A review by montereads
A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez

5.0

Tender, aching, gruff—these are all words that a character searches for in his second language in the last part of Sigrid Nunez’s ‘A Feather on the Breath of God,’ and are all words I could use to describe the book itself. We start with a profile of the speaker’s father as through a fish-eye lens—him in distorted focus, the background blurry. But the novel pans out rapidly, picking up in pace and scope to encompass memory, otherness, love, and the remarkable soul of the narrator. Nunez does none of the explicit work of connecting the parts of the book, but she doesn’t have to: the through-lines are clear. This novel feels like examining a bruise; painful, but you can’t help but be captivated by the colours.