Review: The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen

The Bird Sisters is the author's debut novel and a truly decent piece of work. Rebecca Rasmussen has lyric and cadence, and most importantly, heart. It was easy reading: I felt drawn into the contours of its rough countryside, to its decrepit house with the purple meadow and the algae-infested pond, and to the tension within a family to whom happiness required painful effort that it almost resembles a kind of Spring trying to break through an unyielding Winter. I lingered and read the book through to see whether Spring would indeed arrive.

The story is about two sisters growing up in rural Wisconsin, who possess such opposite personalities, but who cling to each other for emotional survival and protection as the family falls apart. Milly is a beautiful, sensitive soul with the blonde hair, full figure and brilliant green eyes to go with it. She is wise beyond her age, graceful, responsible, and admirable in the kitchen. She is exactly the kind of daughter parents in those days wished to have: marry-able. She even possesses the spunk to go after her true love; but when fate lands him on her lap, Milly responds by revealing her strongest virtue– which also turns out to be her worst flaw. Twiss, a couple of years younger, is a tomboyish free spirit: her father's dream daughter and her mother's bane. The book resounds with her sweet laughter and wrathful poundings and, at the height of her coming-of-age, the crackle of her broken spirit. The story explores themes of forgiveness and healing.

It opens when the sisters are in their seventies; the reader is introduced to their quiet life in the old family home now shamelessly falling apart and with a garden overgrown by weeds. The reader takes a journey with them, hither and thither in time, as each sister relives memories and reflects on their shared history through the daily assault of forgetfulness and brittle bones. We meet their dead mother, an unhappy woman who had married for love and reaped all its bitter fruits, and their father, a passionate man who was forever burdened by his poor, humble origins and who lacked the courage required to bring love to pass. We linger at one particular summer and witness the arrival of Bett, a pale, sickly cousin– unbelievably more impoverished than they were– whose thin, frail frame managed to finish off the family's upheaval. From the present through to various instances in the sisters' childhood, we are taken backwards and forwards in time in a jumble of memories as we try to get at the reason that made them live together to their old age.

Though it is beautifully written, I cannot help being disappointed that there wasn't more of it. I felt the elderly sisters' characters were not much different from their younger selves and so, many times, I lacked the feeling of the passage of time. The characters were more round and lifelike when they were presented as teenagers than as the two elderly sisters facing the close of their lives. I think it's a pity that there was no clue as to what happened between their teenage and their elderly years: six decades during which they must have acquired experiences, other loves, other angers, wisdom. I almost get the feeling that the author knew them only as teenagers as well. There were also characters in the village which I felt were promising and would have provided a fuller, richer, more realistic backdrop for the story if they had come to the fore. Rebecca Rasmussen has amazing talent. I see no reason why she shouldn't dive into her story with abandon as Forster did, or the Brontes, or any literary writer for that matter. That would have been more enjoyable, at least for this reader.

The fact remains though: The Bird Sisters is a charming book. I have no doubt it will attract many fans of contemporary realistic fiction. I can already see it being made into a movie. For my part, however, although the book was a delight to read, it's the kind I would happily lend to a friend without perhaps missing it on the shelf.

Review: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

If you’re the type to have Shakespeare’s King Lear on your bathroom shelf, then perhaps you’ll have the patience to withstand the madness of this book.



I say perhaps because, though I am a fan of Shakespeare, I still find Laurence Sterne’s indefatigable wit and humour something like running a marathon on a steep hill. It is absolutely funny, over-the-top hilarious, and quite "post-modern" for its time. It was published first in 1759 in what’s now of course old-fashioned English. It was a triumph, in my opinion, of courage, lunacy, and creativity.

The story belongs to Tristram Shandy, a narcissistic gentleman who is struggling to write his autobiography. In order to do this perfectly, he feels he must familiarise the reader with every detail that is pertinent to his life and birth. He is earnest in his mission and reveals every thing– from a curious mishap during his parents’ coitus, to his uncle’s love of miniature canons, which had all somehow affected his fate. But Tristram Shandy is a man who loves to digress. In his book, he inserts a bold advertisement targeted to the nobility, a legal document between his mother and father, and the whole ritual of excommunication from the Catholic church, among many others. On page 100, or thereabouts depending on the edition, he presents the reader with a joke that would have made me fall into a chair if I hadn’t been already reading on the bed. Reading Laurence Sterne is like inviting a stand-up comic to your home. You will not exhaust him in one night, or one weekend. You have to invite him for dinner multiple times until he finishes his story.

Experimental or post-modern literature can often be serious, abstract, even bland. Tristram Shandy is refreshingly none of these. It is playful and experimental– but not in the Twilight Zone kind of way. Laurence Sterne blows you away like a hurricane, lifting you from the box you built to house your thoughts. Follow him, like Don Quixote, and you’ll emerge on the other side of your mind.