PODCAST-SON OF A BIRD-BOOK REVIEW

Writers are often advised to leave out the boring parts. Nin Andrews did just that with her memoir in prose poems called Son of a Bird. I couldn’t put the book down.

In the first poem of her collection, Andrews describes her childhood home, a stone farmhouse with a barn where the horses and chickens slept, and where the kittens and foals were born each spring. This sounds bucolic, but not all was well.

One night when a horse named Ella dies, Andrews runs from the barn back to her bed where she can’t fall asleep. She writes a letter entitled, Dear Future Me, in which she says she would like to grow up to be a horse. (Later, she practices by eating grass, whinnying, and trotting. She cantors and gallops and tries to make the horse jumps, often falling and skinning her knees.)

In the letter, Andrews tells her future self not to forget her, to write about her, but when she writes about her, to make her prettier and fast. Then, at the end of this poem, adult Andrews observes what I believe to be the thesis statement of this memoir. Andrews says about herself as a child, “Back then you didn’t love you very much and hoped I’d make you better after the fact. Which is strange, I think, for a child.” This sentiment sets the stage for the rest of the volume.

The youngest of six children, Nin was born to parents who wanted a son, a fact she knew from a young age. Her father was an architect and a complicated man. Her mother had Asperger Syndrome. The woman has an aversion to showing physical affection, which is hard on Nin. Miss Mary, a nanny, provides Nin with nurturing and physical care for the first five years of her life. The nanny defends and protects Nin, too. At one point, Miss Mary is so angry with how the child’s parents treat her, she says, “Damn white folks—don’t even know how to raise their own chillens.”

I lost track of how many times Nin is hospitalized with eye surgeries, respiratory infections, and suicidal depression. In one poem, she describes her mother as shrugging as Nin stands at the edge of a stone ledge. Her mother doesn’t move to help, assuming Nin won’t fall. But, of course, Nin tumbles off the precipice and is injured. Another time, one morning, a truck driver finds Nin by the side of the road, unconscious and lying next to her bike. He drives her to the ER. Later in the afternoon, a doctor from the hospital calls and asks her father if he is missing a daughter, which he was, although he and no one else in the family had noticed.

All these stories are told without self-pity and are interwoven with gorgeous images of farm life and wise observations about the complexity of marriage and sibling relationships. Because Andrews tells these stories in a lyrical way, with a generous dollop of humor, the sadness is bearable and the prose is uplifting. For example, Nin nearly dies during sinus surgery because of a bad reaction to anesthesia. She wakes up gagging, with the doctor sobbing by her side. The doctor says, “We thought we lost you…Anesthesia is not your friend.” Andrews ends the poem by saying, “Anesthesia, I thought then, was a Russian princess or evil stepmother who poisoned me again and again.”

The pacing in this collection is brisk. The poems are not necessarily in chronological order, but the flow from poem to poem makes emotional sense, thereby creating a satisfying narrative arc. The prose is spare and succinct. Andrews never uses one word more than she needs to convey her life story, which is filled with beauty, courage, and resilience. I plan to re-read the volume soon. It’s that good.

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Interested in reading more book reviews? Check out: The Caretaker, Time of the Child, and Without You Here.

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Son of a Bird

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(Photo by Jen Fariello)Deborah Prum’s fiction has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Across the Margin, Streetlight and other outlets. Her essays air on NPR member stations and have appeared in The Washington Post, Ladies Home Journal and Southern Living, as well as many other places. Check out her WEBSITE. Check out her DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING SERVICES. Check out her PAINTINGS.

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