Winter Birds [Hardcover]

Jim Grimsley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 1994

Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. On a snowy Thanksgiving day in North Carolina, a dreamy eight-year-old is pushed headlong into the adult world by a violent quarrel between his parents. Jim Grimsley's brilliant first novel unfolds in a strikingly unconventional way--as the boy tells himself his own story. A shattering story of heartbreak, violence, and the endurance of the spirit. "Tell everyone."--Dorothy Allison, author of BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This intermittently affecting but disappointing first novel from Grimsley, winner of Newsday's Oppenheimer Award as Best New American Playwright of 1988, limns family dynamics in a household crushed under domestic violence. Danny Crell, an eight-year-old hemophiliac, his four siblings and their mother are long-term prisoners of their father and husband Bobjay's alcoholic rages. The narrative centers on this highly dysfunctional clan's Thanksgiving celebration, which goes terribly awry-the food winds up on the kitchen floor, Danny and his mother hide beneath their house-and ends in the grisly death of a dog. Grimsley describes the hopelessness of the family's life in lyrical and moving language. Bobjay is the main problem here: depicted as a cartoonish character with only the barest motivation for his anger (he lost part of his arm in a combine accident a few years back), he is Grimsley's excuse to focus relentlessly on the inner sensations of victimization. But he isn't fleshed out enough as a character to make his abusiveness seem credible or worth our attention. Since the other characters are also insufficiently developed, the narrative never coheres into a compelling story.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This grimly violent first novel would seem unbelievable were it not largely autobiographical. It recounts the tumultuous history of the Crells, a poor and transient Southern family, as seen through the eyes of Danny Crell, a dreamy eight-year-old hemophiliac and the author's alter ego. The action is dominated by a brutally violent Thanksgiving Day quarrel between Bobjay, Danny's alcoholic father, and Ellen, his long-suffering mother. The shocking immediacy of the material compels readers to continue even when its harshness might otherwise turn them away. This artfully told trip through hell is at once a survivor's tale and a tribute to a mother's endurance as she struggles to keep her family together against impossible odds. Recommended for all public libraries.
Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1st edition (January 9, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565120752
• ISBN-13: 978-1565120754
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,227,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars And so it began........, March 6, 2000

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Winter Birds (Hardcover)

Having just read "Comfort & Joy" and finding it a highly successful novel, I took fellow reviewers' suggestion and traced this author's literary progress by reading his initial novel, "Winter Birds". An incredible journey! Not only is his first novel enormously engrossing (like the fascination of watching an autopsy), learning the narrator's (Danny Crell) history supplements his further life voyage in "Comfort...". After being absorbed in Winter Birds for one evening, my immediate response was to re-read "Comfort & Joy" with a better knowledge of the polarity of that last book's main characters. Grimsley is a gifted writer, and knowing that his first successes were in playwriting is no surprise. "Winter Birds" is an intense, credible study of the type of dysfuntional family that we'd all rather not believe exists. But by writing this book I think Grimsley sensitizes us to look beyond the adult RE-actions of troubled people to find how incredible it is that many of these injured and abused people made it into adult life. Powerful, thought provoking writing.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Behind the face before me, February 1, 2000

By 

Jim Morris (Marietta, Georgia) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Winter Birds: A Novel (Paperback)

A friend loaned me this book without comment but knowing that I am a juvenile court judge. I know this family in dozens of permutations, but I will empathize more when I see them next thanks to Jim Grimsley. I started and finished the book in one sitting last night. It is a powerfully executed visit inside the life of a boy who is surviving a violent family minute-by-minute. The characters cry out for peace, for relief from the cruelty of a father and husband who views them as property, and from a society that agrees. Excellent book that makes me crave more of the same, but only after I manage to exhale.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully melancholy, October 17, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Winter Birds: A Novel (Paperback)

Readers and reviewers have panned this novel as grim. But it is a celebration of the courage of Danny, a character who reappears (starring) in the novel "Comfort & Joy." We all know abuse happens - especially in situations of poverty. Compound that with the inherent abuse of an ignorant father against his small hemophiliac child and you have a definite "tear-jerker." Defying cliche, again, as he does in all of his novels, Grimsley shows the silent strength of the children who help their mother to dodge the father's brutality. You quickly envision the souls of 40 year olds trapped in the body of toddlers. It is something profoundly emotive. Something to be savored. Grimsley's talent lies in painting a psychological portrait of the characters. This can be a daunting task, but he does so with ease and fluidity. I recommend this book not because of its "tearjerker" plotline, but because of the inherent hope that rises from the strength of its characters. Much like his novel "Comfort and Joy," the writer seeks to ensconce desolation with strength and hope. It's a novel that is not grim; it is a novel that seeks to show the points of light in the pitch black of sadness.