An Explanation of the Birds, António Lobo Antunes, 1981. Translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith, 1991.
Antunes is one of my favorite authors. He recently passed away but he was still writing and publishing. His writing style over the past many years has been a bit different than that of the earlier years but still very impressive and with many similarities. He could be classified as experimental with his multiple narrative voices, mixed tenses, and overlapping of past, present and future. He is a challenging read but every book of his that I have read has been worth the challenge. An Explanation of the Birds from the early 80’s is no different except that I got a radical pleasure from this one, much more so than his other great novels.
The main character, Rui S., is a political historian who teaches at university. He is dissatisfied with his life so he skips a planned lecture and takes his wife to a small village for a weekend so he can divorce her. That is the primary action of the book but as in any Antunes novel there is a whole lot more going on. The narrative involves several voices attempting to explain Rui’s suicide. One is left with the task of evaluating Rui’s characteristics from the varying but sometimes overlapping eyewitness accounts. Antunes handles this so deftly and in the decoding process I was left with extreme empathy for his protagonist.
Rui has spent his life trying to get an explanation of the birds, from early in his childhood up until his death. Birds occur frequently throughout the novel and provide much information about Rui and his development. I loved this recurring theme, the foreshadowing within certain episodes, and how Rui’s life and the life of birds mirror each other. A great cornerstone for this narrative.
Overall, a beautiful read concerning one man’s search for understanding and direction.
How An Explanation of the Birds informs my writing.
Oh my God! If I could even approach the mastery of Antunes I’d be content but I’m afraid I lack the chops to come even close. Still, I try to write in this experimental style, particularly with my novel-in-progress. An Explanation of the Birdswas a wonderful learning experience for me as far as writing goes, specifically accessing internal thoughts and spilling them on the page. So good!
One theme that runs through the novel is Rui’s father’s obsession with collecting butterflies. Antunes describes this in episodic revelations that taken as a whole reveal the cruelty inherent in the father, not just towards the butterflies but to other lives around him, specifically Rui. It is incredible writing and such a great way to characterize cruel behavior. Cruelty is a theme which runs through my novel too and it was good to see Antunes’ technique for addressing this issue.
