- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Workman Publishing Co. (Mar 19 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1565120752
- ISBN-13: 978-1565120754
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 12.7 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 340 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
This intermittently affecting but disappointing first novel from Grimsley, winner of Newsday's Oppenheimer Award as Best New American Playwright of 1988, limns family dynamics in a household crushed under domestic violence. Danny Crell, an eight-year-old hemophiliac, his four siblings and their mother are long-term prisoners of their father and husband Bobjay's alcoholic rages. The narrative centers on this highly dysfunctional clan's Thanksgiving celebration, which goes terribly awry-the food winds up on the kitchen floor, Danny and his mother hide beneath their house-and ends in the grisly death of a dog. Grimsley describes the hopelessness of the family's life in lyrical and moving language. Bobjay is the main problem here: depicted as a cartoonish character with only the barest motivation for his anger (he lost part of his arm in a combine accident a few years back), he is Grimsley's excuse to focus relentlessly on the inner sensations of victimization. But he isn't fleshed out enough as a character to make his abusiveness seem credible or worth our attention. Since the other characters are also insufficiently developed, the narrative never coheres into a compelling story.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This grimly violent first novel would seem unbelievable were it not largely autobiographical. It recounts the tumultuous history of the Crells, a poor and transient Southern family, as seen through the eyes of Danny Crell, a dreamy eight-year-old hemophiliac and the author's alter ego. The action is dominated by a brutally violent Thanksgiving Day quarrel between Bobjay, Danny's alcoholic father, and Ellen, his long-suffering mother. The shocking immediacy of the material compels readers to continue even when its harshness might otherwise turn them away. This artfully told trip through hell is at once a survivor's tale and a tribute to a mother's endurance as she struggles to keep her family together against impossible odds. Recommended for all public libraries.
Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Out past the clapboard house in the weeds by the river-bank your brothers are killing birds. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
Out past the clapboard house in the weeds by the river-bank your brothers are killing birds. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautifully melancholy,
By A Customer
This review is from: Winter Birds: A Novel (Paperback)
Readers and reviewers have panned this novel as grim. But it is a celebration of the courage of Danny, a character who reappears (starring) in the novel "Comfort & Joy." We all know abuse happens - especially in situations of poverty. Compound that with the inherent abuse of an ignorant father against his small hemophiliac child and you have a definite "tear-jerker." Defying cliche, again, as he does in all of his novels, Grimsley shows the silent strength of the children who help their mother to dodge the father's brutality. You quickly envision the souls of 40 year olds trapped in the body of toddlers. It is something profoundly emotive. Something to be savored. Grimsley's talent lies in painting a psychological portrait of the characters. This can be a daunting task, but he does so with ease and fluidity. I recommend this book not because of its "tearjerker" plotline, but because of the inherent hope that rises from the strength of its characters. Much like his novel "Comfort and Joy," the writer seeks to ensconce desolation with strength and hope. It's a novel that is not grim; it is a novel that seeks to show the points of light in the pitch black of sadness.
4.0 out of 5 stars
very, very grim,
By
This review is from: Winter Birds: A Novel (Paperback)
This book, a cringing, nightmarish, too-violent-to-not-be-real heart wrencher, is nevertheless beautiful and extremely transfixing. The story is told in an eerie second-person narrative by Danny Crell, one of five children in a family with an unbelievably abusive alcoholic father. At the beginning of the book after meeting Danny's brothers (one of whom is a hemophiliac like himself), the reader is also introduced to Danny's fantasy world near the river adjacent to the family home (dubbed "the circle house" due to its spherical path of doors). Danny has imagined for himself a kind and attentive father he calls The River Man, who is described to appear somewhat like bigfoot. As the stories of abuse begin in flashback form, we see very little of Danny's River Man, yet it sometimes feels as though the story is being told by him: "Even with a new baby she watched you every minute, Danny, and you never stepped out of the house without her warning you to be careful." The novel culminates on Thanksgiving Day with unimaginable horror and a final act no one would suspect. The resolution I was hoping for never arrived, perhaps making the work even more realistic. A devastating book, but one worth reading. I look forward to reading Jim Grimsley's other novels.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Too Cold to Fly,
By "southerndrawler" (Greensboro, NC United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Winter Birds: A Novel (Paperback)
There is no doubt that Jim Grimsley is an extremely talented writer. The language of Winter Birds is such that in places it can make you cry. Yet, in spite of this, there is an emotional sterility that pervades this book. I have noticed that many of today's writers equate seriousness of subject matter with seriousness of writing. Is this the [term] that writers fall into?The subject matter of Winter Birds is one that has - thanks to [person's book club]choices - become cliched: family abuse. I do not mean to say that abuse in families does not exist or that it is not serious. I am saying that it has been written about to the extent that there is not much more to say about it. The shock value I found in Before Women Had Wings was emotionally overpowering. By the time I got to Winter Birds there was not anything that could be said or done that I did not expect. As I say, Grimsley's ability to use language in setting a scene is almost equal to that of Lee Smith. But, language alone does not make for great writing. What should be an emotional experience simply becomes an exercise in writing technique. In Winter Birds I felt that Grimsley was an outsider observing what went on in the family he wrote about. Well, it may be that Grimsley has experienced some of what he wrote about. If that is the case, he has not dealt with his experiences or processed them fully. He was too detached, especially when he reached the point in the novel that was supposed to be the most shocking. When I read this part, I just felt that I had been manipulated through a weak effort to shock the reader into caring about and doing something about family abuse. I did not feel the pain the characters should have felt because the emotional link was not there. The book had fallen from the grace of writing to the skill of technique. I own and will read [another book]...
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