Customer Reviews

White Bird in a Blizzard

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

 

 

Laura Kasischke has transformed a real-life crime, grisly and comical, into a meditation on cruelty. All of her characters have sharp edges; they crash against each other like ice floes. Kat's mother, the vanishing Eve, is so vicious to her daughter, it's a relief that she makes her odd exit. But there is no such thing as one abusive parent. There is always the attacker and the accomplice, the one who fails to defend the child. Which, in the end, is crueler? Kasischke's language is alarmingly vivid -- the bloody cupids are a particularly striking image -- and her pace has the drowsiness of someone sliding into unconsciousness in a snowbank. "White Bird" is a strange and remarkable novel, highly recommended.

Kasischke is a remarkable talent. Her book was beautiful simply for the poetry. It was also touchingly emotionally evocative. I was so sorry to finish it I had to find out what else Kasischke had written so I could get more. I hope she reads this. I teach creative writing at the University of Colorado at Denver and wish I could write as well as this woman.

Laura Kasischke's White Bird in a Blizzard startles and intrigues with its powerful images of suburban anomie and teenage lust and confusion. Kat Connors is a sharply drawn sixteen-year-old at the beginning of the book, intensely preoccupied by her newly sexual self. Her lovely, dissatisfied mother has just disappeared, abandoning Kat and her dim, unambitious father. Kat's memories of her mother weave into her dreams; the chill blank white of the January day her mother vanished become both the blankness of Evie Connors' life and an image of her disappearance -- she has become white on white and faded into insubstantiality. Kat tells her story through four successive Januaries. Each year Kat -- and the reader -- discover more about Evie, more about Kat's relationship with Phil, her sexy boyfriend next door, and about Kat's opaque father. Throughout, dreams of ice, feathers and smothering cold disturb Kat. The power of these images and the sense of mystery lure the reader through a story which becomes unfocused as Kat grows older. Her quaint grandmothers arrive and comment on Evie and abandonment. Kat seduces the hyper-virile detective who investigates her mother's disappearance. Phil becomes inexplicably distant, yet continues to identify himself as Kat's boyfriend. He behaves with a kind of sensibility at odds with his established personality as a thoughtless, proudly ignorant, over-sexed high school boy. Kat drifts through the years, occasionally prodded into deeper thought by her therapist. At last the detective, hearing about Kat's dreams, provides Kat the clue to understanding Evie Connors' disappearance. The language of Kat's final discovery is striking, though the revelation has been set up rather obviously. I enjoyed White Bird for its images of loss and bleakness, and for its depiction of a girl surging into her sexuality, but Evie Connors' entrapment in suburban hell seemed rather dated both for when the book was written and for the date it is set (late 80's). The characters, with the exception of Kat, feel prodded into place, rather than growing inevitably into themselves. A beautiful thin book that I would recommend for its lovely evocative language and dreamy tone -- and for lusty, confused Kat -- in spite of its weaknesses of plot and characterization.

This has to be one of the most beautifully written novels I have read of late. "White Bird..." is a wistful and elegiac coming-of-age story, set in small-town Ohio and following Katrina Connors as she blossoms into a beautiful teenager, has her first sexual experiences, and -most importantly- tries to make sense of her mother's unexplained disappearance.

Told from the main character's perspective, the story develops richly and believably, as Kat reflects on her parents' failed marriage, her mother's bitterness and cruelty, and her kindly, dull father's attempts to continue living after she vanishes. The prose is incredibly lush and beautiful, whether the descriptions are of Ohio in the dead of winter or of Katrina's own states of mind.

The only reason why I didn't give it more stars was its implausible, contrived ending. It's as if, 75% into the novel, Ms. Kasischke had suddenly decided that what she wanted to write was a mystery novel instead of a character-based one --- or as if she had wanted to finish it quickly and had just wrapped everything up in this silly conclusion. And this is where the book, in my opinion, fails. The ending is not only unlikely (i.e., what happens could hardly have happened without anyone finding out soon enough) but also anticlimactic and disappointing. I'd have enjoyed the novel much more if Ms. Kasischke hadn't changed courses, and had continued with the wonderful story that had me hooked from the start!

By the middle of this book, I felt lost in the blizzard! So half-way through I was all set to put it down and forget about it. How much could I take of these musings of a 16-year-old? However, she is smarter (and more articulate) than your average 16-year-old. It was like an avalanche of too much introspection! Yet something made me stick with the book. And the ending was so gripping and surprising that it was well worth it! So, plow through it--you'll be glad you did!

I thought that White Bird in a Blizzard was a very good book, i enjoyed it so much from when you start when her mother just turned up missing every possible idea of what had happend to her mother, and when you reach the end the actual solution is the last thing you thought of.

It was a powerful and open book and she really told what teens think and feel. The first book i really couldn't put down, but it was kindda graphic in the begining.

I'm sorry to say that I didn't enjoy this book. It was extremely repeptitive... telling us again and again how the mother left. This got kind of irritation considering you were reading the same thing over and over again with different wording. It was alright in some parts though... I do have to say. But it was definitely not a wonderful book. Okay, I guess. If I were to have rated this book without reading the ending it may have been a higher rating but the ending made it absolutely idiotic. It made not sense whatesover. If you are really into poetry and stuff you may like it a little more than I did... but not to much more. It uses a lot of subliminal meanings and metaphors and stuff. So, whatever. Read if you want, but most likely your wasting your time.

The book drags a little taking us in the life of a colorless character. It would be easy to overlook this book if it was not for its amazingly surprising ending!