A Bird on Every Tree by Carol Bruneau
A "Throwback Thursday" Short Fiction Review from 2017 by James M. Fisher
I had never read Carol Bruneau until receiving this ARC from Nimbus Publishing, and it made me a little anxious for here was a Maritime author I should have been familiar with. Yet, it is not humanly possible to have read books by all the different authors the East Coast provinces are blessed with. Coincidentally, at about the same time I received this book, I was browsing the books at the Fredericton Value Village and came upon a copy of Glass Voices, her 2007 novel. I wanted to read one of her novels before I read A Bird on Every Tree, a short story collection. Simply put, I was blown away by Glass Voices, or more to the point, Ms Bruneau’s astounding command of words. She is one of Canada’s best fiction writers, for Glass Voices (and A Bird on Every Tree too) is overflowing with word pictures, metaphors, and similes to the point that the reader is enraptured by the story and like a beautifully fulfilling dream, you don’t want it to conclude.
“At an even dozen, the stories in A Bird on Every Tree are decidedly larger than the few pages they inhabit.”
At an even dozen, the stories in A Bird on Every Tree are decidedly larger than the few pages they inhabit, dealing as they do with relationships (Burning Times, The Grotto, Crotch Rockets, Shelter, The Vagabond Lover), family (If My Feet Don’t Touch the Ground, Solstice, Polio Beach) and personal struggles like Marion’s in The Race, Sister Berthe’s in Doves, and Delia’s in Saint Delia. What is truly fascinating in reading this collection is the way Ms Bruneau captures each character’s voice, whether it is a mature woman, a man, or as in the case of Delia, a young girl with a learning disability, making it so real that we feel we are looking through the character’s eyes (male or female) into the world as they see it. Another gift she has is that of making her locations so vivid. Has she visited all these places where she sets her stories? It would seem so, yet if she hasn’t, the reader would never suspect that either, so ingenious is her inclusion of details only a person who has been there could give.
By now, you have likely guessed that I thoroughly enjoyed A Bird on Every Tree, and you would be right. I enjoyed every story; there wasn’t one I would have left out. Ms Bruneau writes with graceful precision and has a deftness with words and their cadences, implications and meanings so that there are no misunderstandings, only a full comprehension of each story and its message.
Carol Bruneau is the author of eleven books: four short story collections, including Threshold, one work of nonfiction, No Ordinary Magic: the Art of Laurie Swim, and six novels. These include Purple for Sky, A Circle on the Surface, and These Good Hands, a novel based on the life and art of sculptor Camille Claudel, and most recently, Brighten the Corner Where You Are: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Maud Lewis, longlisted for the 2022 International Dublin Literary Award. Her fiction has been published internationally. A past winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and two Dartmouth Book Awards, Bruneau lives and writes in Halifax/Kjipuktuk, Nova Scotia/Mi'kmaki.
Publisher : Vagrant Press; 1st edition (Aug. 30 2017)
Language : English
Paperback : 152 pages
ISBN-10 : 1771085029
ISBN-13 : 978-1771085021