I'm not sure how my reading will keep up once school gets back into swing. I keep hoping that I will focus more on housekeeping and having a life. So I've been reading up a storm to be covered.
The novel is written from the differing points of view of the main characters, Felice, her mother Avis, her father Brian, and her brother Stanley. It is a story of isolation even in the family unit. Each of the family members copes in their own way with Felice's departure. I found the story plot given to the husband/father the most telling:
"A family like any happy family. He wanted only to keep them whole and entire: to provide. But perhaps that's where the problem was? The drive to pour oneself out, into the providing?" (102)
He has given himself over to his job, to leaving the children with his wife, because that is what he believes good husbands and fathers do, they provide. Later when he and a co-worker are talking about their struggles his co-worker says:
"I left. To make her happy. You see how that works? You keep leaving, like you say, to keep them happy. You go to work, you keep working, you run away until you're all the way gone. Maybe even you shoot yourself. And the whole time you keep thinking--Are they happy yet?" (312)
Each of the characters' plots are quite complex and a story unto themselves.
Abu-Jaber uses the hurricane to bring her family back together, in a healing, forgiving way. I was pleased with this. I really struggled with how unhappy everyone is at the beginning of the book in their separate lives. And I felt like the title of the book is a metaphor for how precious and fragile people are, they are the birds of paradise living in Miami, placed there by life circumstances.
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