The Bird Artist

I loved this novel, for its humor and its tight and straightforward narration of the plot. The writing is sparing, with only the most necessary details. To write so tightly, the author must have edited it carefully and it shows. Not a sentence is wasted. You know this book was written `tongue in cheek' from the get-go, because it is set, in the first sentence of the book, in 1900, in a place called Witless Bay, the reverend keeps a talking parrot in a room behind the pulpit, and the parrot squawks during sermons. People's names are funny and the characters are distinct and memorable for their eccentricities. I especially loved Margaret, who takes all maters of importance in her hand. She also drinks and has a prodigious sexual appetite. She is frequently `over- the-top', shooting bullets through a photograph of her boy-friend's "fiancé-to-be" or taking over his parents' bedroom. She is generally a lot of fun throughout the book. Other characters are likewise full of vigor, delightful or strange, especially if you don't take them enormously seriously. The book reminded me slightly of Shipping News, which also takes place in New-Finland, though in a different era. It too is as endearing and touching and fun. The Bird Artist is also an historical novel. I think that for an historical novel to grab you, it has to capture the pace of the era as well as the `spirit' of the people and their geography. The Bird Artist is successful on all accounts, side by side with its humorous identity. It takes you back to the days when light houses were often the only way for fishermen to get back to shore; when it took several days in a mail-boat to get to Halifax, when arranged marriages were not out of the question, and the pace of life allowed time to sit on your porch and paint, without the distractions of a radio or TV. What a fine, gentle sea breeze this book is!

Howard Norman writes what I think of as anti-mysteries. It is his trademark to announce the "crime' that forms the basis for his story right up front. So, Norman's novels tend to start with confession and work their way toward explanation (as opposed to a standard mystery, which moves toward a solution.). In The Museum Guard the crime is theft; in his newest, The Haunting of L., it is adultery, then murder. This book begins thusly:My name is Fabian Vas. I live in Witless Bay, Newfoundland. You would not have heard of me. Obscurity is not necessarily failure, though; I am a bird artist, and have more or less made a living at it. Yet I murdered the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I think of myself.This novel is characterized by a dry humor, unlikely but truly engaging characters, and the skill with which Norman fixes them in their community and landscape.As he recounts the story to the reader, Fabian, despite knowing where he is headed, even what he will see when he arrives, remains at the mercy of the stubborn swells of memories that preoccupy him along the way. And that, it seems, is the great mystery at the heart of Norman's anti-mysteries. Not what will or did happen, but what role the narrator actually played in everything and why it all seems to have so little to do with him. Norman's befuddled narrator/protagonists, with their confessional introductions, imply that everything they are describing is, in fact, being made sense of in the retelling, that the reader, therefore, is witnessing their very synthesis into a story. Although critics have celebrated The Bird Artist as a tale of "redemption by art," the novel seems skeptical about the idea. For one thing, meaningful redemption requires guilt, and Fabian feels none (nor is the reader shown any reason that he should, a fact that may bother some).There is a big difference, though, between reckoning and redemption. Fabian's "redemption" for Botho's murder is the fantastical mural of Witless Bay he is paid to paint near the end of the novel, above the pulpit of the church. The offer, from Reverend Sillet, is tendered with a mix of prurience and sanctimonious sadism-he throws in extra money for a depiction of the murder. Indeed, Fabian's show of contrition seems to be mostly for Sillet's benefit, and Margaret rightly mocks his shameless decision to paint himself into the mural, facedown in the mud in the place of Botho. But if the mural does not offer redemption, it does offer something like revelation. For the first time in the novel, Fabian steps back from the enveloping current of events, fixes them in relationships, and imposes his own organizing vision on them. What Fabian's art does offer are these moments of clarity, the knowledge that, in the end, Botho's murder is simply "an equal part of how I think of myself."For, in the end, it seems to me it is not so much redemption Fabian seeks, but understanding. Which is a scenario much more true to the real

The events depicted in Howard Norman's novel THE BIRD ARTIST are cemented by his finely-honed style into their time and place -- and at the same time they are as universal as they could be. It's one of those stories that could have easily been written as a mystery -- if the murderer had not confessed to the crime in the first paragraph.Fabian Vas is a bird artist -- a talent that would seem to have been born in him. He lives in Witless Bay, Newfoundland, born just at the end of the 19th century. The village is not a wealthy one, and the people are simple and straightforward -- but not stupid. Several of them, in fact, I would classify as being inordinately wise -- their comments about the events that transpire, as well as about life in general reveal this about them. There is a lot of gentle humor to be found here, as well as suspense -- for, even knowing the perpetrator and the victim, it's entertaining to see how things play out.Although Fabian reveals the fact that he has murdered a man at the outset of the book, the author's storytelling skills would not allow my interest to fade. Looking back to the time before the murder, and chronicling the events that followed it, Norman weaves a rich tapestry of these characters lives for the reader -- in the hands of a sensitive director, this would make a memorable film.

If you want a book to take with you to the beach that you won't be embarassed to have been caught reading, look no further. I may be biased as I read it under what may be perfect circumstances -on a foggy island on the coast of Maine, with the foghorn and the marine radio for background, but even for the shore-bound among you believe me that this is what The Shipping News never could deliver. Beautifully written with nary a wasted word this book captures both the period and The Rock in a way that I have yet to find in any other author. While the narrator may infuriate you at times you will also find yourself rooting for him throughout, and although we "know what will happen" from the first paragraph on the WHY & the HOW keeps you going to the end.

I read this book three years ago and I still think about it from time to time. It reminds me of a quiet Sunday. I read The Shipping News soon after and couldn't help but compare the two. Liked this one better.