As If a Bird Flew By Me: A Novel

by Sara Greenslit

“The world is full of continuous conversations: Now is surrounded by Past, and both are encircled by Forever.” So states an unnamed narrator in Sara Greenslit’s new novel As if a Bird Flew by Me. Celia lives in the contemporary Midwest. Ann is an accused witch, executed during the Salem witch trials. Two women separated by time and place, yet yoked by heritage and history. Set in three time periods, stories within stories unfold, and Greenslit’s language seamlessly weaves Celia’s modern life with the historical record of Ann’s demise alongside dazzling renderings of animal life. Greenslit’s hybrid of fiction and nonfiction occupies that rarest of airs: it is a book that illuminates, line by line and page by page, how it should be read.

 

 

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 8, 2011

About the author

http://www.starcherone.com/greenslit.htm

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Animals and humans, migration, the sensorial specificity of cello proficiency, observations diaristic or lyrical, a witch accused and killed, centuries before. Adapting some of the list poetics of Carole Maso or David Markson, this deftly interweaves many thoughts and modes into a fluid whole. Never quite the moments of sublime convergence that mark those notable forebears, but a novel that moves in fluttering instants, always restive, never settling from its flight.

[Jacki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim novel from Sara Greenslit (The Blue of Her Body) reads like a beautiful, haunting dream, and its sparkling mesh of lyricism and imagery netted Greenslit the Ronald Sukenick/American Book Review Innovative Fiction Prize, ensuring the work's availability to captivate lovers of fine wordcraft.

Light on word count but heavy with impact, Greenslit's narrative follows brief thoughts and moments in the lives of a lapsed cellist attempting to master her instrument anew; her neighbor Celia; and Celia's ancestor Ann Pudeator, executed during the Salem witch trials and now alive only in Celia's amateur genealogy attempts. Though these three women ostensibly make up the focus of the novel, in reality a myriad of human and animal stories link and interlink in a succession of interludes and fragments that is part fiction, part field guide, part poetry. Greenslit possesses a rare gift for capturing the lovely and eerie connections between past, present and future, between strangers who never meet, and between humanity and the natural world we barely notice. She offers us the secrets of birds, the alchemy of music and the mystery of migration.

Fans of free verse and prose poetry will savor As If a Bird Flew by Me as though walking through a gem-studded cavern, each sliver of language a shining stone. One caveat: not reading Greenslit's most striking passages aloud will feel akin to thumbing through sheet music without ever sounding a note, so savor in solitude or among other lovers of unique, expressive writing.

***This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness Readers Edition. Sign up for this free and awesome newsletter at http://www.shelf-awareness.com for the latest news and reviews! This review refers to an ARC provided by Shelf Awareness.***

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the sound of the air in autumn. It's a ghostless ghost story. You're a child in a dark house alone at night and you don't know when your parents will be home. They didn't even tell you that they were leaving.

[Michele Merens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning language, at times more poem than prose, but the whole from beginning to end has the energy and mystery of a brisk wind. Left me restless and invigorated.

[Zoe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was an English lit major, so I have quite a bit of experience analyzing literature, and I still felt that I didn't "get" this book. It was so all over the place, and seemed to be that way just for the sake of being that way.

[Michaela · Rating 3 out of 5]

To me this was very Dylan Thomas-like in the beautiful use of language. Reads more like a poem than a novel. Less concerned with action than feeling.

[Sandra Lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yowzer, what a good memoir. Or is it a novel? Or poetry? Who cares.

[Melanie Page · Rating 1 out of 5]

Super don't know what's going on.