.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Ava Sing Lo is the daughter of Helen, a Korean woman forced into prostitution on a segregated American army base, and one of the clients she serviced. All of her life, Ava has sensed that her mother, often depressed and withdrawn, is ashamed of her past and her daughter's dark skin. Helen is fascinated with birds, which seem to encompass for her some vital message about fragility and survival, but Ava has been accidentally killing her mother's pets since she was a little girl. Now Ava wants to head to the Salton Sea, the site of the worst bird die-off in American history, where she also hopes to repair her fragile relationship with her mother. This first novel is the winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for a work of socially and politically engaged fiction; however, Brandeis' novel suffers, at times, from overly fraught symbolism and an awkwardly tacked-on subplot. The author is at her best in her lyrical descriptions of nature and in the finely detailed portrait of the emotional tug-of-war between mother and child. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“THE BOOK OF DEAD BIRDS is a story of healing--a skillful, textured weaving of dark and light.” (Donna M. Gershten, author of KISSING THE VIRGIN'S MOUTH )

“The plight of the mother and daughter is … heartbreaking.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“Intricate and elegant ... a novel that illustrates a compelling search for meaning that is ultimately familiar.” (Denver Post )

“Moving … powerful and strangely interesting.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch )

“An emotional story forged in crystalline prose.” (Bust Magazine )

“A moving and perceptive first novel.” (O magazine )

“Brandeis’s writing is sensitive, lyrical and diverse.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel )

“A uniquely inventive novel.” (Rocky Mountain News )

“[A] vivid tale of a woman learning to save and cherish life.” (San Francisco Chronicle )

“Lyrical, imaginative, beautifully crafted, and deeply intelligent. Before anything else, its characters take you by the heart.” (Barbara Kingsolver )

“[It] has an edgy beauty that enhances perfectly the seriousness of its contents.” (Toni Morrison )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (April 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060528036
• ISBN-13: 978-0060528034
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #522,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperSanFrancisco), The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel (HarperCollins), which won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change, Self Storage (Ballantine), Delta Girls (Ballantine) and my first novel for young readers, My Life with the Lincolns (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers). The Book of Live Wires, the sequel to The Book of Dead Birds, is available now exclusively as an ebook. You can visit me at www.gaylebrandeis.com. It's always a pleasure to hear from readers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A powerful and painful bridge to acceptance..., June 10, 2003

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was intrigued by the title of this sensitive tale of a mother and a daughter and the cultural obstacles that define their lack of common language. Mother and daughter relations provide a universal theme, this relationship made even more poignant by the Korean background of the mother, transported as a war bride to the shores of Southern California. Her daughter is born in America, yet never knows a sense of belonging.

Hye-yang is a dutiful daughter in a Korean village where the women are ocean divers. But Hye-yang is clumsy, unable to contribute to the family's meager coffers, so she goes to the city, where she is tricked into a life of prostitution. As a prostitute, she is demeaned and abused, unable to speak up, even when her best friend, another prostitute, is killed. When a young soldier brings her to America as his wife, Hye-yang, now Helen, hasn't the courage to tell him the shameful truth: her life of prostitution as a vessel for colored soldiers and that she is already pregnant. When the child is born with dark skin, the soldier beats and sexually abuses Helen, leaving her to make a living as a single mother in a strange land.

With her dark skin, Ava Sing Lo looks black, is half-Korean, yet never feels comfortable with either identity. Studious and reliable, her life is spent at school and helping her mother. She secretly reads a journal kept by her mother over the years, where Helen has documented all the birds Ava accidentally killed, meaning only kindness. Ava takes this as another criticism of her abject failure as a daughter. After graduating college, Ava has no sense of direction, no plan for her life. In an effort to do something positive, Ava volunteers to help in an effort to save endangered pelicans at the Salton Sea, determined to prove that she can do something positive.

Leaving San Diego temporarily to live at the Salton Sea, Ava finds herself amid a group of eccentrics that are a balm to her discomfort. Enjoying the open-hearted acceptance of these new friends, Ava begins a process of self-discovery. Then Helen appears at the Salton Sea and, after a while, the mother and daughter experience an unexpected healing, reaching across the years of Helen's silent suffering and Ava's anguished need, bridging the years and opening a door to the future.

The metaphor of the birds is central to Helen's life, and by extension, to her daughter. The birds are ubiquitous in Korea, carping and squawking in the background, distinct in their ability to scavenge for scraps, to exist on the meager amount the stingy land provides. In such a way, Helen has survived, on scraps, physically and emotionally. But she has no words, no legacy for Ava. Helen's spirit has been confined by her silence, in Korea and the strange new land where her daughter is born. Ava's generous and forgiving heart is the balm that heals their wounds, as Ava offers the words to Helen she's longed to speak, "I know the language of birds." Luan Gaines/2003.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Place Exotic and Familiar, May 19, 2003

By 

LKRigel (West Coast USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel (Hardcover)

Gayle Brandeis's The Book of Dead Birds has a powerful simplicity unexpected in a first novel. It is the story of Ava Sing Lo, a young woman with a masters in communications who can barely talk to her mother, Helen. All her life, Ava has inadvertently killed Helen's pet birds. When a horrific bird die-off hits the Salton Sea, Ava is compelled to volunteer to help save the birds, to somehow make up for the past.

The scenes at the Salton Sea are rendered so truly, you can smell the air and feel the crunch of the hard shore. Brandeis, who has written about the importance of sensuality in her book Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write, skillfully puts the reader in the triple-digit heat of the stinking bird kill or the cool waters of a lagoon diving for abalone in Korea.

But the author is tricky. The places and characters in this fierce novel are deceptively exotic. The story is actually a familiar one, exceptionally well told, of the rage between parent and child when life has been so much less than good. Finally, with all its images of death, The Book of Dead Birds is really about rebirth, about taking one more chance, believing that happiness is possible, and deciding to go get it.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ecological tragedy, family secrets and a wonderful story, September 25, 2003

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel (Hardcover)

This first novel is more than just a good story. It's about a recent ecological tragedy at the Salton Sea in southern California where more than 14,000 endangered brown pelicans died. The heroine of the book, 25-year old Ava, volunteers to help out and while there goes through her kind of maturation. She's half black, half Korean, and has been brought up by her rather quirky Korean single mother who was once a prostitute in Korea catering to black soldiers. Her mother has always kept birds, and Ava has always had the misfortune to accidentally kill them. Her mother keeps the bird feathers in a large scrapbook and documents all of Ava's bird-killing misdeeds.

It is only when Ava takes the step to drive the few hours to Salton Sea, that she finally gets to understand her mother, her background, and the fascinating and sorrow-filled world of the dying birds. It's all captured well, in well-crafted words, and there's even a bit of Korean folklore. Ava is a sympathetic character who was easy to identify with. And, as the mother's story gradually unfolded, I was filled with horror as well as a new kind of understanding for the world of young women who are lured into the nightmare world of servicing men.

I was heartened to see Ava finally emerge from the shadow world of her history and find meaning in her life as well as love. Mostly, though, I was glad to see her working side by side with her mother to help rescue birds. In just 245 pages, the author has managed to do a lot. No wonder this book has won the 2003 Bellwether prize for fiction has been lauded by such notables as Toni Morrison and Barbara Kingsolver.

I found the book wonderful. And definitely recommend it. I'm also looking forward to whatever Ms. Brandeis writes next. She is clearly at the beginning of a long a distinguished career.