Birds in Fall: A Novel

This little gem is by far the best fiction book I've read in some time. It is poetic, and gentle, and does not overwhlem the reader with useless information or filler; rather is beautifully crafted so that there are no wasted words or ideas. Kessler seems to have an insiders knowledge of pure, clear grief, and his characters' suffering is deeply accessible by the reader. He loves his characters and has created each of them with the most tender care. His writing about the sea and the natural landscape is just beautiful, and right on. I loved the book and cried when it was over.

A gem of a book. As a therapist who works with patients who have experienced loss, grief and trauma, I love the beautiful way that Kessler explores the ways we respond in the face of tragedy, the strength of the human capacity to overcome even the most terrible thing and to heal. Bravo. One of the best written books I've read in a long, long time.

Brad Kessler's novel begins with a disaster in the air when, like Icarus, a jet plane plunges into the sea somewhere up in the Maritimes. At a nearby B & B, a pair of gay guys are closing down for the winter, but they keep the place open to accommodate a growing swarm of relatives, people whose nearest and dearest have gone down to a watery death. Kessler's book, like many hotel novels, brings together a critical mass of people from all walks of life, enough of a sample so that we seem to be experiencing humanity en masse in all its messy complexity. Kevin, the hotelier, throws himself into the work of mercy with a fierceness born of a desire to forget about mounting boyfriend problems, and indeed of a whole New York life decimated by the death of all of his friends to AIDS. Here in Trachis Harbor, he and Douglas are patronized and resented by the locals, but under the pressure of emergency all things change, and Douglas becomes more of a Maritimer than the Maritimers. Kessler's particular focus is on Ana Gathreaux, a Manhattan bird scientist who has lost her husband. As Ana remembers meeting Russell, they were in a museum for dead birds, and "Russell told her one night in the empty halls of the museum, that if you listened carefully, you could hear all the dead birds in their display cases communing with each other. "What does it sound like? Ana asked. "Esperanto," he said. "Only for avifauna." This turns out to be one of Russell's little jokes, but her sorrow is all-encompassing. There is also her opposite number, Pars Mansoor, an Iranian firebrand whose niece he hasn't seen for many years, since he's been in exile trying to lead a new life. From Iranian folklore Kessler derives many of his most telling metaphors, particularly the superstition that the soul is a bird that lives in the nape of the neck. After awhile reading this book, you too will believe that everything is bird-related. When Ana and Pars bond together in the gay B & B, they are brought together first by mutual loss, then by a growing sense of new life beginning for them, perhaps together. Their attraction is too delicate, even unseemly, to put into words exactly, but some strong drink puts paid to their inhibitions, and--but I better not let spoilers ruin Kessler's lovely buildup to this middle-age romance. I say, get Barbara Hershey and Naveem Andrews (from LOST) to play these two--a real life Hollywood couple for the inevitable movie version. Another pilgrim is Diane Olmstead, who practices a sort of Wicca magic and sees signs everywhere, even in the banal. She's huge and fat like Mrs. Moore in A PASSAGE TO INDIA, and like Mrs. Moore she sees through the seeming side of the real, into the realm where birds and humans fly together through lit mead halls. She reads the TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD and seems like our ambassador into mystic places, just as the very young people who have come to the island, a Dutch punk girl and her disaffected brother, allow Kessle

This is an elegantly written, character-driven novel that reminds one of Melville in its depth of learning. Brad Kessler (farmer, birdwatcher as well as writer) is a major new talent in American literature. This is a book that will be read many years from now in university survey courses in American literature. Yet it's immediately accessible and a rewarding read. If you care about the novel, you owe it to yourself to read this one.

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. 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." [Homework: Go to page 235. Or Google.] 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 c