Praise for Brad Kessler's Birds in Fall
From the Jacket
One fall night off the coast of a remote island in Nova Scotia, an airplane plummets to the sea as an innkeeper watches from the shore. Miles away in New York City, ornithologist Ana Gathreaux works in a darkened room full of sparrows, testing their migratory instincts. Soon, Ana will be bound for Trachis Island, along with other relatives of victims who converge on the site of the tragedy. As the search for survivors envelops the island, the mourning families gather at the inn, waiting for news of those they have lost. Here among strangers, and watched over by innkeeper Kevin Gearns, they form an unusual community, struggling for comfort and consolation. A Taiwanese couple sets out fruit for their daughter's ghost. A Bulgarian man plays piano in the dark, sending the music to his lost wife, a cellist. Two Dutch teenagers, a brother and sister, rage against their parents' death. An Iranian exile, mourning his niece, recites the Persian tales that carry the wisdom of centuries. At the center of Birds in Fall lies Ana Gathreaux, whose story Brad Kessler tells with deep compassion: from her days in the field with her husband, observing and banding migratory birds, to her enduring grief and gradual reengagement with life. Kessler's knowledge of the natural world, music, and myth enriches every page of this hauntingly beautiful and moving novel about solitude, love, losing your way, and finding something like home.
"Once in a blue moon a book like Birds in Fall comes along: a wise, sly, and beautifully written novel. Kessler's story, ostensibly about a plane crash, turns out to be a much deeper, much richer retelling of an ancient myth. Mysterious, oracular, this breathtaking book contains multitudes."
-- Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
"Without melodrama, without trivializing his characters, Brad Kessler transforms a story about an airline disaster -- anguish, bereavement, and being held hostage by grief -- into a chorus of hopeful voices, full of tenderness, gentle humor, and terrific writing. Birds in Fall is a remarkable novel."
-- Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector and About Grace
"Birds in Fall gives us a whole world -- our world -- alive and full, and on the verge. Brad Kessler enters the souls of the lost, the found, and the rest of us who move from one state to the other and back. He cups all of his characters in one elegant, strong hand and pulls us through a rich and moving story with the other."
-- Amy Bloom, author of A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories
From The Los Angeles Times
"Birds in Fall" is a luminous tribute to Kessler's
abiding and respectful faith in the power of storytelling: There's bold
engagement here with the most contemporary fears and the most eternal
preoccupations (fate, loss, mourning, healing). If, at times, Kessler's
threading through of mythology and ornithology feels like an effort to beautify
the ugly reality of what happens when a packed airliner explodes into a million
pieces, his instincts are true when he writes, "How is a story like a bird? It
keeps us aloft."
From Publishers Weekly
This brooding novel is a modern-day retelling of the Greek myth of Ceyx and
Alcyone. In the eerie first chapter, Russell, a New York ornithologist, is on a
flight to Amsterdam when the airplane plunges into the Atlantic near Nova
Scotia. The victims' family members, including Russell's wife, Ana, gather near
the site on Trachis Island to wait for word from search crews. Their host is
Kevin, an innkeeper who witnessed the crash and occupies himself making the
anxious guests comfortable. There, the disparate group, a global mix of parents,
siblings, spouses and aunts and uncles, begins the difficult work of dealing
with the tragedy, with Ana's story at the center, while Kevin, distracted by his
duties, grows apart from his partner, Douglas. The protagonists are sympathetic
and complex and Kessler, a journalist, children's book writer and novelist (Lick
Creek), writes with lyricism, but also with studied seriousness.
From Booklist
Strangers clasp hands as their airplane falls through the dark into the sea off
the coast of a small Nova Scotia island. A sweet-natured innkeeper witnesses the
crash and braces for the arrival of the victims' families. Many lives are about
to be irrevocably altered. Ana, an ornithologist studying bird migration whose
ornithologist husband was on the plane, finds refuge at the inn along with a
Bulgarian pianist who lost his cellist wife, an Iranian exile who lost his
niece, a Taiwanese couple who lost their daughter, and a now-orphaned Dutch
teenager. Kessler's entrancingly beautiful and psychologically incisive second
novel, following his tale about a mining disaster, Lick Creek (2001), is
an exquisitely empathic and poetically acute study in grief and survival. As the
mourners numbly accept Kevin's sensitive hospitality, contemplate the implacable
ocean, forge bonds, and even fall in love, Kessler discerns in the astonishing
determination of migrating birds proof of life's continuity, and subtly explores
our species' ability to find solace in myth. "How is a story like a bird?"
Kessler asks. "It keeps us aloft."
From Library Journal
While the notion of one door opening as another closes may be something of a cliche, the question of who it is that finally walks through that opening door is not, and that's what concerns Kessler (Lick Creek) in this finely calibrated and quietly moving tale. After a plane crashes in the ocean off Nova Scotia, grieving family members journey to an inn on nearby Trachis Island, seeking consolation and closure. Central among them are Ana Gathreaux, a New York ornithologist with a specialty in bird migration who has lost her ornithologist husband, and Pars Mansoor, an Iranian emigre who has lost his niece. Migration and metamorphosis form the overarching, almost mythic themes of the novel as Kessler explores the ways-both large and small-that loss changes Ana, Pars, and the others left behind. The story's deep, autumnal tone and focus on the survivors' grief might be difficult for some readers, but there's little doubt that Kessler has crafted a perfect gem of a novel.
<<read an interview with Brad Kessler>>
<<read an excerpt from Birds in Fall>>