What Begins with Bird - Reviews

"A ravishing associative logic of recurrent objects and sounds distinguishes Noy Holland's original stories; the bird in the book's title is the writer, herself, surely a poet, singing of "The slickened births and murders, ours, the fierce wide blowing day." Old wisdom newly and grandly delivered."

—Christine Schutt

"Holland's scrupulousness and respect for the language keep this text alive and kicking. What Begins with Bird is a book to be read slowly and thoughtfully, shared, passed along."

—John Edgar Wideman

"From broken phrase to sentence, from sentence to paragraph, from paragraph to scene and scene to story, Noy Holland's aims are ambitious, her tone right, her diction masterful, and she spells her stories out in bites of beautifully lyrical but bitter prose and with an ardent grimness of eye that is both unsettling and intensely satisfying; however the reader must weigh every phrase and go forward warily because images await like traps set in a forest. What Begins With Bird is a remarkable achievement."

—William Gass