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The Bird Artist

This strangely magical love story moves with the slow grace of a Greek tragedy, drawing people to their fate almost against their will.  

Set in Witless Bay, Newfoundland, the book is populated with people who are quirky, plain-spoken, and likable.  They form a rustic backdrop to a plot that involves murder, adultery, shipwreck, and a disastrous arranged marriage.

Another Shipping News?  No.  The language is spare and gives the story the feel of an extended folktale.  Helen has seen mermaids and mermen.  Enoch talks to his daugther in Morse code, and drives the mail boat singing Beothuk songs.  The birds that Fabian draws lend a wild and beautiful presence to the book:

...the owl spread a clipped wing like a magician's cape over the mouse, revealed it, covered it again.

The author's delight in odd names adds another layer of otherness:  Orkney and Alaric Vas,  Botho August, Lambert Charibon, Boas LaCotte, Odeon Sloo, Mekeel Dollard, Mari-Lyma Fsjikskdjal, Laslow Sprunt, Ole Worm.  These are not typical Newfoundland names.

Author Howard Norman is an American fascinated by Canada.  Some of his other books include The Northern Lights, The Museum Guard, and My Famous Evening.

The Northern Lights

This is the second novel by Howard Norman that I've read, the other being The Museum Guard.  Characters in both books come from damaged families.  They develop odd quirks and wander through life in a slightly dazed state.  The tone however is gentle and wistful rather than tortured or depressing.

The first half of The Northern Lights takes place in northern Manitoba.  Teen protagonist Noah Krainik has a father who is mostly absent.  Noah himself is mostly absent too, spending a good part of each year in a nearby Cree community, while an orphaned cousin named Charlotte keeps his mother company.  Noah's best friend, Pelly Bay, has been abandoned by his parents and takes up riding a unicycle.  Cree phrases are srpinkled throughout this part of the story.  The Cree themselves are friendly but enigmatic.

Noah's mother is fascinated by the Biblical ark, but when she actually sees one on a northern lake, she realizes it is time to head south.  She and Charlotte move to Toronto and buy a movie theatre called the Northern Lights.  

When Noah arrives, he takes on managerial duties and hires a Cree projectionist named Levon, who moves his family into the projection room.  Each night Levon goes out to hunt and trap urban wildlife.  He has a very pragmatic take on the ark -- knowing it was going to be a long journey, the Biblical Noah stocked it with lots of eatables.

When The Northern Lights was published in 1987, some very large names appeared on the dust jacket:  Louise Erdrich, Ursula Le Guin, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen.

The author himself, in an new introduction, remarks that the book is "tonally autobiographical."

The Birth House

Dora Rare lives in the village of Scots Bay, Nova Scotia, early in the 20th century. It's an isolated spot, but not immune to the great events of the day -- WW1, the Halifax Explosion, the Spanish flu.

Dora has the dark hair and complexion of a Mi'kmaq ancestor, and is the only daughter in five generations. She learns midwifery and herbal remedies from an old woman with Acadian roots and a reputation for witchery.

This brings her into conflict with "modern" medicine, represented by a doctor who tries to entice the women of Scots Bay to his pricey clinic in Canning. According to him "morning sickness is neurotic in nature, the pregnant woman's way of gaining attention from a husband who is uncomfortable with his wife's condition."

However, some of the remedies that Dora uses sound equally batty.  "Bury the afterbirth with a scallop shell.  Gives a woman at least a year before she gets with child again."  She dispenses moon elixir, skullcap tincture, beaver brew.  

What is certain is that the book is a delightful blend of romance and history, an earthy and semi-magical world of darning eggs, moss babies, sex tips, Butterick patterns, Beaumont Hamel, the sinking of the Lusitania.  It's a time when women had names like Precious, Patience, and Experience.  And it contains one of the most memorable characters in Canadian fiction, Dora's tutor, Miss B.

My only complaint is the number of unpleasant men in the story.  Dora's husband Archer Bigelow is a worthless lout with an appetite for rough sex, Brady Ketch is a drunken brute, Dr. Thomas tries to pin a trumped-up murder charge on Dora, and the hypocritical Reverend Covert Norton gets in some extra-curricular boinking in (where else?) the church.  They're an unusually nasty bunch.

Scots Bay

Ami McKay is a transplanted American who lives in Scots Bay, in a house that provided the inspiration for the novel.  This tiny community is only 15 minutes away from our own home, and occasionally we head over there to walk along the beach.  We also attended a reading the author gave in nearby Canning.

Chapters has declared The Birth House as one of the best books of the decade.  Ami McKay's next novel, The Virgin Cure, is coming out in the fall.

Author's website  Birth House website 

   











 

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