Bird Opera

The Mapmaker’s Opera, Bea Gonzalez, 2005

This first novel by Spanish born Canadian Gonzalez is written in the form of a granddaughter recording tales told to her by her grandmother, Sofia. The tales were very operatic so the granddaughter decides to structure her recording in the form of an opera with acts. The granddaughter always believed the tales to be fictional but lately she is coming to discover that people and events in the tales really existed so she is left to wonder if the tales were real.

The novel is inevitably compared to works of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but the style is better described as big and operatic rather than in the style of magical realism.

Seville Plaza de Espana Seville

A boy, Diego, grows up in his great uncles bookstore in Seville Spain in the late 19th Century. The bookstore caters to English tourists and Diego’s father gives the English tours of Seville in addition to working in the bookstore. An older Englishman, Senor Raleigh, lives in Seville and collect old maps. He introduces Diego to his maps and shows how maps illustrated the beliefs and myths of the time. Diego is gifted and starts drawing maps of his own. Then, one day, Diego comes accross an 1838 book by Audubon. Raleigh also collects ornithology books and soon Diego is imerged in the study and drawing and painting of birds. When Diego’s parents and great uncle die, Raleigh arranges for Diego to go to work for his American ornithology friend Nelson of the Biological Survey who is compiling a book on the birds of the Yucatan in Mexico.

Merida Plaza and Ruins
Merida Merida

Diego goes to Mexico where Nelson’s Mexican assistant takes him under wing teaching him about life in Mexico. Nelson is friends with a fellow bird lover, Don Roberto, an absentee owner of a small Henequen plantation and owner of a bookstore in Merida. Don Roberto has a 22 year old daughter, Sofia, who has the same Audubon book also loves birds and draws them. Sofia’s female relatives are desparate to find her a suitable (rich) boy to marry and save the family which is deep in debt to the large landowners.

Passinger Pigeons passenger pigeons

Diego and Sofia meet of course, but it is 1910, and a Mexican revolution with Emiliano Zapata in the south and Pancho Villa in the north is about to hit the Yucatan. Triggering events in the novel are the discovery of a pair of passenger pigeons, nearing extinction, held in the avary of a large plantation owner. Very entertaining.