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    Imperfect Birds: A Novel
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    Imperfect Birds: A Novel
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    Imperfect Birds: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Imperfect Birds: A Novel

    Written by Anne Lamott

    Narrated by Susan Denaker

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Look out for Anne's latest book, Hallelujah Anyway, on sale now.

    A powerful and redemptive novel of love and family, from the author of the bestselling Blue Shoe, Grace (Eventually), and Operating Instructions.

    Rosie Ferguson is seventeen and ready to enjoy the summer before her senior year of high school. She's intelligent-she aced AP physics; athletic-a former state-ranked tennis doubles champion; and beautiful. She is, in short, everything her mother, Elizabeth, hoped she could be. The family's move to Landsdale, with stepfather James in tow, hadn't been as bumpy as Elizabeth feared.

    But as the school year draws to a close, there are disturbing signs that the life Rosie claims to be leading is a sham, and that Elizabeth's hopes for her daughter to remain immune from the pull of the darker impulses of drugs and alcohol are dashed. Slowly and against their will, Elizabeth and James are forced to confront the fact that Rosie has been lying to them-and that her deceptions will have profound consequences.

    This is Anne Lamott's most honest and heartrending novel yet, exploring our human quest for connection and salvation as it reveals the traps that can befall all of us.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 6, 2010
    ISBN9781101154847
    Unavailable
    Imperfect Birds: A Novel
    Author

    Anne Lamott

    Anne Lamott is the author of seven novels and nine works of nonfiction, and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She has been a book reviewer for Mademoiselle, a restaurant critic for California magazine, and a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and Salon. Anne Lamott lives in northern California.

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    Reviews for Imperfect Birds

    3/5

    165 ratings28 reviews

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    • 3/5
      not a great book, yet an important book to read! Kids/drugs/parents.
    • 3/5
      Seems I much prefer her memoirs. Some passages here were beautiful, but they were the ones that echoed things I've read in her essays
    • 3/5
      I have never previously read any of Lamott's fiction, although I am a fan of her non-fiction work (particularly Bird by Bird, which I think is one of the very best books about writing available and incidentally one of the wisest books about life as well). I didn't realize until I had started this novel that it is actually the last book in a trilogy, and perhaps it was a disadvantage to have started from the wrong end of things, so to speak. If I had read the earlier novels and evolved an interest in the characters from the beginning of their various stories, I might have found them less impenetrable. Lamott's narrative style is a bit disjointed at times, but there are some really fine passages in which the raw, scouring effects of love and grief are beautifully expressed. I thought the last third of the book, which alternates descriptions of the teenage Rosie's state of mind as she lives through a wilderness rehab program with descriptions of her family and friends trying on their own both to make sense of her situation and face up to their own culpability in it, was particularly well-executed and moving.
    • 2/5
      I had a very hard time completing Imperfect Birds, the story of recovering alcoholic Elizabeth and her blooming addict daughter, Rosie. First, I hated Rosie for being such a selfish, stupid teenage bitch. Then I hated her mother for not suspecting or questioning her daughter enough -- something she as a former addict should have known to do. The tedious lists of the drugs Rosie takes, the lists of good and bad days for both characters, became boring and did not constitute a plot. I probably would have put this down in frustration if I hadn't been listening to the audiobook on my daily commute. But I finally finished and got some small satisfaction from the ending. I really loved Bird by Bird, Lamott's frighteningly honest book about writing, but this is the second novel of hers I've read, and I found them both mediocre. Perhaps she is one of those people who actually fulfill the old adage (which I don't agree with generally), that those who can't do, teach.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book, and Anne Lamott is an incredible writer. It's a very honest look at a mother-daughter relationship, and the honesty with which both sides are told will both break your hear yet make you uncomfortable. Meant to address the very real issue of teenage drugs, I'd recommend this for every parent. I loved the book up until the last few chapters which sort of digressed into a brochure for a recommended way of treating teenage drug use.
    • 3/5
      The slow build of the plot was well-executed, although it made for a slow read at times. But this book walked the line of being unpleasant to read, and the characters walked the line of being unsympathetic. Maybe it would have worked better for me if I had read the two earlier books about these characters, and was more invested in them.
    • 3/5
      Excellent story that develops characters with some depth by the end of the book. And because of the personal and family themes and drama, it helps to think about common issues.

      Audio edition comment: character "voices" are difficult to distinguish, get lost at times and somewhat grating, shrill voice in places.
    • 3/5
      I know I'm not exactly an Eng Lit graduate, and so you have to read my comments as the ramblings of an uneducated Australian buffoon. So....Woah! Is America really like this? Families that do urine tests on their 17 year old daughter to check for drugs...and a 17 yo daughter who seems to accept this as a reasonable thing to do AND sees these tests partly as a sign of how much her parents love her? Lamott is clearly writing about a world that is foreign to me on so many levels, that I just couldn't relate to this story at all. Sure, I could understand and connect with the basic story line of "my children are doing things that really worry me; what do I do about it?", but to me Lamott didn't get to the heart of this situation. I just don't think she's a writer who is able to get to the deeper elements of human relations or even paint a good picture of a place and its society. I'm not saying she's lousy (I am giving this 3 stars), just the she's only just another hard-working, well intentioned author with a good basic idea that fails to achieve its potential. On the other hand there is a possibility that I'm a lousy parent who let his kids get away with anything and who is confronted by a story in which the parents do the right thing by intervening in their teenagers' lives.'Tough love", I think Americans call it, and they'd say not being tough is not being loving. Oh well, it's too late now.
    • 3/5
      I have never previously read any of Lamott's fiction, although I am a fan of her non-fiction work (particularly Bird by Bird, which I think is one of the very best books about writing available and incidentally one of the wisest books about life as well). I didn't realize until I had started this novel that it is actually the last book in a trilogy, and perhaps it was a disadvantage to have started from the wrong end of things, so to speak. If I had read the earlier novels and evolved an interest in the characters from the beginning of their various stories, I might have found them less impenetrable. Lamott's narrative style is a bit disjointed at times, but there are some really fine passages in which the raw, scouring effects of love and grief are beautifully expressed. I thought the last third of the book, which alternates descriptions of the teenage Rosie's state of mind as she lives through a wilderness rehab program with descriptions of her family and friends trying on their own both to make sense of her situation and face up to their own culpability in it, was particularly well-executed and moving.
    • 3/5
      Imperfect Birds was a difficult book to read, maybe because the main characters, Elizabeth and Rosie, were in such downward spirals in much of the book. Rosie portrays herself as a typical teenager in her own of Lawnsdale, while, in fact, she is doing many different kinds of drugs, is sexually active, and is an accomplished liar and con artist - especially to her parents. Rosie's mother Elizabeth barely maintains her own equilibrium mentally and emotionally while struggling to "protect" her daughter from the world; she tiptoes through life, afraid to confront and discipline Rosie. James, Elizabeth's husband, tries to deal with both Elizabeth and his stepdaughter Rosie.Friends of Elizabeth and James are Rae, an activist/hippie/spiritualist who gives Elizabeth strength, and Lank, a high schoolteacher who gives them advice about teens, see too perfect.This was unlike other Lamott books in that she usually has something uplifting and humorous to say, without necessarily always having happy endings. I thought this book was depressing throughout and therefore a bit difficult to read.
    • 4/5
      It's been a while since I've read any of Lamott's fiction, so I kind of forgot the Elizabeth/Rosie storyline. But the book works well on it's own anyway. Slow start, but strong finish. Lamott's writing is strong, as always.
    • 4/5
      I wasn't sure what to think of this book initially. The challenges faced by Elizabeth Ferguson are so much different than those I face myself. Elizabeth is a recovering alcoholic who lost her first husband and is struggling to raise her teenage daughter Rosie, a drug user herself, with the help of her new husband James. I cringed each time Elizabeth let Rosie talk her way out of consequences for irresponsible behaviors, and this happened a lot. But it was just as I was feeling weary from these repeated episodes that I realized that Lamott had made me feel a little of what Elizabeth must be feeling. I found myself thinking about these characters throughout the day, and trying to figure out how I would handle such situations when my kids become teenagers. This is not a book that I can describe as enjoyable, but I found it well-written and insightful.
    • 2/5
      Rosie is entering her senior year of high school carrying her parents hopes for a scholarship driven college career. She's been secretly overstepping typical behavior boundaries leaving clues that are picked up by everyone but her mother for a painfully long time. This, to me, was the best section of the novel. I thought the author accurately captured the angst of the teen rebel and the mania of a dangerous drug user.I was not so impressed with the last part of the novel--the healing, so to speak. It seemed to me the author ran out of gas. I expected more.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the book as a possible insight into teenagers today. I do not have kids but I do live in the Bay Area so I liked the local flavor. Unfortunately, I agree with some of the other reviewers that the book was too one sided in its portrait of the kids. Where were the good ones? I agree that the ending was too neat. I also had problems with Elizabeth and her selfishness as it related to her husband's work and her lack therof. The reason I gave the book 3 stars is that it held my interest, was entertaining, and I had just heard the author at a book reading. I would consider reading Anne Lamott in the future but have no great desire to read her other fiction. I have read some of her non-fiction.
    • 4/5
      Though this book starts out slow and is rather hard to sink into, eventually the story captured me and carried me along. Watching as Rosie slowly devolves in front of her parents' eyes is poignant and disturbing, and Lamott tells the story in lyrical prose. I did enjoy this book for its treatment of the mother-daughter relationship and the peek inside the mind of an addict. A good read once it grips you but definitely a slow starter.
    • 3/5
      Thankfully, I have parented seven children through those rough years without having my children get caught up in the net of substance abuse. I felt that the author did a good job of highlighting some of the areas where parents and children fall off the rails, although the quick fix at the end was, sadly, not realistic. I listened to audio version read by Susan Denaker.
    • 4/5
      I was scared to read this book. I've read Lamott's non-fiction and been impressed. I found myself worried that I wouldn't find her fiction as compelling.I shouldn't have worried. I recognized Lamott's voice even in a completely different genre. And the story grabbed me. It's more of a psychological tale, but it kept me turning the pages. It also gave me a window into teenagers, and it made me very grateful that my daughter leads a less exciting life!Don't expect a formulaic, feel-good story. But enjoy and reflect. I know I did.
    • 4/5
      Any folks whose families are grappling with the harrowing effects of drug abuse must read Lamott's insightful novel. Without being preachy, she underscores the importance of tough love. Removing safety nets and allowing a loved one who is addicted to drugs to hit rock bottom is an excruciating but critical step toward recovery. Lamott's book isn't perfect. For me, the main character's downward spiral seemed a bit tame and, at times, contrived. But "Imperfect Birds" is generally well-written and delivers an important message.
    • 1/5
      I like Anne Lamott, although I haven't read her in several years. I couldn't even finish this book - I picked it up several times but when I chose to quit, it was a big relief. I found it very disjointed - there seemed to be no real voice but rather an omniscient third person narrator and the point of view jumped all around. In addition, I learned way more than I wanted to know about the sexual mores of 15 year old girls.
    • 4/5
      Honest and heart-wrenching. First 3/4 of the book deals with a 17 yr. old's downward spiral into drug use while attempting to maintain an "all-together" exterior and her parents efforts to "believe" that everything was OK. While it felt slow in parts, it created a situation where the last 1/4 of the book became believable and real. Must read for anyone who has dealt with a teenage and drug abuse and all the pain and fear that comes with it.
    • 1/5
      Oh, the trials and tribulations of the privileged in Marin County - how difficult their Birkenstock-wearing lives, how trite their wise women, how much they over-react.Yes, drug and alcohol abuse among teens can be deadly, but not every beer drunk is a step on the road to hell nor does it require a visit to freakin' rehab. Yes, teenagers lie and are difficult to live with - this isn't a bolt from the blue and doesn't necessitate almost 300 pages of whinging. Man, it's really damned difficult to keep the house clean and keep the garden up while preparing groovily organic meals that are vegan at least five days a week - it's a good thing to have a trust fund so you don't have to have an actual job. My heart is breaking for you that your husband writes essays for NPR and isn't at your beck and call every second of the day - what a strain on your marriage.I hated this. This book barfs out every stereotype of people in the Bay Area that I loathe (and I live here). Lamott trots out every cliche of the overbred, over-privileged guilty white liberal that you can imagine and in doing so makes her story pointless.I hated this.Thanks, anyway, to the publisher for the advance copy.
    • 1/5
      In my part of the world, Anne Lamott is best known for her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, a much-loved book of advice and inspiration for writers. Her new novel, Imperfect Birds, will do nothing to extend that reputation, however.The novel fuses the perspectives of Elizabeth, a badly broken middle-aged woman, and Rosie, Elizabeth's seventeen-year-old daughter. Petted and privileged Rosie has an addiction problem: to her mind, there is nothing that can't be solved by getting drunk, high, wired, f'd up, disconnected. The story follows Rosie through the summer and into her senior year, where her inability to control her drug use and her persistent manipulation of her parents spiral toward an inevitable outcome.Elizabeth's back story is nothing but struggle. A widow, though now remarried, she was raised by parents whose laissez-faire attitudes enabled Elizabeth's own addictions. Elizabeth fears she will transmit this legacy to her dazzling daughter, and so shuffles through the text in abject fear of her spoiled, abusive, immature child, thus realizing exactly her fears. She also ignores the advice of the many professionals who surround her, thereby confining herself to a frighteningly narrow range of options and choices.The major problem with this novel is its excessive drama. The tone is histrionic from the opening pages and has nowhere to develop as the plot wincingly advances. Readers encounter no teens who are not smoking, drinking, using drugs, playing at sex, experiencing profound depression and alienation. If this text truly reflects Lamott's perceptions, then she sees a much bleaker world than most people do. If the author is trying to make a commentary on the anomie inherent in the over-developed capitalist economy, she succeeds to a degree; but generally the novel is far too inward-focused to make such broad claims.Another problem is the characters. Not one of them is attractive, and few offer identification for the reader. Most of the supporting cast is minimally drawn, including the several predictably quirky, offbeat, New Age-spiritualism caricatures. Rather than characters, Lamott gives us types — an unsatisfying choice. Again, if the author were inviting us to read the text as satire or social critique, this choice might be defensible; but the novel is far too earnest and emotionally overblown to invite such a reading.One major missing element is that there is little beautiful prose to relish. Lamott has a way with an unexpected metaphor, but these turns are infrequent and sometimes feel quite cumbersome. There is none of the lilt or light that readers of Lamott's earlier work might expect here. Rather, the text is heavy handed: clunky and overwritten, melodramatic and dull.This is not a novel I would expect from an experienced writer. If we had only the chapters from Rosie's point of view, this book would read like some of the weakest of contemporary YA fiction. The conflicts are overly telegraphic and violate again and again and again the advice against telling the reader what the characters think, feel, and want. There is no showing, no ambiguity, to this writing, and nothing but inevitability to this plot. Disappointing.
    • 3/5
      “...please don’t let Rosie get [...] any neck tattoos; or AIDS. Also, help her not fry her mind. Oh, one more tiny thing: Could you please help keep her alive, and not have a spinal cord injury...”So prays Elizabeth, a stay-at-home mom and recovering alcoholic, to a god she’s not sure she believes in. She worries 24/7 about Rosie, her 17-year-old daughter, in their California community seemingly rife with rehabbing and dying youth. And so the novel proceeds, through teenage lies and irresponsible behaviors and a seesaw of maternal under-reactions (“It’s hard for me to say no to [Rosie...] I’m so afraid of her wrath that I cave”) and over-reactions (also prompted more by her own fears and less by Rosie’s best interests). As things worsen, the steadying influence of Elizabeth’s second husband and an assortment of wise and grounded friends and counselors illustrate the wealth of support that’s available to people who don’t insist on tackling their problems alone.Lamott’s Bird by Bird is among my all-time-favorite books, and I enjoyed Traveling Mercies and two volumes of her essays. This is my first of her fiction, and I’m undecided about pursuing more. She manages point of view well when it’s her own (nonfiction), but here it frequently bumped me and sent me back to reread. The story felt slow and repetitive (incidents mostly occur at a similar level of tension/stakes rather than progressively escalating), and even somewhat withheld (much of the tension and fallout are off the page). That style distanced me -- until I realized that it very much mimics Elizabeth, and the realization added a satisfying layer.(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)
    • 4/5
      Imperfect Birds is a thought provoking story of angst. We meet the primary characters Unfortunately we only get to meet the three primary characters during an intense and difficult period in their lives. Mom Elizabeth is a recovering alcoholic, whose world view is very focused on self and family. She is struggling, and intensely worried by her daughter Rosie, whose drug use continues to escalate to very dangerous levels. While all this is going on, Anne Lammot provides the very gritty day to day details – perhaps at times too many – of the running script of their lives and thoughts. Every once in a while Lammot (and often through the voice of Rae), will throw in a thought-provoking line to provide a larger world view or meaning for all that is going on. Husband/step-dad James plays a kind of social worker to this family, who himself is finding increasing levels of escape through work.On a larger scale, what is worrisome is the fact that their community is full of kids where excessive drug abuse and trips to rehab are the norm, as opposed to the exception.Although not a particularly upbeat read, I got to know the characters well enough that I will continue to wonder what happened to them – and hope for a happy ending. Thanks for the chance to read the advance copy.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book, and Anne Lamott is an incredible writer. It's a very honest look at a mother-daughter relationship, and the honesty with which both sides are told will both break your hear yet make you uncomfortable. Meant to address the very real issue of teenage drugs, I'd recommend this for every parent. I loved the book up until the last few chapters which sort of digressed into a brochure for a recommended way of treating teenage drug use.
    • 3/5
      Imperfect Birds is about the relationship between Elizabeth, a stay-at-home mom and recovering alcoholic, and her daughter Rosie, a high school student who outwardly seems perfect but is hiding her partying and drug use. I requested this book through Early Reviewers because I loved Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott's book about writing, with its lighthearted, engaging tone, so I wanted to read something else she'd written. However, I was quite disappointed with Imperfect Birds. There were two main issues I had with it: first, not much happens for the first 3/4 of the book. Rosie does drugs and Elizabeth worries and feels sorry for herself because her husband, daughter and best friend don't spend all their time with her. Second, I didn't really like any of the characters. Elizabeth is incredibly self-absorbed, and can't deal with Rosie because she only sees her daughter as an extension of herself, not a separate individual. Rosie doesn't come together as a believable character until near the end of the book - the sections from her perspective rarely ring true, as she does not sound like a teenager and her characterization is very inconsistent. Most of the characters have the same voice, making it seem like they're multiple versions of the same person, not distinct characters. It's entirely possible that someone who has struggled with a difficult child, or who is interested in the type of ecumenical spirituality espoused by the characters would enjoy Imperfect Birds, but it was not for me.
    • 3/5
      A few years ago I read Lamott's non-fiction book Bird by Bird, which I really enjoyed. I don't remember much about it, but I do remember reading it on the ferry and laughing out loud. So I was thrilled when I won a ARC of Imperfect Birds as part of the Early Reviewers program. I guessed that it was some sort of sequel. Wrong, it's a novel, but the description sounded good: Elizabeth's teenage daughter seems to have a perfect life, but "there are disturbing signs that the well-adjusted teenage life Rosie claims to be leading is a sham . . . slowly and painfully, Elizabeth and James are forced to confront the fact that Rosie has been lying to them." It sounded pretty good to me.But the description on the back cover didn't match the actual book. The opening line is "there are so many evils that pull on our children," and the opening pages describe Elizabeth's great worries about her daughter who she knows is lying, and she knows is doing drugs. I didn't see any slow realization happening--it was all there in the first few pages of the book.By page 37 I seriously considered quitting. I couldn't relate to the characters, and I found the writing choppy and sort of all over the place. But as a mother of a teenage daughter, I thought I should stick it out. I did gain some empathy for the parents, but the lying, selfish party girl was boring, as most lying selfish partiers tend to be.
    • 3/5
      In the beginning I had a hard time getting involved with the characters.... I am far removed from the teenage drug scene at the age of 67. It is hard not to fall into the "When I was Young" trap....It is sad to me that the Mother and Step Father are so gullible regarding Rosie's drug use....She constantly lies and plays on her mothers weakness ( which rings true for me, as my mother was a drunk and played her like a violin) It is a sad story, with the exception of the spiritual ceremonies and Characters.