Birds in Fall: Brad Kessler's Exploration of Grief and Transformation

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.

A tragic occurrence and the resulting aftermath is a book flap synopsis of Birds in Fall by Brad Kessler [2006 Scribner, 244 pages]. A plane bound for Amsterdam goes down in the waters of Nova Scotia, near Trachis Island. All aboard are lost. But what about the others—those who survive the lost?

Kessler explores this aspect of grief (survivorhood), with some affecting and nuanced expressions of the tortured logic and emotional chaos that is visited upon survivors after the death of a loved one. It is an almost universal response: the wondering about last moments; the remembrances of past conflicts with a too-late recognition of our own foibles; and the romanticism that can intrude into our memories, making the loved one more than human. And, most of all, it is the numbing grief, from which there can be little respite.

Birds in Fall, by design I think, cannot explain everything about its characters. Much of the novel’s impact rests on the reader’s recognition that the emotions and pain on display within its pages are those that they may have felt before or may feel in the future. The reader is then connected to the character’s grief through, perhaps, memories of their own episodes and experiences with death.

That’s not to paint the book with a morbid brush, but a recognition that a novel about survivorhood will not be to everyone’s tolerance. Still, it was a novel I had a hard time tearing away from, and when it finished I was left with a vague disappointment that my time with the characters had come to an end.

In order to grasp the emotional aftereffects to come, the first chapter is essential to Kessler’s aims. [Kessler has built this chapter based on the book Flight 111: The Tragedy of the Swissair Crash by Stephen Kimber.] Here, he briefly sketches the passenger list, giving peeks at the people on-board, setting up some of the emotional connections that fuel the rest of the book. The chapter builds the story slowly to a harrowing “what if” at the end and then the aftermath.

The main character is a sympathetic one. Ana Gathreaux, is a believable depiction of a New Yorker. A woman devoted to her job, and her partner Russell. She lives a bit unconventionally and could be considered very “city” in her outlook. The tragedy is a major upheaval to her emotional and structured sense of self. She and Russell had a very solid, supportive and content relationship. All that ends with a phone call.

When Ana arrives on Trachis island, she essentially becomes part of a new family; a new reality. She is now part of the survivorhood, whether she accepts it or not. There, other family members are gathered, from all walks of life, all nationalities, and with different coping mechanisms and beliefs.

Kevin and Douglas, the owners of the inn also become important to the story as well. Kevin exists as a part-time narrator and takes on something of a healing presence. His inn becomes the center of a new family. Douglas and Kevin also represent the ways that a tragedy can impact the lives of people with no connection to it on the surface. At this point, the novel becomes a bit of a bonding exercise, even for the reader as the divergent methods and traditions of grief are explored through glimpses of other peoples’ ways of dealing with sudden and tragic losses. Kessler writes the characters in ways that not only illustrates their grief but also ties the experience to the reader with some interesting connections. Here, in a discussion of what happens to birds caught in the eye of a hurricane (the others are interested in Ana’s work, especially as the plane went down in a storm)

“What happens to the birds in the eyes of the storm?

It’s not a pretty picture…really are trapped there… So they have to keep flying for hours or days, and eventually, they exhaust themselves and drop into the ocean…”

I had never thought of grief that way but it does make sense. Like a bird caught in storm, grief can capture a person who survives day by day until a point of exhaustion. You either go on, or you fall and never recover, perhaps.

At another point in the story Kessler also ties fiction to a bird in flight to illustrate where the characters’ paths may be headed:

“How is a story like a bird? It keeps us aloft. It flies. It goes from one place and land on another, seemingly at random. But its movements are carefully choreographed, and if you look closely, you’ll know exactly where it will next perch”

Birds in Fall was a difficult book to leave behind. Kessler has written a believable and relatively moving portrait of people caught in circumstances beyond their understanding initially, and followed them into a state of transformation at the end. Not all of the novel works (there is a telegraphed romantic possibility that could have been avoided), but the tone seems correct to me (it is a relatively quiet and contemplative novel) and enjoyable despite the dark aspects of the tale (four stars).

Sources
www.birdsinfall.net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trachis
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/aircrash/
http://www.stephenkimber.com/