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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 2006, 240 pages
Paperback:
May 2007, 244 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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The story of Noah's Ark and the flood, as narrated by a Crow who is deeply suspicious - and skeptical - about Mankind.
From the moment that he looks down on the ancient gray head of Noah, who is swinging his stone axe, the narrating crow in this unique and remarkable epic knows that these creators called Man are trouble. He senses, too, that the natural order of things is about to change.
At a time when so many of us are searching for meaning, Layne Maheu’s debut novel lingers in a masterfully rendered ancient world just long enough to ponder our fears of disaster and to watch as humanity struggles to survive, to understand, and finally to prevail.
Recalling both the magical imagination of Richard Adams’s Watership Down and the spiritual richness of Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, Song of the Crow is a soaring debut.
Song of the Crow
Prologue
A big black bird is making the most gawdawful racket, for no
apparent reason, caw caw caw!!! his entire body bouncing upward with each
caw. Perhaps he is singing.
—Ben Jacklet, "Crow Mysteries"
Happy Noah, singing Noah, eager to do God’s bidding without a
single drop from the sky. There’s the story of his miraculous birth, that he
came into the world already circumcised, with a full head of hair all long and
silver and already combed, and at the age of three could stand and deliver
speeches on the virtues of his all-powerful moral authority in the sky. But if
it were true, that he was born with the pale signs of Misfortune already
sprouting from his head, he wouldn’t boast, not even at the age of three,
because it is a wellspring of sadness that grows there, and to carry it around
with you always is a burden no one would wish for.
How would I know? And why was I summoned to keep an eye on this...
A meditation on man's place in the universe; think Jonathan Livingston Seagull meets The Red Tent, with shades of Watership Down...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Phil Bevis, Arundel Books
A cross between the Magical Realism of Garcia Marquez, Ted Hughes, and Roger Tory Petersen, Song of the Crow is an astounding first novel. I believe that this book marks the start of a great literary career. Although the concept of a novel about crows may seem odd, I think that this book will be one of the great handsells of 2006….Our #1 new literary pick for 2006. Robert Hicks, author of The Widow of the South
Beautifully written and artfully imagined.When asked why he wrote Song of the Crow, Layne Maheu replies, "One of my imaginary selves has always been a biologist. Perhaps in a former lifetime I was a nineteenth century naturalist. The closest I’d ever come to realizing that fantasy, though, is by bird watching. Quickly I found that merely seeing and identifying bird species was only a part of it. I was interested in bird behavior. So, I looked over the bookstore shelves...
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