[3]
By
Published: 2006
Category: Fiction [4]
The novel starts inside the plane. Eighty minutes into the flight, just as the jet curves over the Gulf of Maine toward Nova Scotia and the moonlit Atlantic, a few passengers sense that something's wrong. The lights flicker. There's "a curious chemical smell, not exactly burning, more like a dashboard left to bake in the sun." The narrator, an ornithologist, babbles on about birds until his seat mate, a cellist, tells him to shut up. She knows what's coming; she writes her name --- in lipstick --- on her arm. The plane shudders, shakes, tumbles, explodes. And disappears into the sea.
A plane crash. No survivors. And the main character of the novel with the metaphor-drenched title is the ornithologist's wife, another ornithologist. Who then travels to an inn on Trachis Island, off Nova Scotia, to identify his remains, if any. Man-made birds. Birds in nature. Birds as mythic figures. So many birds you brace yourself for a novel so sensitive you're really not deep enough to read it.
"Birds in Fall" is a better book than that. Much better. Oh, it has its arch and learned references, but then, the passengers we briefly meet on that plane were accomplished professionals. And, more importantly, so are the surviving victims: their family members, whose lives we follow for five years. And so is Kevin Gearns, who --- with Douglas, his lover --- runs the inn where the widows, widowers, parents and others will gather.
There is a kind of book I loathe more than any other: a rural retreat, a gathering, late nights by moonlight, candles and campfires --- and a secret is revealed. This book draws on those elements, but it is not that book. For one thing, Kessler is a master of place and time. His inn is as real as my neighborhood. And if you read this novel as I did --- sitting by an open window, at night, in warm weather --- you can easily transport yourself to an island in the first week of September, where glory is anywhere you look. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here [3]. For the Kindle edition, click here [5].]
And the people! The focus is on Ana Gathreaux, expert on the migratory patterns of sparrows and now, stuck in time, as the survivor of a 15-year marriage. I felt I knew her right away; later, I learned how much more there was to know. The minor characters are just as vivid: a silent Bulgarian, Taiwanese parents, an Iranian exile, Dutch teenagers. A sprinkling of humanity, linked only by grief.
And then there are the birds. Ana's knowledge is impressive --- I mean, Brad Kessler's is. I have not the least interest in the details of Nature, but I do not mind learning, in the course of a taut story, that "at the end of summer, migratory birds grow restless." How high-flying migratory birds show up on pilots' screens as "radar angels." And about the myth of Alcyone and Ceyx and the phrase "halcyon days." Even the metaphor doesn't grate. When Ana's hope that her husband will be found alive finally gives, it's like "a tiny twig, a bird bone, toothpick thin." Yes, okay.
As we watch the characters deal with their loss on a minute-by-minute basis, there is welcome relief. Some of it is trivia. Did you know that Elizabethan women kept apples in their armpits, later to give them to their lovers? And some of it is tabloid ghoulishness, like the "bottles of corked seawater" that have been prepared for the families to take home.
There are pages here as beautiful as anything I've ever read. To cite just one example, late one night a week after the crash, the Bulgarian sits at the inn's piano, playing Chopin's Nocturne, number 19, in E minor. He's like the Pied Piper. From all over the property, the mourners are drawn to this music --- Ana most of all, for this was her husband's favorite piece. The man without words gives them eloquence beyond eloquence. When he finishes, Ana squeezes his hands, whispers thank you. "The Bulgarian bowed stiffly, formally, the way he would in a concert hall."
"How is a story like a bird?" Kessler asks, near the end. "It keeps us aloft. It flies. It goes from one place and lands at another, seemingly at random. But its movements are carefully choreographed, and if you look closely, you'll know exactly where it will next perch." In a lesser book, I would have read this and thought, "Ouch." In this book, like Ana, I just said, "Thank you."
To buy "Birds in Fall" from Amazon.com, click here. [6]