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  • A Feather on the Breath of God: A Novel
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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
145 global ratings
5 star
47%
4 star
27%
3 star
17%
2 star
7%
1 star
2%
A Feather on the Breath of God: A Novel

A Feather on the Breath of God: A Novel

bySigrid Nunez
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Top positive review

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Abigail Harden
5.0 out of 5 starsLovely short read!
Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2018
I love the way the author writes! It kept my attention and felt like an old friend was telling me a story. It is a great insight into life as a child of immigrants, both good and bad.
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6 people found this helpful

Top critical review

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Edward J. Bohls
3.0 out of 5 starsHalf & Half
Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2021
In telling this, her story, which seems half fact & half fiction, the narrator spends the first half of the book telling us of her parents, and then she spends the second telling us her own story. The first half seems more well observed, more reliable, than the second. By design, I suppose. Hers is an interesting voice, witty, weary. I liked her, but I don't know if she would like me.
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One person found this helpful

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From the United States

Alicia Trees
4.0 out of 5 stars honest and spare
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2001
Verified Purchase
There were many reasons I felt I had to read this book (my interest in writers even vaguely Latin American being one of them) and I am glad that I did.
My favorite part was definitely "Immigrant Love," the last section of the book, where the narrator has an affair with a Russian immigrant. "He has no curiosity at all about me. After all, I am only a woman; facts about me can't be very important." One of the most honest portrayals of the complexities of human relationships that I have ever read. As a dancer, I found "A Feather on the Breath of God," the third section, interesting and surprisingly foreign to my own experience, but none the less enriching to read. The novel's spare structure makes you feel the necessity of every word on the page.
10 people found this helpful
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dggwood
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2021
Verified Purchase
She has a German mother and Chinese father, so her last name is Chang. They grow up the a housing project with no money. But she has lots of dreams. Ballet stories shape her life.
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Tim W. Jollymore
4.0 out of 5 stars Not Featherweight but Light
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2013
The first question is: Is this book a novel?
Answer: No. It looks more like a fictionalized memoir.
The second question: Is it, then, worth reading.
Answer: Very much so for several different reasons.

I came to this book from Nunez’s third novel, The Last of Her Kind which was published about ten years after this debut book, A Feather on the Breath of God. The similarities between these two books, the stylistic variations, development of character, and, especially, movement (plot if you will) made reading A Feather much more engaging than would have been had I come upon it first – an accident of availability at my bookstore. Accidental or not, the order I read them in made comparison more fruitful.

So, A Feather isn’t a novel. What it is missing is character development. The characters are revealed but they are static. The Chinese-Panamanian father, the German mother, the adolescent ballerina, and the ill-fated Russophile teacher (the grown ballerina daughter) are characterized. But if you hope for transformation through hard experience or through the action of the novel, you might be disappointed.

Father is more stoic and less transparent that The Great Wall itself. Even to his children he is opaque, revealing his interior life only in the very few times his kids see him in a Chinese milieu like the one that begins the book. Otherwise, his is glum, taciturn, very hard working and grumpy. He lives and eats separately from his family. He works constantly, pausing only a day or two at the end in order to die. The narrator, his youngest daughter, notes no change in him.

Mother is better known, more accessible, but she stays the same throughout. It is as if her world-view had been imprinted on her at age 17 during a pedestrian journey from her 3rd Reich work camp to her home town at the end of WWII. She seems to see which no reason to deviate from that early imprint. She accepted her pregnancies, immigration, continued poverty and estranged marriage though not without complaint. She fought with her husband bitterly, but accepting and dogged stubbornness seemed to be her survival strategies.

Does this mean these two characters, so central to the narrator’s life, are dull, uninteresting. Not at all. Especially the mother is painted in admirable, loving strokes, as strong willed, creative, and, in a roughshod way, supportive. Father and mother are full portraits. They are, though, still-lives. The change of country (from China/Panama through Germany for the father, direct from Germany for the mother) barely seems to affect these two. Both reject the new country: father disappears into New York’s Chinatown each day; mother reviles all things American and yearns for home even after a trip back when she discovers there is no there there.

The narrator grows up during the movement of the novel, but like her parents, she seems to move through experiences without being much touched and certainly not transformed by them. The third section of the book concerns the narrator’s foray into ballet (something Nunez knows and loves to write about). During this time a well-to-do ballet class friend dies; another girl is raped. These are reported by the narrator as matter-of-factly as her mother might have told her a dress she tailored was now ironed. The events others suffer seem not to touch, or change, the narrator. She seems uncurious about them.

The same might be said about the later affair she engages in with one of her students, a Russian émigré. Far from being life-changing (perhaps affairs are not unless they destroy a marriage) the affair is simply entertainment – it seems – for a bored ESL teacher. It is only after she discovers that her lover had been a pimp that she ends their meetings. She knew he was a cheat, a liar, a thief, a brute (though not to her), a druggie, a chain smoker and more for as long as she knew him, but, my god, a pimp. That could not stand. So she sloughs him off. She seems like the Teflon-narrator, one who goes through the motions but is unaffected by them.

This static quality seems – from the 2.25 Nunez-books I have read – to be a hallmark of Nunez’s writing. Georgette George, the narrator of The Last of Her Kind is similarly “untouchable” and seemingly unchanged by the twists and turns of life. The affairs, for example, (and GG’s marriages as well) show notable similarities between the books: the lovers are of impossibly different classes from the narrator, and reveal a deep-seated crass cynicism of the narrator. GG has no problem “dating” her good friend’s widower-father. After all, her friend is in prison for life. She uses and rues her actions only when she finds he has been used. The same is true of A Feather’s narrator. The affair is okay as long as she is using him. To use a man and toss him off is one thing. Not to learn a thing thereby is quite another.

The books develop similar themes (The Last more completely to be sure): the difficulties of rising from poor to middle class, rape, affairs, family history, the effects on a life of literature, ballet, working and living in New York City. It is wonderful to witness Nunez’s development of these themes in stories written ten years apart. The older Nunez is wiser, defter, more highly condensed. Still the younger book was a rite of passage. A Feather on the Breath of God is well worth the short read that it presents.
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S.H.
4.0 out of 5 stars Sad and Devastating
Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2011
Heartbreak, heartbreak, and even more heartbreak. A ballerina twirls her way through the heartbreaks of her life: an absent father, a nostalgic, aggressive mother, and a sordid, unhealthy affair with a Russian immigrant. Sigrid Nunez's novel, A Feather on the Breath of God, tells the story of a young girl struggling with her multicultural background (having a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother) and the growing pains of a broken family and home. Throughout the book, she strives to battle cultural and language barriers to find a connection to both her parents and to have a relationship with her immigrant lover.

Though the beginning of Nunez's novel may seem tedious, the end is worth the wait. The journey it takes to get through this novel is worth the end destination that left me full of sympathy for the narrator. It is important for the end to learn about the "unbearably few facts" about Chang, the long-winded story of Christa, and the "escape" ballet gave her. So, don't let the first three parts of the novel discourage you because the buildup of the first three parts is crucial for a meaningful end result. The last chapter ties the whole story together. The narrator explains how her affair with the Russian immigrant, Vadim, "holds some answers for me." The ending brings everything full circle and you can find the answer to why it was necessary to undergo reading the first three sections of the book. There is finally insight into the development and formation of the narrator, which her father, her mother, and ballet play integral parts. So, if you do not get through the first three parts, the emotional depth of the book will not be as poignant or as resounding.

It is easy to connect to the narrator because of the sympathy that you initially feel for someone that lives through her experience. I couldn't help but root for her and hope she makes the right choices to be happy. But, as the story progresses, I saw how much of her past trauma and her broken childhood seeps into her adult life and how much it really impacts her. As a reader, I felt even more sorrow for what the narrator goes through as an adult and how damaged she is as a person. Although the first three parts seemed a little dragged on, I did not abandon the narrator or her story. What I eventually realized is how much the beginning and the middle parts builds up to the end, creating a heartbreaking story that moved me.
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Seung Lee
4.0 out of 5 stars Feather on the breath of god
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2011
Deception is not always a bad thing. I've always thought being deceived would cause displeasure, but Feather of the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez is a deception of pleasure. The book starts off with amazingly excruciating detail. This detail in the start tended to lose me at times, but Nunez kicks things up a notch towards the end of the read. This introduction of excruciating detail easily redeems itself by greatly enriching the already intense ending of the book. I truly understood the meaning of the first half, by completing the book. This deception of an excruciatingly detailed book, into an action packed story is great.
In the majority first of the novel, the narrator divides up her childhood into three parts: memories of her father, mother, and herself. Her father did not have much affection toward the family, leaving the narrator with very little memories. The starvation of memories changes her life, leaving her with the ever remaining mystery of her father. It ends up damaging her life, and helps contribute to her corruption. On the other side, her over-zealous Russian mother dominates the family, leaving the narrator too many memories. This imbalanced and corrupted family ends up corrupting the narrator as well. The flood of memories immersed the reader into the narrator's life and explains her decisions in the second half. At first read this part is very drawn out, losing my interest constantly. Luckily the second half is a redemption of this detail.
In the second half, the story is about the reader into her life as an adult, which is fully understood from her corrupt childhood. She dates a Russian immigrant with a family. They connect with each other well, but she ends up leaving him. This exotic behavior sprouts from her exotic childhood. She ends up ruining the family of the man causing fights between the man and his wife. The daughter of the immigrant swears to leave for college as soon as possible to escape her life. The man's family seems to be taking the same course as her family. This parallel of her family and the family she ruins enhances the reading by displaying the brilliance of Nunez.
The novel reveals it's intelligence towards the end. This strategy to draw out the beginning worked really well to deceive me. I didn't appreciate this drawn out excruciating detail at first, but now after reading the whole thing I've taken the beginning in a new light and interest. Sigrid Nunez has done a good job with this deception and truly reveals her talent. Do not underestimate Nunez.
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