- Deliciously domestic as usual. Lovely.
- It’s very hot in Venice and for some strange reason Brunetti’s apartment is not air conditioned. The man is suffering. His way of relaxing is coffee and reading classical Greek literature.
- Immerses the reader in Italian life - the food, cafes, buildings, facades, canals of Venice.
- Also the language. I didn’t know that Venice had its own dialect.
- Not Leon’s best by a long shot. For fans only.
- ‘Old people, in big cities, afraid of the sky’: Expressions like this perfectly capture the concisely expressed brilliance of this wonderful novel.
- Offill registers the strangeness of people. They are lost. Their sense of emptiness, hopelessness, anxiety and existential dread is captured perfectly.
- The deadpan humour is delicious. ‘All day, Ben lies on the couch, reading a giant history of war. But he got it at a used-book store so it only goes up to World War 1.’
- The narrator, Lizzie, is a charming character. She's witty, observant, caring and, importantly, sane. Her down-to-earthness and intelligence reminded me of Lucy Ellmann in Ducks, Newburyport. But where Lucy overtalks and overwrites, Lizzie understates and is quietly reflective. She respects silences and peace.
- Global warming, the fear and reality, is depressing for everyone
- 'For dessert, Catherine serves fruit with unsweetened whip cream. My son rips his napkin into smaller and smaller pieces. "What is there to do here?" he whispers. Henry overhears and leans in to speak softly in his ear. Eli smiles.
"What did you tell him?" I ask my brother later. "I told him nothing", he says.'
- The small snippets, paragraphs and jottings of Lizzie’s thoughts and observations begin to build in a powerful way.
- People aren’t too bright. They elected Trump (although Lizzie refuses to utter the name ‘Trump’). '"In chaotic times, people long for a strongman", she said. But I didn’t believe her. Hardly anyone did.’
- ‘Insomnia is a badge of honour. Proof that you’re paying attention.’
- ‘Someone says hello to me and I see it’s the hot guy from the bus. He is wearing running clothes, which lowers my opinion of him.’
- ‘Of course, the world continues to end’, Sylvia says, then gets off the phone to water her garden'.
- ‘What is the core delusion?’ Margot asks the class, but nobody knows the right answer, and she doesn’t bother to tell us'.
- ‘The core delusion is that I am here and you are there.’
- I found this novel, if that's what it is, very frustrating. In one of the most political regions of the world, Israel, where passionate engagement on one side or the other is a fundamental part of everyday citizenry, this book decides to be very sympathetic to both Israelis and Palestinians. It takes a neutral political position. Though McCann immerses us in the cultural, religious and social richness of both traditions the non-political stance diminishes Israel’s responsibility for the brutal suppression of the Palestinians.
- As I read on, I became increasingly irritated. It was hard to fathom what the point of the novel was. Structurally, it's gimmicky - one thousand short chapters/snippets on all sorts of unrelated topics, some fascinating, some meaningless, many boring. Far too many were about birds (hence the cover). Why?
- By far the best chapters were those describing the political realities of life in Israel for both Jews and Palestinians. The bureaucracy of Israel’s border crossings, for example, is absurd, even in hospital emergencies. The checkpoints are ugly.
- The principal focus however is on the individual experiences of the two real life men, an Israeli and a Palestinian, and their personal histories. Their young daughters were killed, the Palestinian by a bullet to the head fired by an 18 year old Israeli soldier, the Israeli girl by a suicide bomber in a cafe. The form a bond of friendship and collaborate to work towards reconciliation and peace.
- Hence the 'novel' is not fiction at all, which explains the absence of plot or character development. It’s really a real world collage which slowly builds empathy for the men's tragedies. But the problem is it has a New Age sensibility about it - providing faux depth and rather corny meaningfulness. 'Meaning of life’ truisms are scattered everywhere and they are typically banal and vacuous. The two men are treated like saints, their stories over-egged and sentimental. The larger tragedy is the brutal oppression of the Palestinians.
- Dwight Garner’s review in the NYT pans the book, and rightly so. Most other reviews highly praise it (eg, Julie Orringer in the NYT).
