Rating: 
Summary: A GREAT YARN WITH MEMORABLE CHARACTERS
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A (perhaps too-) unusual story of love, lust and murder.
Review: The idea behind this book is to take one of literature's most-proven plotlines and give it a dark, minimalist twist. The story tells of the 1911 coming-of-age of Newfoundler Fabian Vas, who makes his living drawing birds and repairing ships. The action follows Fabian's bizarre love affair with his childhood friend and his arranged marriage to a distant cousin, his mother's adultery, and his murder of his mother's lover. But the story is stranger than its summary. For such a raw tale, for a book that touches on so many deep and barely-controlled passions - love, hatred, revenge - the writing is remarkably quiet. There's no spark among the characters and rarely any heat. The protagonist reacts far more than he acts, and even then it is with more resignation than furor. The plot is controlled by his mother and his lover, two women with only a tenuous grasp on reality, decency, and what it means to be human, and it zigzags without regard to the boundaries of normal people. The writing and the setting contribute to the feeling of blank surrealism engendered by the storyline. Newfoundland is generally described in books as a place rich in its bleakness and isolation (although one would have to have read other books set there, or have been there, to know this). And the writing itself is harshly minimalist, to the point of seeming simplistic and a bit uncrafted. Which is perhaps what the author intended. Maybe, if one is patient enough to see through the tired sentences and dry narration, the characters who don't care or give the reader a reason to do so, and the sheer indifference displayed by the writer and his subjects towards the unfolding drama, there is a lesson. Perhaps the book is not about the largest passions of the human experience but about a man - who so many of us have been - who looks at his unfolding career and his longtime lover and feels nothing but emptiness, a vague confusion, and an obligation to fear.
Rating:
Summary: A (perhaps too-) unusual story of love, lust and murder.
Review: The idea behind this book is to take one of literature's most-proven plotlines and give it a dark, minimalist twist. The story tells of the 1911 coming-of-age of Newfoundler Fabian Vas, who makes his living drawing birds and repairing ships. The action follows Fabian's bizarre love affair with his childhood friend and his arranged marriage to a distant cousin, his mother's adultery, and his murder of his mother's lover. But the story is stranger than its summary. For such a raw tale, for a book that touches on so many deep and barely-controlled passions - love, hatred, revenge - the writing is remarkably quiet. There's no spark among the characters and rarely any heat. The protagonist reacts far more than he acts, and even then it is with more resignation than furor. The plot is controlled by his mother and his lover, two women with only a tenuous grasp on reality, decency, and what it means to be human, and it zigzags without regard to the boundaries of normal people. The writing and the setting contribute to the feeling of blank surrealism engendered by the storyline. Newfoundland is generally described in books as a place rich in its bleakness and isolation (although one would have to have read other books set there, or have been there, to know this). And the writing itself is harshly minimalist, to the point of seeming simplistic and a bit uncrafted. Which is perhaps what the author intended. Maybe, if one is patient enough to see through the tired sentences and dry narration, the characters who don't care or give the reader a reason to do so, and the sheer indifference displayed by the writer and his subjects towards the unfolding drama, there is a lesson. Perhaps the book is not about the largest passions of the human experience but about a man - who so many of us have been - who looks at his unfolding career and his longtime lover and feels nothing but emptiness, a vague confusion, and an obligation to fear.
Rating: 
Summary: A Bird Dive
Review: This book was horid. It had as much suppense as that Al Pacino movie "Insomnia" (which is none). After reading it I honestly was bummed that I wouldn't be able to get that valuable time in my life back.
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