Review: A great story, but it feels too short
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 16, 2012
Waves of birds are dying - quite literally dropping dead en masse, with no rhyme or reason to the deaths. Migration patterns are disrupted, birds are appearing in areas where they've never been seen before, and no one knows why. And against this backdrop, a grieving widower and his step-daughter attempt to cope with the loss of their wife and mother. Such is the premise of Fall of the Birds, an intriguing - if slightly frustrating - novella about grief and the healing process. Author Bradford Morrow writes with a master's touch, bringing these two characters to a rich and tender life over its short length, all while bringing out a touching and painful exploration of these two people who are struggling to fill the fresh void in their lives. More than that, Morrow expertly interweaves the two major threads of the story - the fate of the birds and the grief of the father and daughter - in intriguing and compelling ways, using the more unusual elements of the story as a complex metaphor for trying to make sense of an untimely death. At the same time, though, the problem with metaphors like this is that they can overtake your story, and the tale of bird deaths ultimately is so strange and eerie that it becomes compelling and unsettling to the point where we expect that it's going to go somewhere, rather than being used to support the "main" story. And as Morrow draws his characters' arcs to a close, I couldn't help but be a little frustrated that there's no closure at all to the tale of the birds. Is that intentional? Definitely...but at the same time, it's almost as though Morrow is a victim of his own success, given how compelling his world is. Fall of the Birds is that rare piece of writing that would be better if it went longer, and while that's a good problem to have, it's still a frustrating problem to read.