Review: Love, Death, and Birds
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 16, 2011
An insurance adjuster and his stepdaughter, Caitlin, are trying to cope with the loss of her mother. The only thing the two have in common, besides their separate grieving, is a shared love of birds and birding, something her mother gave them. Caitlin is the first to notice that there are no longer any birds at their backyard feeder. Then he begins to get calls to investigate claims of damage caused by thousands of birds falling dead from the sky.Suddenly, everywhere birds are dying. Not only is their no apparent cause but many of the birds are out of their proper place and time. Caitlin and her stepfather begin to follow the trail of this disaster to try to understand what is happening and, as they do, a bond begins to grow between them - in the midst of this tragedy, they are becoming a family again.Fall of the Birds is a beautifully crafted novella about love and loss, about the overwhelming sorrow and loneliness of grief and the sense of wrongness of the universe that comes with it. But it is also about the resilience of the human spirit to cope and to transcend tragedy and to form strong and lasting bonds despite or because of it. And, oh yeah, it's a pretty darn good story about birds as well.