A Feather on the Breath of God: A Novel Paperback – December 27, 2005

As a disgruntled, pretentious college student, I am particularly hard to please. A Feather on the Breath of God is no different. I have generally mixed feelings about the book. It is divided into four sections, each about a different facet of the main character's life, ranging from her childhood to her lovers. It begins with an introduction of her silent, diligent father Chang. She describes him as someone almost cultureless, "not like everybody else." The entire house was cluttered with objects connected to Germany, her mother's homeland. The book progresses to the protagonist's experiences with her mother Christa, which I'll talk about later. After the protagonist leaves the household, the narrator tells of her passion within dance and her experiences with fate. The last section talks about her relationship with Vadim, from Russia with love.For their intended purpose, the chapters do quite well at bringing their point across. The narrator has a poor relationship with her Chinese father. Her mother is a crazy psychopath. The narrator loves to dance. That's all fine and dandy. What wasn't so compelling was the repetitiveness of the second chapter. I felt the nostalgia and love the mother expressed about Germany was one-dimensional. It did not need excessive description, nor did it require a disproportionate number of examples of said trait. The writing portrayed the mother in a very negative light by the way she dominates the household and seemingly doesn't contribute anything but her heartfelt anger about all things not German. The author does a good job writing a realistic portrayal of complex characters, where there is still a bit of ambiguity. Nonetheless, I felt like the second chapter did not work for me, mostly due to its repetitive nature.The last chapter was a surprising find. There are few novels which I am deeply immersed into a story enough to keep turning the page. This last chapter was one of those moments. It does a good job combining themes from the last three chapters into the protagonist's interaction with Vadim, who has said, "We don't have sex, we only have children." He says this only to be sardonic, with unusual idiosyncrasies and beliefs, such as his translation of the golden rule: "Today I am unlucky. Tomorrow it is someone else's turn to be unlucky." I believe the people around you say more about you than anything else, and I believe Vadim's unique personality and peculiar wisdom spoke volumes about her character. The character accounts were splendid, and that's what made the last chapter worthwhile. Still, the rest of the novel was pretty dull, so if you can stomach it, you'll find a great story in the final section of the book.

Before I even began to engage with this text, I was drawn not only by the cover but captivated by the title because of its abstractness. What does a feather on the breath of God really mean? I kept getting conflicting mental images of fragility and power. Sigrid Nunez's novel is uniquely mesmerizing and had a firm hold of me throughout the entire read.The beauty in this novel is crafted in the character development and is divided up neatly into four sections. The novel opens up with an unnamed female protagonist who begins by painting the story of her hauntingly sad father, Chang, a Chinese-Panamanian immigrant. The reader is immensely aware of the loss of connection that the protagonist experiences with her father and makes you question if his own unwillingness to assimilate is the direct cause of the type of relationship he has with his daughters. The next section is starkly juxtaposed with the story of her mother, Christa, a German immigrant. She is ruthlessly opinionated and is clearly the one ruling their home. Nunez sheds light on the parents' unpromising and ominous marriage and how that ends up playing an important role in the novel. The story fluidly flows incorporating the domineering, selfish and emasculating Christa and the passive, quiet and absent Chan. It illustrates how these two people help shape the teenage years of our unnamed protagonist and how this spills over into her own adult life when she impetuously marries a Russian immigrant. No matter where you are in the novel, Nunez has a way of playing with your emotions and making you sympathize with every character.The last two sections are filled with love, lust, hope and heartache, but in a very satisfying way. The suspense of whether the protagonist's past will anchor her demise or will she be triumphant is subtly inserted throughout the novel by Nunez. Using the historical background of each character Nunez masterfully creates these poignant characters that not only become alive in this novel but she allows the reader to get lost in the complexity of their character and forces us to question whether fate is a result of our family's own shortcomings.The novel takes starts off slow and takes a little bit of time to pick up steam, but I promise you the ride is well worth it. With this novel being part biographical, Nunez exposes a vulnerability expressing how the protagonist challenges and overcomes the sins of her family. I enjoyed being lost in the novel and was thoroughly satisfied by how everything came together in the end. A must read that you will have a difficult time putting down.

In the past few weeks I have tracked down and read every book by Sigrid Nunez. I only wish there were more books out there by her