A Bird's Eye
Cary Fagan
Imprint: House of Anansi / Format: Hardcover / publication date: August 2013 / 183 pages / ISBN: 978-1-77089310-8 / Price: $19.95
Growing up in a Jewish neighbourhood in the 1930s in Toronto, young Benjamin Kleeman falls in love, first with Corrine Foster and then with magic.
Hiding his new passions from his parents — the long-suffering Bella, an Italian immigrant, and Jacob, a talented but failed inventor of elaborate mechanical devices — Benjamin begins apprenticeships in magic and life itself, learning along the way that things are often more complicated than they seem.
With tenderness, humour, and wonder, Cary Fagan brings a gifted young man's rise to a peculiar kind of stardom, wonderfully alive.
Finalist for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize
An Amazon.ca. Best Book of the Year
“Fagan does a fabulous job of bringing the city to life. Pure and utter magic.”
— National Post“A tiny gem, entertaining, funny and scrumptiously written.”
— Toronto Star“Cary Fagan's tender new novel looks like a small book, but do not be deceived. It is impossibly rich ... big enough for me to get completely lost in inside. Fagan's prose is as sweet and brusque as a first kiss. A Bird's Eye consumed me.”
— Globe & Mail“A captivating coming-of-age story. Lovingly rendered ... his finest book yet.”
— Canadian Jewish News“A strong setting, imaginative characterization, and a captivating narrative voice ... moving, satisfying.” — Quill & Quire
“Refreshing. The pages get turned faster and faster.” — Winnipeg Free Press
“Characters like Hannah, Benjamin's unmarried aunt, who feels like a prisoner in the new world and longs to return to Eastern Europe, and his Uncle Hayim, a Duddy Kravitz eye-on-the-main-chance type, give the novel its richness, its layers of grown-up complexity. A Bird's Eye is written exactly to the scale it should be.”
— Montreal Gazette