Customer Reviews

The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel

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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.

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.

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.

Brandeis' book is astonishing. A mother who loves birds--a daughter who inadvertently kills them. Woven in is the heartbreaking story of how the mother, a Korean woman forced into prostitution, thinks she's found redemption right up until the baby is born. By the end of this lustrous book, both mother and daughter have begun to make their own peace with their own lives--and with each others. Lyrically written and just beautifully, beautifully told. Stunning in its power.

Ms. Brandeis, the author of the inspirational nonfiction book for writers, Fruitflesh, scores again with this uncommonly lovely and graceful story about Ava Sing Lo, a San Diego native who learns to save birds rather than killing them, and her mother, Helen, who grew up in Korea where she was used as a prostitute on a U.S. army base. There is redemption here that does not come easy, making it all the more worthwhile when it at last arrives.

The Book of Dead Birds sucked me in and didn't let me go until I'd devoured it from cover to cover. This novel is like a rare gem in a treasure chest - unique, beautiful, mesmerizing. Gayle Brandeis is a definite new talented author.

Ava Sing Lo has had freak accidents involving the death of birds since she was a little girl. In order to find peace with herself and hoping to win her mother's approval, she moves from San Diego to Salton Sea to help alleviate the epidemic of dead birds in that area. What transpires is a lyrical, slow-paced tale of a young woman's journey to self-discovery. She, too, needs to alleviate herself. Her Korean mother's painful past has haunted her throughout the years. The unraveling of her mother's struggles is both disarming and poignant. There's a great deal of symbolism throughout the novel.

As mentioned earlier, The Book of Dead Birds enthralled me from beginning to end. It is a literary force to be reckoned with. Gayle Brandeis is a wonderful new voice that shall be heard for years to come. The book jacket states that this novel won the Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for addressing various social problems. The aforementioned prize is well deserved. I highly recommend this brilliant and beautiful novel...

I believe the characters illustrated in this lyrical novel will stay with me for some time. It's a beautiful, well-written story. Gayle Brandeis has a true gift. Her main characters are quiet and introspective, and yet we hear their voices very clearly. We see everything they see, feel everything they feel, and smell everything they smell.

The plot is built around a series of dead birds--birds inadvertently killed by the main character, a young woman of mixed heritage (Korean and African American) named Ava Sing Lo. Information about each bird--its life and cause of death--are recorded in her mother's scrap book, The Book of Dead Birds. As Ava attempts to break the spell of the dying birds and her shame and sorrow of being a disappointment to her mother we come face to face with her fragility, pain, and insecurity. We, and all those within the story, root for her to soar.

Brandeis weaves together two stories--the daughter, Ava, and the mother, Hye-yang (Helen). She takes us from San Diego to the Saltan Sea and back to Korea in the 1960s, where through Ava's retelling of her mother's song, we learn of Hye-yang's slide into prostitution, Ava's conception and their ultimate flight path to freedom.

I highly, highly recommend this book. It's one of the best I've read so far this year.

Michele Cozzens, Author of A Line Between Friends and The Things I Wish I'd Said.

The Book of Dead Birds is a story within a story, layered with dead birds, historical tragedy, and the hope for future flight no matter how deeply a bird has been wounded. Following the life of heroine Ava Sing Lo, in first-person present tense, this novel explores themes of race, exploitation, pollution, and indigenous cultural survival. The book includes excerpts from Ava's mother's journal, which is actually an encyclopedia of dead birds, revealing a voice that holds the burdens of witness, grief, anger and defeat, in single-page entries, here and there throughout the book. Lyrical & redemptive storytelling.

What a beautiful and complex book. Gayle Brandeis' poetic background comes through in the lyrical writing, especially when she's describing the birds in their natural world and when she's delving into the push-pull relationship between mother and daughter.
Book of Dead Birds deals with many issues: gender, race, culture differences, environmental concerns, immigration, guilt, survival, redemption - and love.
Ava Sing Lo is the daughter of Helen, a Korean woman who was forced to work as a prostitute on a military base; Ava's father was one of her mother's `clients.' Brought to America by a white husband, Helen found herself quickly abandoned after she gave birth to a black baby (Ava) who grew into a child and young woman who never felt full acceptance from her immigrant mother. The birds of the title are her mother's, and they carry heavy symbolism in the story. And Ava has been killing them. To atone, she finishes graduate school and volunteers to work with birds that are being poisoned by agricultural run-off.
Very moving and lyrical first novel. 4 ½ stars.

Gayle Brandeis doesn't write a story, she sings it. From the opening line ("I remember the first time I flew"), I was captured by her voice, by the passionate rhythm of her phrasing. This novel does so much more than tell a story; it exposes the hearts of two women, mother and daughter, and makes you love them. Never before have I finished reading a novel and then turned back to the first page to begin again.