The Bird Artist: A Novel
Books / Hardcover
Books › Fiction › Historical
ISBN: 0374113300 / Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 1994
A novel set in Newfoundland in 1911 concerns Fabian, who is studying to be a bird painter, and his relationships with a beautiful woman and his difficult parents, as jealousy, guilt, and regret enter his life
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The Bird Artist, Howard Norman's spellbinding new novel, is set in Newfoundland in 1911. Fabian Vas's story, told with disarming simplicity and grace, takes place against a spare and profoundly beautiful landscape where the most powerful of emotions stand out starkly against naked rock, sea and sky. At age twenty, Fabian is working at the boat yard, taking a correspondence course in bird painting, and sleeping with Margaret Handle, a woman of great beauty, intelligence and waywardness - though his parents are determined to marry him to a distant relation he has never met. Then his father leaves on a long hunting expedition, his mother takes up with the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and Fabian's world loses most of its bearings. The Bird Artist reveals the fire at the heart of human interactions with a rare and enthralling directness.
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