Birds Of Paradise centers around a nuclear family during the mid nineties property boom in Miami Florida. Brian the father is a lawyer for a high powered property real estate company and is a boring character other than the fact towards the end of the story he struggles with his moral reasoning when his company tries to buy land in a poor neighborhood which would send the long time tenants into the streets practically homeless. Avis the mother is a baker and the writers long descriptions of moist dulce de luché's and intricate pastries was lost on me as I am not a sweet lover. Avis is struggling to come to terms with the fact that five years ago her teenage daughter Felice ran away from home, being a mother this would be a tragic event but I found it hard to empathize with Avis's character. Then there is Felice who has been living on the Miami streets for five years but has managed to live on her looks as a model and has never turned to drugs or prostitution a hard to believe phenomena. Then there is Stanley the brother who makes a brief but inconsequential entrance at the end of the story as Felice's bolt hole when things finally get rough on the streets and she decides to make a re-acquaintance with her family.Altogether the character's were dull and just skimmed the surface of their personalities and the story never went anywhere, another snoozeville. I thought this book would be entertaining because it was set in Miami with the bonus that the main character was the producer of sumptuous pastries. In that I was not disappointed (the descriptions of the little French-based pastries throughout the book were knee-weakening), but what grabbed me more that the sometimes unbelievable characters, was that of the Haitian woman who was a next-door neighbour and who told her tragic story of life in Haiti. Not a piece of fabulous writing, but very well executed and paced story telling. Makes you pause to ponder child rearing, familial love and life in the tropics, including hurricanes. And you do feel empathy with the characters . . . whether you care to or not. Recommended.
What do You think about Fuga Dal Paradiso (2011)?
This was a pretty decent disfunctional family story.
—kanishka
