 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Birds Without Wings
By Louis de Bernieres
Secker & Warburg $49.95
 The English author's major follow-up to Captain Corelli's Mandolin looks to the roots of the previous war for its inspiration, being set in south-west Anatolia, in today's Turkey, where Muslims and Christians are said to have co-existed harmoniously until the Ottoman Empire clashed with the Allies and life changed forever.
With a phalanx of characters and events, the novel is a massive undertaking for both writer and reader, enthralling and confounding, sometimes on the same page, sacrificing character development in favour of historical detail, yet rarely failing to delight if savoured almost at random.
In a passage that explains the title, young Nico and Abdul - later to be renamed Karatuvak and Mehmetcik - are playing with small clay bird whistles moulded by Iskander the Potter: 'From time to time they became carried away, running about the hibiscus shrubs and wild pomegranates with the whistles in their mouths, flapping their arms, and wondering whether or not it might be possible to fly if only they flapped their arms enough. "Man is a bird without wings," Iskander told them, "and a bird is a man without sorrows."'
Alas, such appealing writing is diminished by a passing parade that remains too one-dimensional to totally captivate.
Surprisingly, given his great historical significance, the short chapters on Mustafa Kemal, aka Ataturk, that are interspersed throughout the book seem quite unnecessary.
'One of Destiny's men', he is 'born into a world where the seeds of Nazism have long been sewn and are waiting only for the dark rain... a world where law and order are fast collapsing, where looting has become more profitable than working, where the arts of peace are becoming more and more practicable, and personal tolerance makes less and less difference.'
De Bernieres charts the downfall of religious and cultural tolerance, writing superbly about the human impact of military conflict, notably 'the botched Allied attack on Gallipoli'.
'If you are a soldier, you are forced to think about God more than those who are at home... You look at a body and you see that it is not a man because the spirit has fled, and so the body does not fill you with grief.'
Too many ingredients seem to have been crammed into one of history's great melting pots, leaving this a novel best savoured for its writing than the story told, but a fine achievement nonetheless.
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