North Country Passion

By Martha Duffy

Margaret Handles is a rarity in recent serious fiction, a throwback to the larger-than-life heroine. She's a regular Annie Oakley, shooting up the town. When her lover brings around a framed photograph of the girl his parents have arranged for him to marry, Margaret draws her revolver and pulverizes the picture. Two more shots follow, with greater consequence to the plot of Howard Norman's startling, ambitious novel, The Bird Artist (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 289 pages; $20).

Margaret is drunk much of the time, but the whiskey does not seem to dull her mind, her ability to utter home truths or her prowess in bed. It just loosens her trigger finger. She lives, just after the turn of the century, not in the Wild West but in the remote hamlet of Witless Bay, Newfoundland (one store, one restaurant, a sawmill and a drydock). Her lover is Fabian Vas, the narrator, who could easily have been the subject of a stultifying art novel. From age 8 he has spent most of his time in inlets and marshes sketching birds, turning his impressions into meticulous paintings that he sells to magazines. A placid life on the surface, but then Fabian has Margaret, plus his own vacillation, to keep him off balance.

He also has his mother Alaric, another sexy woman who readily speaks her mind. When Fabian's father goes away for a summer to earn the money for his son's unwanted wedding, Alaric moves in with the lighthouse keeper, Botho August. He is one of those romantic figments who can coax ships off shoals, seduce women with his silent charm and his gramophone records, and generally alter the chemistry that keeps an isolated community from violence. "A lighthouse keeper held a sacred trust," writes Norman. "Berserk gales, blanket fogs, fairy squalls, even zigzagging water spouts -- weather that had for centuries drowned sailors, lovers, fishermen, and indeed battered Witless Bay countless numbers of days and nights during any given year -- are what Botho had to contend with." Margaret has also shared Botho's bed, and at the crucial moment Margaret hands that gun to the tormented, conflicted Fabian.

The Bird Artist has been optioned for the movies, but it really should be an opera. It has everything the great 19th century operas had and that most modern music dramas lack: a strong plot, fierce currents of jealousy and revenge, a devouring sea ready to roil at an opportune moment, and juicy roles for two women and two men.

As it is, the book is not only an old-fashioned story but also a lovingly detailed celebration of the north country. Norman, whose first novel, Northern Lights, was about Canada too, revels in remote places. Their names in The Bird Artist -- Mint Cove, Show Cove, Richibucto, Trepassey -- provide a particular delight, as do the names of birds and men. The strange birds give the narrative its own kind of plumage: teal, merganser, kittiwake, cormorant. When the men of the town are searching for a dinghy lost in the fog, they track each other by calling out names: " 'Richmond Fauvette, this is Oliver Parmelee.' 'Oliver Parmelee, this is Fabian Vas.' "

This sea chant, repated at the story's climax, typifies Norman's highly personal approach to fiction. His story is extravagant melodrama, but his writing is strict, laconic and evocative. Birds, coves, proper names. Odd sources of enchantment, but real ones.