Curious, cocky, and sociable, the wild rainbow lorikeets who daily wandered into my Sydney flat, exploring the lianas (wires) under the computer desk and the localised rain in the shower, and who companionably expected to be served apples from the fruit bowl in the kitchen, now belong to my fondest memories of Australia. When I encountered a Teaser Tuesday entry excerpted from Elsewhere In The Land Of Parrots by Jim Paul, I pounced at the chance of enjoying a literary encounter with relations of these astonishing creatures. I cannot judge the accuracy of the author’s information about cherry-headed conures (also known as the red-masked parakeet), but as presented, it vividly engaged both my intellect and my emotions. I returned from my fictional foray into the South American tropics with misty eyes and a big, silly grin.
Shortly after arriving in Ecuador, graduate student Fern Melartin discovers she has been fooled. Instead of doing fieldwork on the near-extinct Aratinga erythrogenys in the mangrove swamps of the Guayas estuary, she has been conned into looking after caged animals in a private zoo owned by a womanizer who, she comes to suspect, conducts an illegal trade in threatened species. With no money left to pursue her dissertation topic elsewhere and no local contacts she can turn to for help, her career in tropical ecology is about to founder before it has even started.
In his work, deconstructionist poet David Huntington attempts to free language of its cage. But his own introverted life is tightly circumscribed by neuroses that make even a trip to the other side of his home town, San Francisco (USA), a panic-inducing prospect. The unexpected gift of a parrot from his father and a generous grant for his poetry crack open his hermit-like existence. While the accolades for his work are very welcome indeed, the loud, demanding parrot grates on his nerves until, one day, he throws it out the window. But there is no peace in the abrupt silence, only an unnerving feeling that the bird is calling to David to follow.
Somewhere in Ecuador, flocks of cherry-headed conures still fly free like their feral counterparts of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. Are their raucous calls signals, and if so, what do they signify? Fern and David’s separate quests to find out may lead in the same direction – if they can muster the courage to break the chains of safety.
I did not know what to expect when I opened Elsewhere In The Land Of Parrots, and perhaps that is one reason I was charmed. In its own, gentle way the story is unpredictable, its simple plot full of interest. It sets its own rules, taking note of both literary fiction and genre romance but acknowledging no need to be bound by the conventions of either. Quietly humorous, straightforwardly told, and earnest in a way that these days seems to be considered old-fashioned, Elsewhere In The Land Of Parrots is an entirely character-driven story about finding the courage to explore and communicate with the world beyond one’s own windows.
The catalysts and facilitators for this are the parrots – or rather, parakeets – of the novel’s title: the cherry-headed conure, or Aratinga erythrogenys. Everything in the novel relates back to and references these birds, their place in the world, their interactions with humans, and, through them, human interaction with nature. The wonder is that despite this intense focus on one subject the novel calmly avoids the pitfalls of preachiness and affected quirkiness. Still, I suspect the novel will resonate better with those who are willing to discover the topic along with the characters than with readers who simply wants to get on with the story.
Also, while the easy sincerity with which moments of awe or emotion are handled prevents things from tipping over into sentimentality, the ending is arguably an exception. I accepted the outcome in the spirit it was offered – as an organic and inevitable progression – but felt the last chapter rushed developments along in a manner that fit awkwardly with the thoughtful tenor of the rest of the narrative. This is an instance where I think an epilogue would have served the overall tone of the story better.
Now, on to Fern and David, the protagonists, whose stories are told in alternating chapters until their paths intersect late in the book. In romances, the meeting of the heroine and hero marks the beginning of the story. In literary fiction, more often than not, male-female relationships are doomed to expire on a gloomy note. The protagonists of Elsewhere In The Land Of Parrots, however, are not even aware of each other’s existence for most of the book, although the plot clearly builds up to some culminating event to do with their shared passion for aratingas.
David names his noisily aggressive, incomprehensible parrot Little Wittgenstein after the philosopher who “had argued that language had no meaning.” David has made a living, supplemented by teaching, writing poetry that is based on this theory, and when it earns him a literary prize that will make him financially independent for several years it reinforces his belief that “any meaning would have reflected an outmoded way of thinking”. His self-important pride in the obscurity of his X poetry is gently satirised: alongside a tongue-in-cheek mockery of the literary avant-garde, David’s efforts to write verse that does not succumb to rational structures controlled by meaning is pointedly contrasted with his painstakingly regulated, anxiously sheltered existence. This, however, is the world that Little Wittgenstein challenges. As David’s irritation at the parrot turns to regret and concern at its disappearance, and as his investigations little by little pull him out of his shell, he grows from someone I was not certain I liked into a layered character who won my fascination and empathy with his quailing steps to reach out and communicate with a world from which he has fearfully closed himself off. David’s eccentricity hides an intensity and a patience that made his passage from anxious recluse to spontaneous traveller both touching and surprisingly believable to me.
While David’s cage is of the mind, the preoccupations that keep Fern captive are more concerned with the practical. She is literally stuck, whether in the zoo or, when the tidal flows of the river she has to navigate in her boat turn against her, in knee-deep mud. Outwardly more enterprising than David, she becomes deprived of her independence and freedom to act when her naivety lands her in an impossible situation and she does not know how to assert herself for fear of losing everything she has worked for. She sympathises with the tiger she watches pacing behind its bars, its eyes and demeanour betraying a mind that remains free and wild, always alert for that one moment that could mean escape. Her own moment to break free comes after she has worked to overcome language barriers and made a connection that means the difference between hope and failure. A conventional character when compared to David, she comes into her own when her passion for her research subject is put to the test. Although I enjoyed reading about her, I already find my grip on her personality slipping. Nevertheless, for most of the novel hers is the more adventurous, expansive setting (described with a dedication that sprouted a steamy, fragrant, and intensely alive tropical jungle around my reading chair), and even when she gets tangled up in obstacles there is a physicality about her that provides stimulating contrast to the introverted mood and narrow, cautious confines of David’s world.
Elsewhere In The Land Of Parrots belongs to the sort of fiction that educates even as it entertains. Saying that, however, seems to reduce this uplifting novel to much less than it is: on one level, a witty conversation about nature, about interconnectedness, about freedom; on another, a lovely flight of imagination that invites the reader to open a window to somewhere else and do more than dream.
Excerpt
(Harcourt Books hardcover, 2003, page 124-5):
“Still, by the time he arrived where he thought he was going, he wasn’t sure anymore. Montgomery, a broad city street downtown, here seemed like a mountain trail. It grew narrower and more crooked, carved into the promontory crowned with Coit Tower. The land on his right dropped away, and he could see the wharves down there, small toothy projections into the blue bay. Then the street concluded in a cul-de-sac, where there was a railing, from which David looked down over the tops of trees. They looked like an odd collection of trees to him, palms and regular trees and the occasional red-leafed one, all in a sloping thicket.
And then, before he was ready for them, before he had stood at the top for even a minute, the parrots appeared. David heard a cry answered by a clamor that sounded like a troop of chimps in the trees, and at that moment a dozen or so of the birds flew out of the thicket toward him. They were bright green, and the flock banked together in formation in the sunlight. Their orangish underwings flashed in unison as they headed north toward Fisherman’s Wharf. Even at that distance, with no special training as a birder, David recognized them. They were Little Wittgenstein birds, cherry-headed conures.
The sight made David so excited he shouted, ‘Wait!’ at the retreating flock.”
