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Birds of America
Lorrie Moore. Picador USA: 1999 (paperback). ISBN: 0312241224. 291 pages.
Guide not available
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These twelve stories show us a world seen through what Julian Barnes calls Moore's
"avian eyes." Birds of America was short-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998, and with good reason.
We see these quirky characters first from a distance, then Moore swoops down, and suddenly we share their odd point of view.
Moore weaves various images of birds through these stories effortlessly, sometimes with such subtlety we almost miss them the
first time around. The stories themselves record moments in the lives of various characters: an aging B-movie star moves
from Hollywood to Chicago and has an affair with a auto mechanic indifferent to film; a woman who writes questions for the
SAT exam takes a strange trip to Ireland with her mother; a Romanian librarian named Olena discovers the depths of her own
desire; a Great Books instructor from Iowa takes a life-changing trip to New York. It is remarkable that Moore writes from
so many different points of view and manages to make each of them as engaging and authentic as the next. This collection
makes the ordinary extraordinary and reminds us of the beauty of simple moments and the power of human encounter.
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