Birds of Paradise, Diana AbuJaber
Birds of Paradise, Diana AbuJaber
3 Rating(s)
List: $25.87 | Sale: $18.11
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Birds of Paradise

Author: Diana Abu-Jaber

Narrator: Tamara Marston

Unabridged: 14 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/06/2011


Synopsis

Avis Muir is a brilliant pastry chef, Brian Muir a corporate real estate attorney. Their son, Stanley, is the proprietor of a trendy food market. Their beautiful daughter, Felice, is missing. A runaway at 13, Felice has spent five years modeling tattoos, skateboarding, clubbing, and sleeping in a squat house or on the beach. She’s about to turn 18. Soon all of the Muirs will be forced to confront their anguish, loss, and sense of betrayal. And Felice must reckon with the guilty secret that drove her away, then face her fear of losing her family and her sense of self forever.
 
 Set against the vibrant backdrop of contemporary Miami, Birds of Paradise is filled with piercing insights into the politics of food and sugar, teen culture, and of the ebb and flow of marriage. The writing is sumptuous, the story moving, and the descriptions of food (one of Abu-Jaber’s specialties) are mouth-watering.

About Diana Abu-Jaber

Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of Origin, Crescent, The Language of Baklava, and Arabian Jazz. She has won the PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction, the Oregon Book Award, and other prizes. Her writing appears in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, Ms., Gourmet, Salon, and Vogue, and she is frequently featured on National Public Radio.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Carmen

This book should be renamed: Morons Who Make Terrible Decisions. ... A cookie, Avis told her children, is a soul. Oh, please! *rolls eyes* Spare me this kind of pseudo-philosophical garbage. The above is the opening sentence of the novel. As soon as I read it I heaved a big sigh. I could tell what kind......more

Goodreads review by Dawn

This book was always going to suffer by comparison since I loved the previous book I read so much, but it was pretty boring. Hard to believe that a book that contains a hurricane, murder and suicide can be boring, but it is. Even the author seemed bored by it, as she abruptly stopped writing. It end......more