THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411051056
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BRITT RENO
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
WINTER BIRDS
JIM GRIMSLEY
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 209 pp. $18.95.
As a child growing up in rural North Carolina, Jim Grimsley lived in constant fear of the most minor injury. A hemophiliac living in a volatile family, he daily faced the prospect of bleeding to death. But he survived, enduring his father's drunken abuse, his mother's helpless cries and countless nights of terror.
Grimsley, 38, began writing Winter Birds, his first novel, while still a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 1970s. The disturbing autobiographical tale was completed in 1984 and published abroad by a German press after six years of rejection by U.S. publishers.
When his novel didn't sell at home, Grimsley turned to writing plays at Atlanta's 7Stages Theater, where he won the 1988 Oppenheimer Award for best new American playwright and is now a writer-in-residence. Algonquin Books decided to publish Winter Birds after seeing the manuscript at the 1992 Frankfurt Book Fair.
In Winter Birds, Grimsley looks back on his 8-year-old self with an omniscient eye and a reassuring hand. Writing in the second person, he speaks to Danny Crell, his alter ego, in a gentle voice, trying to make sense of all of the turmoil in his life - and teaching Danny what Jim has taken decades to learn and understand. The tone is haunting, and the prose is riveting, deftly combining beauty with anguish.
Danny lives in a small circular house with his parents and four siblings. He spends a lot of time by the river trying to escape the cycles of abuse and circles of confusion in his life. There he fantasizes that his family is dead and that he is an orphan. A kind imaginary friend, the River Man, envelops him and keeps him safe from harm.
The Crell home has not been safe for years, not since father Bobjay ground up half his arm in a corn harvester. After the accident he began drinking heavily, mistrusting his wife and verbally and physically abusing her. He became a Jekyll-Hyde type, snapping in and out of drunken rages.
His long-suffering wife, Ellen, holds the house together. A loving mother, she will sacrifice anything for her children. She is the buffer between her abusive husband and her fragile children, calm and confident even as her voice cracks with fear.
During one of Bobjay's rages, Danny falls and bites his tongue. This simple childhood stumble proves nearly fatal. He bleeds for weeks in the hospital. The new blood pumped into his body seeps back out of his wound. Grimsley describes Danny's vague, depleted state with passive wonder, the corridor between life and death described as peaceful and nonthreatening. The accident underscores Danny's vulnerability and raises the family stakes. (The stakes were similarly raised for Grimsley, who, HIV-positive, may have contracted the virus through one such transfusion.)
Year after year the pendulum swings between nightmare and normalcy. A pattern is established: After the rage there is a calm. The family does the chores and makes idle conversation, all the while checking the windows for the father's return. There is no way out. They can only wait and prepare for the onset of the storm, locking doors, planning escape routes.
The storm arrives in a heart-pounding climax, deafening against the quiet of a snowy Thanksgiving night. Bobjay Crell hunts his family with a butcher's knife by moonlight. They cower helpless and unprotected like winter birds on barren branches. That night Danny is brought directly into his parents' world of abuse and humiliation, shocked out of his imaginary sanctuary forever.
After the terrifying incident, Danny asks his mother if they are going to stay. ``Where would we go?'' she replies. She is trapped in a prison of abuse, reduced to begging for mercy from her tormentor, just as her mother did before her. This legacy is passed on to Danny. His mother's distant gaze is ``carried like a cold stone in [his] brain.''
Grimsley has told an all-too-common tale of abuse with uncommon eloquence and endurance. His world is mesmerizing, blending icy horror and warm nostalgia. He shines a compassionate and understanding light on unforgivable memories of the past. Winter Birds is his catharsis - and ours. MEMO: Britt Reno is a photographer and writer who lives in Alexandria. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
DAVID ZEIGER
Jim Grimsley began writing the autobiographical ``Winter Birds''
while a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
in the 1970s.
by CNB