Laura HarringtonReseñas

A Catalog of Birds by Laura Harrington is a story about both love and loss. Following the rehabilitation of a badly injured Vietnam Vet, we learn of the toll this war had not only on the vet, but on all his family and loved ones. The story is told by Nell, just graduating high school and looking forward to her studies at university, but when her beloved brother, Billy, is returned to the family with burns and nerve damage, everything in their world changes. The expense of operations and rehabilitation eats up the families savings, and does little to improve his condition. Billy lives in constant pain and experiences survivors guilt along with many other side affects from his injuries.

Before we went to Vietnam, Billy was an artist who specialized in drawing birds, he found himself in his artwork and in the study of the winged creatures. Sharing their love of nature, he and Nell spent a lot of time wandering the woods near their home in upstate New York studying birds and their habitat. Along with the tragedy of her brother’s injuries, Nell’s best friend (and Billy’s girlfriend) has disappeared mysteriously and it is feared that she has become the victim of a serial killer.

A Catalog of Birds is a unique story that is both a searing anti-war story and a novel of family faith and love. The author gives us characters that are complex and very human in this sensitive story of a family whose lives have been torn apart by war.

Recommended by Greg and June

I found this to be really slow and boring

It is not often that I am moved to tears reading a book. This one dug in and touched all my vulnerable spots: VietNam vets, exquisite descriptions of nature, dashed dreams. The story revolves around the 1970 return of Billy Flynn from an unpopular war, the lone survivor of the crashed helicopter he was flying. He is filled with deep remorse and shame for his part in the war. His body is ravaged. His hearing is shot, the burns are disfiguring and painful, but, most of all, he has lost the ability to use his right hand, a huge loss to a budding artist who had dreams of being a pilot.

Sounds like a real downer, right? I prefer to think of it as a deep look into a nurturing family who works together to overcome a tragedy. The book might be about Billy but it is also a testimonial of love and support from his younger sister Nell, and the helpless reaction of his father Jack who had his own war wounds to overcome. He tells his daughter, "You can't leave it. You just end up carrying it." He goes on to muse that he "wishes he didn’t know the limits of love and hope, how little, really, can be covered over, hidden away, made whole."

Although there is a lot of heartache in this book, there is also a lot of life and hope expressed in Billy and Nell's relationship to each other and the natural world. Much of their childhood was spent in their explorations of the Finger Lakes region of New York where they grew up. They learned to sit quietly and study the birds while Billy honed his art skills in his field books. The only drawback to the story was the disappearance of Megan who was Nell's best friend and Billy's girlfriend. I didn't think she was integral to the story, but the void left by the mystery of her disappearing was distracting. I can only hope that the author left the door open to a sequel. I would like to spend more time with the Flynn family.½

beautiful story about mothers and daughters/family/loss/identity

Great read about a returning soldier from Vietnam. Very well wrote. Being a Veitnam Era Vet I really related to this story.

"Don't just disappear on us." ~ Laura Harrington, A Catalog of Birds

I was born in the mid-1970s, in the shadow of the Vietnam War. I was too young to have any first-hand memories of the war, but not too young to eavesdrop on hushed conversations. I quickly learned the Vietnam War was a topic that was not suitable for young ears. That, of course, made it irresistible.

I remember playing in the living room while my parents watched the news and surreptitiously paying attention in case anything of relevance came on the television. Eventually, I learned that lyrics to the songs on the radio were also a good source of information. I grew up listening to Peter, Paul and Mary, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Joan Baez, The Byrds, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel. And I remember watching Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam.

But true understanding—then as now—came from books.

Laura Harrington’s latest novel, A Catalog of Birds, takes place in upstate New York in 1970. Nell Flynn is about to graduate from high school to attend Cornell when her beloved older brother, Billy, comes home from Vietnam severely injured and struggling to understand why he survived while his co-pilot, a husband and father of two small children, did not.

Billy was not drafted to serve, but volunteered in order to become a pilot. Before the war, he and Nell spent hours watching birds and trying to build wings that would allow them to fly. By the time he was 12, Billy’s field journals were full of precise and detailed drawings of birds. He knew the species just by listening to their calls. But when he returns from Vietnam with severe burns and extensive nerve damage, he can no longer use his right hand, and his hearing is so impaired that he often can’t hear the birdsong. Plagued by nightmares, PTSD and survivor’s guilt, Billy falls into a deep depression and turns to alcohol to dull the pain.

But it is not just Billy’s body and spirit that have been destroyed. Nell volunteers to measure mercury levels in songbirds and notes that the toxin attacks a bird’s nervous system causing it to be too distracted to sit on their eggs long enough for them to hatch. Jack, Billy’s father, desperately tries to save the Elm trees in their yard and monitors water and soil contamination from pesticides.

Billy talks about the chemicals they used in Vietnam, and how at first his primary concern was for the birds:

“The first time I saw napalm I thought—you’ll laugh at me—I thought about the birds. The ibis and Himalayan swiftlets, Oriental skylarks. Birds, when below me people are burning.”

Now that he’s returned from the war and struggling with his own health issues, he sees a much larger picture:

“There are plenty of vets who can’t smell or taste. Most everybody has hearing loss. More and more cancers are showing up. The VA says they are slacking off, looking to stay on the dole. Twelve million tons of Agent Orange, Dad. As if the Geneva Convention against chemical warfare did not exist. Think of what we have done, what we are leaving behind.”

Harrington’s writing is quick and sharp; it hurls you through the story and makes it difficult to catch your breath. An award-winning playwright, it perhaps should come as no surprise that she is a master at setting the scene and writing poignant, believable dialogue that somehow manages to avoid feeling like a lecture. The resulting story is rich and complex, made even more powerful by Harrington’s willingness to unflinching dig into the traumas of war.

But there is one subplot that feels underdeveloped and takes away from the whole: the unsolved disappearance of Nell’s best friend and Billy’s girlfriend, Megan. Disappearance is one of the core themes of the book, but we barely know Megan when she disappears. And while we are repeatedly told that she was Billy’s girlfriend and, once upon a time, Nell’s best friend, we are never really shown how important she was to either of the main characters. Harrington missed an opportunity to let us get to know Megan, to care about her and puzzle over her disappearance. Because this subplot was never fully integrated into the novel, it felt like an unnecessary distraction.

Harrington’s writing is compelling, beautiful and disconcerting. Her words propel you through the story. Nothing about this novel is comfortable, and that is one of its greatest strengths. Harrington doesn’t allow us the luxury of plausible deniability; she holds us accountable for the damage we do to one another and the natural world. I appreciate the discomfort this book causes, and the complexity and richness of the plot is incredibly gratifying. But the storyline about Megan never felt incorporated into the rest of the novel. It felt secondary. And that is its greatest weakness.

★★★

A Catalog of Birds, a novel by Laura Harrington, published by Europa Editions in 2017.

This book review is presented as part of my personal challenge to read and write a thoughtful review of at least 30 books in 2018. To learn more about this challenge, the books I have selected, and my imperfect rating system, visit www.thescribblersjournal.com.

This beautifully written book will definitely be in my list of top 10 books of 2017. I absolutely loved it - the characters, the plot and most of all the beautiful writing. I feel like I know these people and miss them now that the novel is done.

The novel is set in 1970 and is about the Flynn family - mom, dad, 2 boys and 3 girls. When they were growing up Billy and his sister Nell were always close and spent a lot of time together. Now Billy is coming home wounded in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. He has scars that can be seen but the internal pain is just as bad and more difficult to heal. He returns to his family home to try to recover by being in his familiar place with his family and especially his sister but as much as they try to help him, the more he pushes them away. This is a novel about love within a family and forgiveness of those we love.

The author does a fantastic job of painting a picture of what was going on in America in the early 70s - the war protests on campuses, the questioning of the government leadership by most people and the soldiers coming back with wounds both seen and unseen as they struggled to go back to living their lives like they did before their time in Vietnam.

I loved this novel and highly recommend it.

Thanks to goodreads for a copy of this novel to read and review. All opinions are my own.

_A Catalog of Birds_ is a novel about a family in Geneva, NY and what happens when the youngest son, Billy, returns from Vietnam, a wounded veteran. It's also about nature and listening, about trees and birds and lakes, about ambition and disappointment, loss and love. It was beautiful and I would have happily continued to read about these people and this place had the book been twice as long, even though their story often brought me to tears.

This is a beautifully told story of a Vietnam war vet who has come home scarred both physically and mentally. Prior to 'Nam he was an amazing artist; his sketches of birds and nature were exquisite. But his hand, his drawing hand, was badly burned in a helicopter crash and he has little use of it. In fact he has little use for life at all now. He hasn't been easy to live with what with the drinking and anger. His beloved sister and parents can't reach him any longer. What follows is one of those novels that will tear your heart out. I think that perhaps this is the best book I've read this year.

Coming-of-age story set in upstate New York, 1970. Seventeen-year-old Nell dealing with her disabled brother Billy returning from Vietnam and her friend (Billy's girlfriend) gone missing. No easy solutions. Evocative nature descriptions. A paperback original.½

2.5

I wanted to like this book more but it was just OK. I felt removed and distant and the story often read like a screenplay or script instead of a novel. Pages of short snappy dialogue can get old fast. The writing style just didn't resonate with me, to the point where it didn't generate so much as a tear to my eye - and I'm a crier. On a positive note, the book did deal with the effects of war on military families and the importance of family and community. MINOR SPOILER: Some passages shine but I didn't think the sex scene (and how it was handled by the adults) and the f-bombs by the overly precocious 8 yr old did a thing to further the story.

Review: Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington.

Some will say, “just another one of them stories” but every one is unique. It might be a fiction story but it reaches the heights of reality. Anytime you come across the subject matter of someone going off to war is a sad event to go through. The author creates a beautiful heartfelt story about Alice Bliss and her family as there home hero goes to war. It’s a story of love, loss, beginnings and ends.

Alice is a fifteen year old teenager growing up while her father is miles away because of a war, a reality that has happened to many families in recent years. Alice is at the coming of age point experiencing teenage emotions and now there is the added stress of missing her father. She has always been bonded more to her dad and now she must deal with her mother who gets on her nerves and they can’t seem to see eye to eye on anything. Alice feels burden with the responsibilities of caring for her younger sister Ellie, doing the laundry, and making meals because her mom, Angie, can’t seem to get herself motivated to think of anything besides her husband not being there for her. The family is in turmoil day after day waiting for Matt’s calls or letters, which are few and far-in-between.

Everyone tries to handle Matt’s absent as best they can and than the family is hit with bad news. Matt has been taken as a prisoner and the military are doing their best to locate him. While this is going on Angie, the mother throws herself into her work at the expense of her daughters, Ellie being only eight decides to alter her appearance by cutting her hair short and wearing a pair of glasses, black square rimmed that look to big on her face and Alice takes up running to try to escape from all that’s going on around her.

As the story progresses Alice is growing more mature and having to learn what life is all about long before she should have to. She experiences her first embarrassing kiss with her childhood friend Henry who is hopelessly in love with her and Alice struggles with those troublesome teenage emotions.

There are other characters that make the story more connected and supported as the family waits for some good news. I already mentioned Henry who is loyal, funny, charming and always there for Alice and her family. Than we have Uncle Eddie who is different and unique and teaches Alice life lessons on driving a car and the fundamentals of doing maintenance on the car. Plus, there is a grandma character who is wonderful and the kind of grandma that everyone wishes for. She is the one who shoves food at you when you’re sad, and holds you without saying a word…..

From the very beginning, this book had me hooked. I loved the time-line feature, if you will. The dates for each “chapter” that way the we can see how the time has elapsed. The prologue takes place in August while the rest of the book takes places from January to June. It made it that much more real for me as I read the book, seeing how drastically life can change in such a short amount of time.

Alice is such a wonderful character and I really was able to relate to her. Though she is 15 in the novel, she is mature beyond her years because she has to be. When her father leaves for Iraq, it’s up to Alice to try and keep it together as she sees her mom start to lose it. I particularly love Alice and her best friend Henry’s relationship. It made my heart so happy and even the bit of the love triangle that ensued in the novel, made this book that much better. Through all of the loss, pain, and heartache, there is still room for love.

Angie, Alice’s mom, is such a heartbreaking character. I cried every time I saw into her mind. The anguish, the confusion, the hurt. I found myself wondering if I would be like her, if ever my husband got sent overseas. I don’t know what I would do if I woke up and had to remind myself that he’s not there. That he’s in a different land entirely. I also loved how we get to see the doubt that Angie feels as a mother, whether she’s doing it right, questioning how she should do things. It’s so very real.

Ellie, Alice’s little sister, is such an intelligent, adorable child. I believe she is only eight years old, but she too is mature for her age. I would imagine any child who has a parent out of the equation is mature. You have to learn how to take care of yourself when there is just one person to care for you.

Henry is my favorite character besides Alice. He is loyal, funny, charming, and always there for Alice. Uncle Eddie is another favorite. He is so different and teaches Alice life lessons via car and maintenance lessons. Gram is also a wonderful character. I can smell her bread and cookies as I am writing this. She is perfectly depicted as that grandma everyone so desperately wants. The one who shoves food at you when your sad, and holds you without saying a word.

This book is so incredibly wonderful.

This was an interesting debut - heartfelt and seemingly real. Harrington is a lyricist and librettist and these talents are evident in the dialogue. The story fell a bit short for me as it seemed too simple, as though there were more impressive heights Harrington could have aspired to, but couldn't pull it off.

This novel would make a great mother-daughter (I would say girls aged 13+) read. I also think it offers a good portrait of families at home while their loved ones are away, fighting wars.

Alice Bliss was a quick read and it is a good platform for Harrington's potential as a novelist. I would be interested in reading more from her and hope that her abilities develop well.

Alice is a teenage girl, who is very close to her father, and just trying to grow up. Her father is sent to active duty in Iraq, and her life turns upside down. She and her mother didn't have the best relationship to begin with, and now she is taking care of her little sister, trying to navigate high school, and just survive. This heartfelt story examines the difficulties of those left behind.

A poignant novel about a teenage girl and her relationship with her father; then how the relationship changes when her father is shipped off to war. This tells the heartwarming and heartbreaking tale of day to day life of a family that includes a soldier. The rich details help you empathize with all the characters.

There are some books that pry long-forgotten memories out of the dusty corners of your brain, unfold them on a table and force you to look at them. Alice Bliss was like this for me.

Alice Bliss is a 14-year old girl who loves her father very much. So when his reserve unit is called up to go to Iraq, her world turns upside down. Although she goes through the motions of her everyday- joins the track team, explores love, deals with the glimpses she gets of the adult relationship between her mother and father, the worry and anxiety she feels for her absent father colours everything she does.

Where do I begin reviewing this? I could talk about Harrington’s interesting decisions when it comes to viewpoint- the book is in third person close, but not always from Alice’s perspective. She flits from character to character, like a butterfly who can read minds. At first this jarred me, but ultimately I think it works. We get Alice’s perspective as well as that of her mother, her grandmother, her best friend Henry. It is like getting a sweeping cinematic landscape shot but inside the brains of the characters.

Or the mounting tension, of seeing each member of the family slowly crumble under the weight of their own grief.

Or maybe how it is a simple book, with a simple plot and yet encompasses all the meat of our everyday- of growing up, of the complexity and simplicity of love. Of how we keep on keeping on even when we don’t think we can…

How each of the characters are flawed, beautiful, believable, from the mother who struggles to keep the family together with varying success, to the little sister who finds refuge in the dictionary and long words.

On a personal note, I read this book in one day, sitting on the couch, crying my eyes out. Though it is true, books have been known to bring me to tears from time to time, none as much as this one. The memories it brought back were of heading back to my class after a dictée and seeing the Base Commander with his arms around my sobbing mother. Of being ushered in the class by my teacher and then minutes later being told to come with her. Of my mother taking me by the shoulders and telling me my father was dead. Of the funeral with all my father’s friends in their uniforms, nightmarish copies of my own father. Of my mother crying in her room in the dark, inconsolable.

Christ. It was a good book. You should read it. It probably won’t slice you in half like it did me.

Playwright and lyricist Harrington transforms her one-act musical Alice Unwrapped into a moving debut about loss and survival. Fifteen-year-old Alice has always been closer to her father (they share a love of working with their hands) than to her mother, but when she needs him the most, he’s deployed to Iraq. Though the fluid narration offers access to many characters, this is the story of Alice, her courage, fear, and optimism, and her heartbreaking discovery of the extent to which her father’s life will shape and guide her own. Summary BPL

Ms Harrington tries to remain neutral about war and focus instead on the individuals. More novella than novel, Alice Bliss has a simplicity to it that endears the reader to story and character. Makes me want to see the original musical!

It will perhaps resonate more with Americans than Canadians.

7 out of 10. For fans of young adult fiction.

I did enjoy this but it wasn't a 'page turner'. I found the latter third of the book the most compelling and emotional.

The war in Iraq has been going on for so many years now that it can be very easy to forget that we are still sending soldiers over there, soldiers who leave family and loved ones at home worried about their safety and just trying to go on with daily life as best they can in the face of an uncertain future. There are tv shows capturing the deeply emotional moments of a returning soldier surprising his child, parent, wife, etc. but there's very little media coverage of these same loved ones' lives while that soldier was half way across the world. Laura Harrington has captured what it means for families and particularly children old enough to understand the risks and ramifications of a soldier father (or mother) in her novel Alice Bliss.

Teenaged Alice is a daddy's girl, her uncomplicated relationship with him a direct counterpoint to her difficult relationship with her mother. She's a tomboy who shares her father's interests and she is crushed when she learns that he is being sent to Iraq. She is angry and devastated and unsure just exactly how she can go forward in life without her father right there with her. But go on she does, changing and maturing, fighting with her mother, trying new things, and cherishing the brief phone calls and longer letters from her dad. She wants everything to stay the same for him when he comes home but life doesn't stand still. Alice starts running on the track team, learns to drive, goes to her first dance, all without her father.

This novel is loaded with emotions right on the edge. Alice narrates the story and she is a typical teenager, vulnerable and defensive, but with added weight. Harrington has drawn her characters completely realistically. The tension and relationship between Alice and her mother Angie rings true at every moment of the narrative. And her interactions with her best friend and her younger sister are equally real and authentic. Readers will be touched by this young girl struggling to come of age and to grow into herself even as she doesn't want life to change so it is still recognizable to her father. Being a teenager is hard no matter how you slice it but when your father, the family's north star, is away fighting a war no one wants to talk about, it is that much more difficult, that much more raw, that much more emotional. And this book is nothing if not highly emotional. You'll feel for the Bliss family as they face fear and the implacability of the military at war. And even though the climax of the novel is not at all unexpected, Harrington has written an honest and heartwrenching look at what happens to the families at home that will keep readers engrossed until the last page.

This was a very moving book about Alice Bliss, a teenager whose dad, Matt, is sent to Iraq with the Army Reserve. In some ways, it’s the story of the very ordinary tensions between a mother and her daughter, as her daughter grows and changes. However, all these tensions are compounded when they’re told that Matt is missing in action, and the book is also about how they deal with this. Alice is a strong character, I enjoyed the way in which the story is told from her point of view, I very much liked her narrative voice, and there are a number of telling moments in the book that I very much appreciated. It’s sad but probably realistic to see that the tension between Alice and her mother, Angie, continues even after Matt is reported missing. For all the advice parenting manuals and counseling books give on how to deal with a situation like this, it’s entirely understandable that it’s difficult for parents to be there – as ideal parents – for their children when they're upset and worried themselves, and likewise, Alice’s own reactions to the situation sometimes make things more difficult for her mother. Alice and Angie are both well-intentioned and sympathetic but flawed characters, and that’s another thing that I liked about this book, and that made it even more moving for me.

This was a book I really liked. It is narrated by Alice Bliss aged fifteen. Alice loves her father very much but cannot understand why he needs to go and fight a war, that she does not believe in. The family, Alice and her sister and mother try to cope with his absence as best as they can. They live for his letters when they can get them and they try to carry on with their every day life. Each of them tries to find solace in their own way. Alice joins the track team and discovers that she is actually good at running, and that when she runs she is able to forget about what is happening in her life. But then when her father is declared missing things become even harder as they realise he may never return. Alice immerses herself in the garden that she would plant with her father, keen to carry it on exactly as he would have, and she lives in one of his shirts. She spends a lot of time with Henry the boy next door, a life long friend, whom she turns to for support. I loved the character of Alice. It was very well done, and a believabale character. This was a beautiful and moving story that made me both laugh and cry . There was so much detail. It made it very real. I shall not forget the character of Alice for a long time and I am keen to see if this author has written any other books.½

I too will remember Alice Bliss - this was a beautifully written book about the family left behind when a father and husband is deployed. My father is retired Air Force and when I was 11 years old, he was deployed to Vietnam for a year. My mother, brother and I faced numerous challenges that year so I can relate to what the Bliss family went through. I look forward to reading other books by Laura Harrington.

I will remember the character of Alice Bliss for a very long time. She ranks right up there with Olive Kitteredge. This book made me cry and laugh. I loved it.½