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Bird Cloud (2011)

by Annie Proulx(Favorite Author)

3.03 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0743288807 (ISBN13: 9780743288804)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

New York: Scribner

review 1: Bird Cloud, written by Annie Proulx is a book about 640 acres of land in Wyoming that she bought to build her dream home and the huge amount of time it took, the innumerable challenges that faced her in the design, and her builders and contractors, etc. She became very attached to the wildlife and birds as there are so many different breeds from Bald Eagles, golden eagles, Herons, down to much smaller birds and water fowl that was in the area. She also covered a lot of history of the land and challenges that faced the Indians and others that lived around there. This is an actual accounting of her time there and experiences and challenges she faced. I like her style of writing, and having not read any of her works before this will look and see what other books might be ... moreof interest.
review 2: I've been listening to Annie Proulx's Bird Cloud: A Memoir, on CD (read by the author and Joan Allen). Proulx is the author of the short story which became the movie Brokeback Mountain, which I read recently and enjoyed. I also loved her Shipping News: A Novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award after its publication in 1993. So I guess I had high hopes for her latest work, which sadly disappointed.The first few chapters of this book provide a cursory background to Proulx's life before launching in to the saga of her purchase of remote land in Wyoming and attempt to build the house of her dreams on that spot.While I have enjoyed stories about building houses, such as Richard Manning's A Good House: Building a Life on the Land, this account is more like a long complaint from a spoiled child. The site that Proulx selects to build her house is inaccessible for half of the year due to heavy snows and blowing winds. The architect disappoints in many ways, as do many of the builders (although there is a certain group of contractors who can seem to do no wrong). The author takes every inevitable error personally and bemoans her fate during the weeks that she spends on the ranch when she isn't jetting off to New Mexico, or Paris, or Bali.Once the house is finally built, she sets to recounting all of the types of birds that live on the property, and describing their activities in detail. While it is, undeniably, thrilling to see a bald eagle pull a fish out of a pond, it is not quite so thrilling to read about it. On the whole, there is little of beauty in this account of a privileged woman building an extravagant home in a pristine wilderness area. What a waste of possibility. less

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