Books - Book Review - The Conjurer's Bird - Martin Davies

This book was the June 2007 selection of the International Book Group of New Orleans. A combination of historical fiction, ornithology, art and studies in nature, mystery, exploration, English class expectations, and love, this novel is a well-written page turner that is deeper than it first seems. And, some passages are just truly beautiful, in the way they are written and what Davies is describing.

The story alternates between Joseph Banks, a scientists who sails with Captain Cook and falls in love with Mary, and John Fitzgerald, a taxidermist who is just existing, until he is asked to hunt for Ulieta, a bird that once was part of Banks' collection. Besides having a different typeset, there is a different voice when the story is in the earlier century as opposed to the present. However, it isn't as pronounced as in Cloud Atlas.

Everyone in the group was entranced the most by Mary. She seems to be more a creature of the 21st century. She knows that she will never be a wife, but always someone's mistress and accepts this fact with such certainty. She is always careful to save up money and to make new contacts, so that when her present lover no longer needs her, she can leave with some money and a new "position". Despite being doomed to this life, she tries to find what happiness she can and go forward. She really doesn't feel sorry for herself. She is rather independent.

A new member observed that since she was raised outside the norms of her time, then as an adult, she would not behave as a typical English lady of the time. That's why she seemed so modern to all of us. Her drawing talent is wonderfully described. Everyone was sad that she wouldn't have received the same recognition as James Audubon or other naturalists artists. Someone mentioned that very few people can now make these drawings; most of the work is now done with photography.

Banks loved her, but in his own way. He is too selfish of a person to be able to commit to anyone.

When Banks goes to sea, Mary stays behind in the village.

She continued to draw by day despite the shortening light, and with
each line she felt she made the woods more real. Then by night, curled
under her sheets, she did the same forher memories of him, reaching for
them one by one by one, retouching the colour and lines of each
until they became sunlit portraits hanging in the dark.

Many members agreed that Fitzgerald was a perfectionist. He was very capable of writing a book about extinct and almost extinct birds, but when he realized that more birds would be extinct by the time the book was published and that updating the book would be a Sisyphean task, he became paralyzed and couldn't continue. However, searching for the bird livens him up and he starts to interact with his boarder. He also can examine a previous relationship and finally decide what to do about it.

These are his thoughts about our holding on to the past:

We live in a society that is strangely superstitious about written records.
Even while we're content to countenance the tearing down of rainforests
and the destruction of countless organisms each day, we hold on grimly
to our documents and papers. Few of us are immune to this. I keep notes
about dead birds for a book I won't write. Other people keep bills or bank
statements or the unsolicited menus of long-closed takeaways (take 0ut
restaurants). Our national archives bulge with ephemera that may one
day transform themselves into history.

We ended the discussion by mentioning the cover. Members showed up with three different covers. (See this posting for other versions.)