Lone Star Book Blog Tour: A Wall of Bright Dead Feathers by Babette Fraser Hale (Review and Giveaway)

“We never see the end of something when we’re in the middle of it.”

A Wall of Bright Dead Flowers by Babette Fraser Hale is a literary collection of seemingly unconnected short stories, giving readers the opportunity to read them out of sequence if they choose, without affecting the overall experience. With that said, however, the first few stories provide a pattern of drought, or drouth, in the rustic and often pastoral Texas landscape between Austin and Houston. While these first stories have a common theme of a lack of moisture in a modern context, A Skeptical Parrot, which falls almost in the middle and mostly set during the Civil War, serves as a sort of Volta, turning that motif away from such dry winds and cracked earth, perhaps not necessarily with cooling, life-giving rain but drenched in the blood of the fallen. With this transitional story occurring decades earlier before settling back into the relative present, the symbolism of transforming from arid to arable, both of which are uniquely ripe for living and dying, is interesting in its backward-to-forward flow, in terms of time frame.

As with many short story collections, the narratives start in medias res and stay there, jumping into the telling of ordinary lives without fanfare and mostly without much closure when each story simply freezes in a painted landscape that captures the imagination. With mostly no character arcs or structured plot progression, each short story is a glimpse into mundane and routine lives and relationships filled with choices and natural transformation, punctuated by moments of truth, loss, vulnerability, and life-changing junctures.

“People don’t like to make transformative changes in their lives. They don’t like to look ahead. Because if they do peer into the diminishing tunnel of the future, what they will see most clearly is the impassable wall of their own death at the end.”

Hale’s writing is extremely lyrical yet still ordinary and consumable, creating a flood of sing-song narration ensconced in basic prose, melding and undulating throughout. The stories can be enjoyed for their literal, surface interpretation or based on their symbolism and poetical undertones about both the miniature and monumental stages of life.

The pacing is naturally somewhat fast, with each story building against the backdrop of emotions that are either suppressed or unleashed, or both, allowing the reader to savor and absorb the scant characterization and story lines. If you are looking for quick stories that have substance and deeper meaning floating just beneath the surface, then A Wall of Bright Dead Feathers will definitely fit the bill. Each story can be appreciated a bit more if, upon completion, you give that visceral literary reaction a few minutes to bloom, mature, and filter through the cognitive process. Yes, they are all that thought provoking in their simplicity and depth.

“Surely the easiest, simplest thing is to love the person you spend your life with.”

Enter the giveaway below on or before April 2, 2021, for a chance to win some fabulous prizes.

I received a free copy of this book from Lone Star Book Blog Tours in exchange for my honest review.