Customer Reviews

Hummingbird House

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What's not to love about Kate Banner? She is noble, altruistic, intelligent, desirable and driven by service to mankind. She is willing to risk her own safety to help innocent people caught in the cross-fire of revolutions in Guatemala and Nicaragua. She offers medical comfort and guidance and shelter to those who would perish without it. She is the voice of reason and conscience in a part of the world where both appear in short supply. I applaud Patricia Henley for the time she spent in Central America researching this book -- she seems to understand from experience the essence of the cultures there. And it shows in the characters and story line and in the dialogue, which is especially vivid and real. Henley conveys a grasp of her setting amid its turmoil without overtly espousing political positions. I learned nothing much new about Nicaragua, which I have also visited: Henley didn't penetrate deeply into the substance of the conflict between the Contras and Sandinistas or the glorious landscape or the human paradox of Managua, which somewhat disappointed me. But she was able to shed significant new light on the Guatemala situation for me. Despite the intrusive, overwhelming absurdity of man and nature that Kate encounters in Central America, she remains resolute in her service to mankind, which often seems unworthy of such devotion. I deeply respect such noble optimism and integrity. Henley's portrayal of Father Dixie Ryan was excellent: what a wonderful character and so roundly drawn! I was pleased to learn of Henley's inclusion on the short lists for the National Book Award and the New Yorker's Top Book of the Year. The publisher took a well-calculated risk on this work, which is far removed from formulaic New York publishing fare. I look forward to more of such substantive fiction over the most promising literary career of Patricia Henley. Hummingbird House is milagro, a miracle.

Patricia Henley has woven a most spectacular story in this book. It was difficult at first to find a way into the story -- I was confused and lost for a bit, but I managed to find my way in and unearth the triangle of lives that she builds the story around. Kate Banner is a noble and flawed woman -- and beautiful all the more in dealing with her struggles personally as well as in the treacherous world she choooses to live in. Into her world come a myriad of people -- most notably a priest with questions about his path in life (without compromising his faith and vibrancy) and a young orphan girl, whose impact on Kate changes her entire perspective. This is a book delicately written with such lush images that found myself reading certain passages over and over again. Couple that with human insights so bald, raw, and true that they still haunt me, and there's a beginning of an understanding of just how powerful a book this is. I loved the book when I read it, and as time passed after finishing it, the story stayed with me. I kept remembering it -- kept revisiting it -- kept seeing it. The story itself is wonderful wonderful and complex on its own... it has beauty and horror, love and hate, sense and incredulity, passion and war... its a love story as well as a crusade for humanity -- a story of a cause and an individual fighting to stay on top of the world long enough to make a difference -- a fight for self knowledge and understanding... and underneath it all is a masterwork of language, which lifts this book out of a story and into an experience. Henley's writing is so ripe in language there are phrases you can almost taste when read -- there is so much power in her choice of words that it will haunt you only moments after you've read them. She's created a beautiful experience for a reader -- one overflowing in humanity and haunting in language -- stay with the initial confusion, the reward is an experience that will stay with one for a long, long time.

A finalist for the National Book Award, this novel tells the story of once-idealistic Kate and her American friends who struggle against political and economic oppression during the 1980's. Kate is exhausted from her years of midwifery and nursing in Nicaragua and Guatemala, of the deaths she has known, of the love she has lost, and wants to return to the United States. She travels to Antigua, which she hopes will ease the transition to the safety and opulence of the U.S., but finds herself caught, unwilling to stay, unable to return to a world she had left. She and her friends try to forge small platforms of stability in love and friendship, but the overbearing presence of their political causes and the danger they face threaten to destroy what small pleasures they have.

I would give this book five stars if not for the slightly flat and predictable conclusion, but it was well worth the read. This novel is for all those who have engaged in or who support socio-political causes as well as for those who enjoy high quality literary fiction.

I believe this novel would impress anyone, especially those who have intimate awareness of the political chaos of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Mexico. However, as discussed in other interviews, it does little to politically penetrate these disturbances. I felt this omission was the genius behind the novel.

It is a very dense book, with subject matter quite complicated and diverse. It was, as other reviewers have noted, somewhat challenging to get into. It was difficult to feel just where the protagonist (Kate Banner, midwife) was going and what exactly motivated her anxiety. But, in the end, I find that given the situation, it is a perfect reflection of where and what was going on. How can plans be made when everything can change overnight?

Meet Kate Banner, in the first chapter delivering a newborn in a boat during the aftermath of a hurricane. The infant lives and the mother unexpectantly dies. After years of giving medical care to the poor, managing women's clinics, daubing in dangerous activist circles, exhausted, unsatisfied in love and mentally bereft, she seriously flirts with going back home to the United States.

It is not a surprise to see her attempts thwarted in just about every way. Friends from the past unveil their secret lives, placing all contacts in peril. The horrors of the Sandinistas and Contras become increasingly obvious to her, and unexpectantly, a helpless orphan toddler latches on to her hand and never lets go. The more she tries to pull away from Central America, the more the people, the history and the turmoil itself hold her fast.

There is joy for Kate, though. In stark contrast to the political environs, there is joy in a new love, joy in the nurturing of her adopted orphan girl, joy in the beautifully described region, fauna and people. There is joy in making plans to open Hummingbird House, offering a clinic and school to a small pocket of Guatemalan mountain villagers. and the vision sustains and nourishes her. It is a story of hope and survival.

This is an extremely sensitive novel, and the restraint that the author maintained placed the emphasis just where it belonged.

Central America was rife with revolutionary upheavals and repressive violence during the 1970s and 1980s. Popular demand for social justice collided with traditional agrarian, almost feudal, societies. The rapid expansion of commercial agriculture drove small peasants off the land and into urban areas where they did not have the skills to make a living, and lost their pride in indigenous traditions and their positions of worth in their local communities. Industrial development fostered the growth of the urban working class and middle class, creating professional and blue collar jobs, but the poor and uneducated remained disenfranchised, with extremely high infant mortality rates, and almost no healthcare. The usually conservative Catholic Church became an agent for justice, popular mobilization and change. People demanded democratic reforms in the authoritarian political system, long dominated by landed elites and protected by vicious dictators and their military. In Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the reformist wave was broken by more repression and the mass murder of local populations.

Kate Banner, a trained midwife, travels to Chiapas, Mexico in 1981, to visit her best friend, Maggie. She meets a man, Mark Deaver, the son of a wealthy American woman who has settled there. Mark is an adventurer of sorts, who will eventually run guns for the Sandinistas. Kate believes they will return to the United States one day, or somewhere away from the violence in Central America, and make a life together. In the meantime, she works with some of the 100,000 Guatemalan refugees who fled over the border to Chiapas for asylum, to escape the violence in their homeland. She delivers babies, administers first aid, and assists doctors, whenever one happens to appear. While Kate had never thought of herself as a revolutionary, she was strongly impacted, as a young girl, by the Civil Rights Movement, the bombing of the Baptist Church in Birmingham, the murders of innocent students at Kent State University, the protests against the War in Vietnam, photographs of Vietnamese children screaming with napalm burning their backs. She remembers the nuns telling her to "remember that you have been called to live in freedom." "You shall love they neighbor as thyself." Although she never believed in armed struggle, like Mark - she did want to help the victims of the violence.

Eight years after her arrival in Mexico, Kate is living in Sandinista held Nicaragua, working in a clinic for women and children. She and Maggie are members of a community of activists, dedicated to helping the people of war-torn Nicaragua. Unfortunately, her relationship with Mark has been on the wane for some time, which causes her a great deal of anguish. While she still loves him, he has never really met her needs, or even knows what they are. She has finally come to grips with the futility of their relationship, and acknowledges the pivotal moment she has arrived at in her life. It is time to move on. After a hurricane hits, Kate delivers a baby in the bottom of a swamped boat. When the mother dies, Kate packs the few possessions she has. After years of service, she is physically and emotionally exhausted, and very sad. It is time to leave for the US. She wants Maggie to accompany her to Antigua, Guatemala, and stay with some close friends they haven't seen in a while. Then - on to Michigan. Maggie, however, has ideas of her own. She wants to travel into the countryside with Bob, the new man in her life, and will meet up with Kate in Antigua.

Kate's journey north, into the seething politics and secret wars of Guatemala, will provide the most difficult challenges she has ever faced. She will also meet people who will change her life forever, and find grace and love where she never thought to.

This is a story as powerful and compelling as you will ever read. Patricia Henley's masterful narrative and elegant prose illuminate the characters she brings to life on the page - people determined to stand-up for their rights to live free. She infuses "Hummingbird House" with passion, beauty, outrage, despair and hope. The novel concludes with these moving lines, "We see with quite clear eyes the war beneath the wars. If you pass this story along, make sure you get it straight. What little balm we have, we have against all odds. Do not walk away in sorrow. Do not be consoled."
JANA

Patricia Henley's first novel reflects a bit of recent history that should not be forgotten. It is a deeply moving plea for justice, a cry to wake us from our middle-class stupor, a novel that talks to our souls. The book is beautifully written; images and characters will stay with me for a very long time. I usually dispose of novels when I have finished them, but this one will stay on my bookshelf beside CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, THE COLOR PURPLE, and other masterpieces that focus on the travesties that occur when justice is denied.

I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Henley through my writing program at Northwestern University. She was attentive, intelligent, and curteous. _Hummingbird House_ was my favorite book on this class's reading list. It is touching, informative about a place most Americans are not familiar with, realistic, and passionate. It is a refreshing return to "the story," contains beautiful descriptions and sensory detail.

"Hummingbird House" is the story of Kate, a 40-something midwife who travels to Mexico for a few weeks in the 1980s, and ends up staying in Central America (Guatemala and Nicaragua) for eight years. Although this is a novel, the descriptions of poverty and political turmoil feel very, very real. However, the novel never gets preachy, instead presenting the story from Kate's and others' points-of-view of their own circumstances.

Kate Banner is not a saint, she is a medical professional with her own troubles and upset life, trying to provide whatever care she can in trying circumstances. She struggles with a failed love life and a desire to help those she can. When she finds herself sharing a house with Father Dixie Ryan, it soon leads to creation of Hummingbird House, a school and clinic for Guatemalan children. The individual lives portrayed in the story are indeed compelling, and Kate's desire to create something useful, not merely to shake one's head and look away, is admirable, even if it doesn't solve all of the personal problems she faces.

This was a first novel for Patricia Henley, and it is an amazing one. I would compare this novel to "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett for its gritty realism and interesting way of telling the story of life south of our border. In addition to being a great book, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book are being donated by Henley to human rights groups; she is certainly an author who has aligned her actions with her words, and in the case of "Hummingbird House," the words she uses to share this story are fascinating ones indeed.

This book was so delicious for someone who has traveled through south america... i found myself back in the streets, back on the bus,and back amoung these countries rich with culture and pain. I thought Kate Banner was a well developed and accessible character, and her story was crafted in such a way that each moment had signifigance. It broke my heart. I would read it again and recommend it to others.

This novel both demands and deserves a close read. The language the author uses is complex, evocative, and at times even poetic. We get to spend some time with Kate Banner, not longer than a year, but she lives her life in the past and future throughout, measuring her life in total. Most interesting are her relationships with the men in her life, with all the accompanying complexities. This is a great novel, well-worth the price. I thouroughly enjoyed Kate's journey.