Reviews

The Birdcatcher by Gayl Jones

eglozoraitis's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

neugrowf's review against another edition

challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

A brilliant work with an experimental style of storytelling! I love the way Gayl Jones weaves a strange and colorful tapestry for her characters to inhabit.

lindseyzwilson's review against another edition

challenging dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

kpeps's review against another edition

adventurous fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book was a bit strange, but very engaging! I don’t think I was the best audience for it (the unlovable characters could be a bit too unlovable) so it didn’t hit quite right but that’s because of my preferences as a reader and not because the author is a bad writer.

changeablelandscape's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is the kind of literary fiction I really enjoy; I picked it up because it was on the ToB longlist, and I'm glad I did.   The narrative skips all around in place and time, held together by the voice of the narrator, Amanda, a black author who has become enmeshed in the lives of Catherine, a black sculptor, and her husband Ernest -- whom Catherine periodically tries to murder.  Other reviews have done a good job of framing what the novel is about, and indeed, it is about those things, but what struck me the most is how indirect it is about it all.   Amanda talks about Catherine and Ernest, and about Catherine's friend Gilette, and about her own life, and all the pieces are there for the reader to put together how hard it is for a woman (especially a black woman) to create without the men around her either co-opting or flat-out destroying her work, or her ability to work -- but there is never a moment in which the women themselves are really able to articulate it directly.  It's just there, it's the water they're swimming in, and Amanda can simultaneously

Spoiler

know that she left her own husband and child in order to be able to live on her own terms as a writer, and still (from time to time) participate in the narrative where Ernest is a very kind, lovable man who is overly loyal to his mentally ill wife.  Men and children make women crazy in this book, and there are very few escapes other than violence, either towards the men and children, or towards oneself using the men as instruments so that one is 'right' to leave them.

   It is really well done, and I am very glad I read it, but it is a tight, grim, sad view of the world so I'm not sure if I will ever want to read it again.

lisabunag's review against another edition

challenging medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

theythemsam's review against another edition

2.0

I feel like I would’ve liked this book more if I read it instead of listening to it cuz I def am confused on what exactly happened lol. I feel like I couldn’t follow the author’s train of thought or switch from characters easily and honestly wasn’t that interested in the plot anyway

sam_bizar_wilcox's review against another edition

4.0

Gayl Jones' novel about black artist expats is a vision. Her book is at once a meditation on ambition and jealousy, as the novel spirals around the strange relationships of three artistic women: Amanda Wordlaw--writer, and one-time romance novelist; Catherine Shuger--sculptor, so in love and revolted by her husband that she frequently attempts to murder him; and Gilette--a white painter as dangerous as her razor-ous name suggests (or, is she?). The way these women talk to each other, and the men and children in their lives, uncover a restlessness with the status of the black woman artist. The Birdcatcher is Catherine's sculpture, something that she futilely works on as her husband encourages her to move on. Catherine becomes caught in a prison of her own making, both in her artistic pursuits and in a marriage she is unable to leave (despite numerous attempts to free herself from her husband...by murdering him). Amanda, on the other hand, is in constant flight; she's become a travel writer after ditching her husband, Lantis, and she no longer writes period romance novels but researched non-fiction that jets her off to Brazil, Ibiza, and Paris (or Cleveland?). She is free to narrate the relationship between Catherine and Ernest, and Catherine and herself, but what becomes clear quickly is how her voice becomes an imposition. She is not an objective narrator in her (so-called?) friend's life, but a woman with her own blindspots and obfuscating prose.

This is a dazzling book, written with insidious cruelty that (perhaps) hides a more sympathetic core.

apollonium's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

edorend's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

An incredibly masterfully written but disjointed and complex book that I had to sit with after finishing to properly understand and appreciate what Jones was trying to achieve with it