This is one of those books I had lots and lots of mixed feeling about. It turned out not to be the book I was thinking of, but one I'd never read before. I loved The Sixteen Pleasures by the same author, but found this one more uneven and harder to get into-- but I think that is my own weakness, not the fault of the author. The book is set against the backdrop of a difficult situation-- the death of Woody's oldest daughter in a terrorist bombing that occurred in Bologna in August, 1980. The novel begins seven years after the bombing. It is a year of crisis , turmoil and chance in the family, for Woody, his wife and his two living daughters. It is also the year the terrorists are finally to go on trial in Bologna.

As mentioned in the publisher's blurb, Woody is a classics professor. The novel is filled with quotes and references to the classics, some still in the original Greek. It bounces between first person narration by Woody's middle daughter, and a third person narration focusing on Woody and his relationships to the women in his life, living and dead. The interjection of Sara's voice reminded me of a Greek Chorus in one of the tragedies... interesting device. How love can be a thing of great beauty, but also bring pain, about the strength of love, and the strength of death, about growth, remembering, healing and forgiveness. There are some very amusing bits in there about love, sex, bats, and even a good explanation of String Theory!

There was an interesting discussion about midway through, where Sara reflects on her sister's death and how "(it) wasn't just the end of our life together as a family; it was the end of my expectations about what our life was going to be in the future. It was like reading a short store and thinking it was a novel. You think you've got a couple of hundred pages to go, but all of a sudden you're at the end. The story you were reading is over. That's it. The rest of the books is other stories."

I need to digest this one a bit more, I think.

The author gives three quotes at the beginning for glimpses into the title:



Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father knowing. Matthew 10:29

‘Such,’ he said, ‘O King, seems to me the present life of men on earth, in comparison with the time which to us is uncertain, as if when on a winter’s night you sit feasting with your ealdormen and thegns,—a single sparrow should fly swiftly into the hall, and coming in at one door, instantly fly out through another. In that time in which it is indoors it is indeed not touched by the fury of the winter, but yet, this smallest space of calmness being passed almost in a flash, from winter going into winter again, it is lost to your eyes. Somewhat like this appears the life of man; but of what follows or what went before, we are utterly ignorant.’

Bede, ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ bk. 2, ch. 13

and

There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow
- Hamlet V.II

I had read THE FALL OF A SPARROW by Robert Hellenga when it first came out. I decided to reread it for something about Italy (Bologna and Rome). The walks through the cities, the foods, sights, sounds, smells are fascinating and rendered in detail.

I enjoyed the narrator, Woody, a classics professor. He is fluent in Greek, Latin, Persian, Italian, and English, my idol! He tells the story of his job and his classes. I really liked the focus and the detail of his classroom discussions of the ancient texts.

He is also a father of three daughters. One died in a terrorist bombing in Italy. His grief and the impact on the entire family are devastating, each family member choosing a route towards healing the unbearable wound, the loss of eldest daughter Cookie.

Memories of the family and memories of his youth intertwine with his current quest to find justice in Italy against the terrorists. Some chapters are narrated by his middle daughter, Sara, but these are not as compelling as her father's. She is smart and strong, but nowhere near as erudite (on purpose!)

A great read with too many old-man sex fantasies to earn a 5 start review from me.

To many readers, there is no doubt a meaningful arc here, a story about one man dealing with his daughter's death and the best way to live his life after the fact, a searching for authenticity and happiness. Yet because I know the 'St Clair' in the text, know the real life people who pepper these pages, there is a deep disconnect for me between the Midwestern sections and those related to Italy - how the two come together, how the two meld into a whole is beyond my ken. I enjoyed the sections about Italy - while finding the protagonist a shallow, self-absorbed man packed to the gills with hubris - but never quite felt at ease with the whole product, with the narrative as one entity.

And if this is a glimpse into how men of the previous generation thought of / think of sex, color me unimpressed and vaguely weirded out.

This was not the cover edition I read but it matters not to what was in between. Which was an incredible read, sad but also very thought provoking. I had objection to many things, plot devices, characters, the way the author unrolled his story, but the overall feeling both during and after the reading was very positive and my many criticisms seemed petty and insignificant.
I did not particularly identify or even care about any of the characters which makes it even more surprising I liked it as much as I did.

A great book on many big topics: love, death (& grieving for the death of a loved one), sex, family relationships, politics, justice, forgiveness, faith, doubt, commitment to a career, openness to new starts after children are grown, & interpretation of the classics. It's uplifting to have such immersion in the life of the mind be so taken-for-granted in a character who also cares deeply for his family & enjoys playing the blues guitar. Woody is, in fact, one of my favorite characters in contemporary fiction, along with Rabbit Angstrom, Father Melancholy's Daughter, Danny & the narrator in The Chosen & The Promise, Owen Meany, & the main character in Body & Soul (whom Woody probably most resembles).

Beautiful, haunting, lyrical, set in Rome and the United States. Opens with a haunting loss, and addresses big themes like life, death, love, redemption and forgiveness without ever being heavy-handed.

I don't often give up on a book, but after 160 pages, I abandoned this one. If you like books about how grieving men fill the void with sex, this book if for you. If not, choose something else.

I finished reading Robert Hellenga’s novel, The Fall of a Sparrow, a few days ago. It was okay. It told intimate—sometimes off-putting—details about the impact upon the life of Midwestern college classics professor, Alan Woodhull, aka Woody, from the death of his daughter, Cookie, age 22. Cookie, who was set to attend graduate school in Italy in 1980, died when terrorists bombed a Bologna train station. Most of the novel is told in third person from Woody’s POV, but part of it is told from surviving daughter Sara’s first person POV.

Hellenga has a great grasp of language, learning, and storytelling. What he seems to lack in this novel is a sense of discretion, both in its telling and in Woody’s character. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Woody’s wife of long standing leaves him for the convent, ostensibly over a disagreement over an inscription—His will is our peace—to be affixed to Cookie’s tombstone. His two surviving daughters grow up and go off on their own, leaving him more or less alone and without the need to nurture them any longer as a parent. So Woody buys an ostentatious and costly guitar, has an affair with a student, and spirals slowly downward, losing his job, his home . . .. Nonetheless, in this downward trend he continues to see the world through ancient history and the classics, although not so much so through faith. Big themes: Reason versus faith. Forgiveness. I guess I could say the book is about Woody’s transformation stemming from the tragedy over against stability in its absence. Does adversity facilitate change? Does change facilitate growth?

I adored this book. I've been lingering in this world for several months now, and now that I'm finished reading, I'm sad to put it aside. The story was inspired by the bombing in a Bologna train station in 1980, but all characters are fictional. Professor Alan Woodhull, called "Woody," is a classics professor at a small college in Illinois. His eldest daughter, Cookie, was killed in the strage, or massacre, in which 85 other people were also killed. The tragedy upends their lives. The mother becomes a nun following a breakdown after her daughter's death; the other two daughters are also impacted as their family slowly falls apart. Woody tries to figure out how to live his life in the wake of losing his daughter, and slowly his neatly ordered life starts to fall apart as he has an affair with a student, the daughter of one of the college's biggest donors. After the political fallout, he leaves his job as a professor and goes to Italy to follow the trial of the terrorists, and to discover a new life, and love. It's impossible to do justice to the book with a mere summary; there is so much richness here. As a classics professor and a guitarist and singer, Woody often draws parallels between musical lyrics and classical literature. We interact with bats and the Illinois countryside and Persian carpets, and so much more. It is a deeply layered book, a palimpsest, much like the city of Rome, and like life itself.

Hellenga writes well. Some of the descriptive passages, particularly the ones set in Italy, are vivid and evocative of place. Yet I never did warm up to any of the characters in this book. It's about a man's journey through grief, and the story that unfolds is told mostly from his point of view. But the central character's self absorption and his lack of empathy for others did not make him very likeable. Plus some of the female characters were not much more than caricatures. I usually finish books I start and I finished this one. But the payoff was not great enough for me to recommend it to others.

This is a story of how a family is emotionally "blown a part" after their college age daughter is literally blown up in the train station bombing in Italy in the 80's. I wanted to strangle the main character "Woody" most of the time, but one copes in whatever way one can cope.

I like the religious overtones and the wife becoming a nun. I know the hero is a male pig in many ways, but he appeals to me nonetheless and this is one of my favorite books!