Selected Book

Birds in Fall: A Novel

Birds in Fall: A Novel

  • Paperback
  • Author: Brad Kessler
  • Publisher: Scribner
  • Release Date: March 2007
  • ISBN-10: B000WMQHHQ

Price Comparisons

E-mail these Cheap Book Prices to a friend!

Store Price Condition Free Shipping? Online Coupons and Deals

Amazon
(Marketplace)

Shop & Save

$6.63

as of 1/9 7am EST

New

NO, $3.99

There are no current coupons/deals for this store in our database.
If you find one, please contact us.

Amazon
(Marketplace)

Shop & Save

$5.74

as of 1/9 7am EST

Used

NO, $3.99

There are no current coupons/deals for this store in our database.
If you find one, please contact us.

Shop & Save

button not working?   Click Here

Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon

Summary

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5

Wonderful Read!

Rating: Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5

I read this book while sitting by the fireside in my remote cabin in Alaska. The language is poetic and the characters Brad Kessler painted were so detailed as to become my friends. I really could not put the book down. There were so many levels of insight into human emotions, scientific knowledge about bird migration, lovely caring characters. It's a keeper to share with others.

Sad but amazingly beautiful

Rating: Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5

A friend recommended this book and I found it beautifully written. It is a tragic story of a plane crash and the families of the victims some of whom come together on the small Nova Scotian island to grieve for their lost loved ones. One of the dead is an orinthologist as is his grieving wife and birds and their migrating habits play into the story. It would be a great book club read.

disappointed potential

Rating: Score = 3 Score = 3 Score = 3 Score = 3 Score = 3

I just read this for a book club, and feel that most of the glowing reviews for it are greatly overblown. The prose is mostly quite lovely, and Kessler has created a fine assortment of characters whose responses to the trauma of losing loved ones in a plane crash are plausible enough. But good fiction requires more than realistic depictions of fictional characters and some nice prose. It requires a compelling *story* or *significance*, and in the end those are what this book lacks. The many classical analogies and musical references (e.g., the book is in 23 sections, to mirror Strauss's "Metamorphoses for 23 solo strings") utlimately have no payoff. So while it made me feel smart because I knew about the Ceyx/Alcyone myth and who the women of Trachis were and which Auden poem was being quoted, there didn't seem to be any narrative purpose for my knowing any of these things, since these allusions had no obvious resonance within the novel. Even as a trauma narrative, the book doesn't say very much about trauma; it simply depicts it. While it is an accomplishment to do so plausibly (hence the 3-star rating), I know plenty of trauma victims whose real-life stories I can hear if I want that sort of thing. A trauma novel needs to say something more about grief and healing than that they happen over time and in different ways for different people, which is pretty much all this book says about the matter.

Bird in Fall

Rating: Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5

This is one of the best crafted books I have recently read. Multi-cultures' common denominators of commitment, finiteness, compassion and love all explored and well defined. Kessler is a real story-teller that keeps the reader engaged.

Powerful Storytelling

Rating: Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5

Brad Kessler's novel is exquisitely written. Every word is a gem-so carefully crafted to evoke his translation of the human condition-how families interweaving lives are transformed in the wake of tragedy.