A FEATHER ON THE BREATH OF GOD by Sigrid Nunez

There are about 30 different conversations I could have about A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez, which is quite perfect considering that part of the undertaking of this novel is to account for the complex identities of its characters, what it means to remember the past and how the act of trying to remember and account for the past and present has a sort of prismatic effect. For the sake of you, my readers, instead of veering off into all of these conversations, I want to just interrogate the meaning of the title of the book. The title does what it should and offers an excellent gateway into the themes of the novel, and I think will make you want to read this book.

Some logistics about the novel: we have an unnamed narrator, and she guides us through the story of her parents, her childhood, and then a bit of her adult life. The narrator's father, Carlos, is half-Chinese, half-Panamanian; he was born in Panama, lived in China for 10 years, and the moved to America. Her mother, Christa, is German, and grew up in Nazi Germany. They meet in Allied-occupied German after the war. Christa gets pregnant, they marry, and move to America. So, the least we can say is their family life and identity is complicated...And in this book is a beautiful rendering of the complexities of immigrant life, being part of a mixed family, and being second-generation. 

One of the ways these complexities manifest is in the idea of fate, and there are kind of two definitions, or two sides of a coin, that we get from the novel:

1. Fate as being pulled along against your will toward something you don't necessarily want 
2. Fate as an offering up of oneself to the will of something higher 

The first idea of fate we see through the lens of the narrator's parents, especially her mom, who vocalizes how much she does not like America, should have married someone in Germany and stayed there, especially since Carlos is extremely reserved, he works too much, drinks, gambles, and generally does not talk to his wife and children. He seems broken, but never voices his feelings or thoughts. The narrator notes that her mom would wonder how she got to where she was in the first place, and would 'place her head in her hands, truly bewildered; as if she had blown here like a feather' (72).

The second idea of fate comes from the narrator talking about the years she spent doing ballet. She is obsessed with the control it offers her over her body, with the idea that through ballet one can attain the perfect body, and she would challenge and push herself to attain this. The narrator says, 'To see how long I could go without solid food (up to five days) was a favorite game. How beautiful the hollowed gut, the jutting bones. To be light as a feather, light as a soul – "a feather on the breath of God" (Saint Hildegard)' (106).

With these two ideas of fate coexisting in the novel, what we are seeing is an inconclusiveness to the direction and choices of one's life. To commit fully to one idea or the other is harmful – surely Christa bears responsibility and has made choices that led her to where she is, and for the narrator to have continued on her path to be 'light as a feather' would mean she would eventually physically not exist at all. Christa and the narrator are trying to make sense of their lives, but they will never fully be able to, and both are chasing after visions of what life could be like. To give in to visions of what it means to be married, to move to a new country, to go back to a country, to make a family, to leave a family, to become your own person, to have a body that is yours. You can make a choice, but that choice is within the context of something else – you have a choice and you don't at the same time. So looking back on their lives, Christa and the narrator must begin to attempt to understand how their choices and their circumstances are woven together. 

Let me know if you have any thoughts about this. If you know of a book that is similar in theme and content, let me know! Once again, I might write more about this book because there is just so much to talk about, and I can't stop thinking about this book.