BIRDS FLY....

"Birds fly the whole world over, but always, no matter what, find their way back home."

There are so few times when I tell you to put down whatever frivolous thing you're doing and run immediately to your nearest friends-of-the-library or used bookstore and buy a book. But, I'm telling you now. Put down your Strawberry Pop Tarts. Or your Red Stripe. Now is the time for action, folks.

I just wrote about Julia Glass, and finished reading her second novel, "The Whole World Over." Glass has impeccable prose -- it's skilled in a way that advances the novel, that makes you think, what next? And goddamn, she's a mean tantalizer with those chapter endings.

Here is a story about very ordinary people, whose lives are fleshed out, whose complexities and contradictions make them seem more relatable, somehow, rather than tiresome. With Glass, it's a cumulative effect: the foundations she builds, the slowness of the first half of the book becomes more meaningful on second read.

This is a novel about perceptions: how we see ourselves, how others see us, and that horrible collision when we are able to see both. One of the main characters, Walter, is raised by his grandmother, who he describes as a sort of savior. She raised him after his alcoholic father was unable to, and then continued raising him after his parents' death in a drunken car crash. Glass describes Walter's fervor with incredible detail. Each little note of recalled memory is filled with enough ambiguity to allow for it to invite more realized adult comprehensions.

Imagine how it feels when Walter's memories are swiftly rearranged and intruded upon by not his brother, but by his brother's young, pot smoking, can't-really-argue-with son who mentions that Walter's father suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, that his grandmother didn't really understand what was going on and was thusly cruel to him, and might even have been a catalyst to Walter's parents' death? A definite game-changer, right? Because nowhere before that did the term PTSD come into play, or the idea that Walter's grandmother was also confronting the idea of having failed her child (and maybe grandchildren) by being unable to relate or help. Our perception of histories can change so dramatically when invaded by others. "The Whole World Over" is made of moments like these, where characters are constantly challenged about their ideas and awareness - and while that may seem sad, it's actually uplifting, too, because communities help us confront what we might be in denial about.


xoxo t