by
"Have dreams, must travel." The magnetic words that Maddie's lover sticks to her refrigerator door propels her into a journey to recapture her independence and free herself from the abusive fanaticism of her past. Skewed love and loss fuel Maddie's search for redemption. From Vancouver in the 1960s to present day Mexico, and a small island off the Pacific west coast, "Nine Birds Singing" takes the reader on an odyssey of self-discovery.
Thea sat up straight. “I had a dream, Mad. I think it was telling me something. Something important.”
“A dream about . . .?”
“Nine birds singing.”
“Exactly nine birds? Not ten or eight?”
“Nine,” Thea said. “I read that the Hebrews believed the number nine is a symbol for truth.” She rummaged around in the drawer and pulled out a copy of Vanity Fair, her glasses, and a hairbrush. “I was standing on a street corner right downtown. It was raining, cars flying by, kicking up waterfalls of rain. I heard birds singing and looked up. And there they were, strung out along the power line. Nine of them. And you know what killed me?”
“What, Thea?”
READ MORE“No one else heard them or saw them. It was dusk, not dark yet. The time my mother used to call owl light. All of us standing there waiting for the light to change and not one of them knew what was happening right above their heads. They all had on their going-home-mad-at-the-rain faces.”
“Birds singing in the rain,” said Maddie. “What kind of birds were they?”
Thea turned her head upside down and began brushing her hair. “I don’t know a damn thing about birds, Maddie. You know that.” She tugged on a knot. “I wanted them to be nightingales. Such a beautiful word. Nightingale. But of course, they couldn’t have been. They were just regular old birds. Dream birds.”
COLLAPSEDarcie Friesen Hossack wrote:"Edythe Anstey Hanen’s writing shines when she trains her eye on the landscape around her, from Vancouver to west coast island life to Mexico. Her detailed descriptions of the Mexican desert made me crave its colours, textures and tastes. It’s in these moments that Nine Birds Singing approaches poetry."
"There is a sixth sense to Hanen’s ability, as well, with an intuition that reaches the inner workings of the human heart. Time after time, the reader might stop on a single insight, and wonder over the way a few lines of English can expand into something greater than the sum of its words."
