64 pages • 2 hours read
Joyce MaynardThe Bird Hotel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Endurance of Grief and Love
From the very beginning, the prologue in which Irene contemplates death by suicide, the novel explores the devasting grief that follows the loss of a loved one. The power of both love and grief to persist is a testimony to the power of human attachment, which is as significant a force in the novel as any of the natural elements that influence the lives of those who live in La Esperanza.
The narrator experiences the enduring power of grief through two significant losses. The first is the loss of her mother when she is not yet seven, a loss that literally changes the narrator’s identity. This change in her name from Joan, the name her mother gave her, to Irene, the identity of a stranger, also serves as a metaphor for how a bereaved person can feel reshaped by loss. Irene cannot even identify herself as her mother’s daughter because of fears that she and her grandmother will be harmed by the association. As a child, Joan deals with this separation by pretending that her mother is alive and leading a celebrated life elsewhere. As an adult, she feels the enduring effects of this bereavement in her reluctance to share the truth of her past, even with Leila. At Leila’s passing, Irene weeps as if she is finally mourning her own mother, showing the long-term effect this loss and sense of abandonment has had on her even into adulthood.
The loss of her young son, Arlo, and her husband, Lenny, haunts Irene through most of the book. Arriving at La Llorona, she is an embodiment of the legendary weeping woman. The change of location doesn’t end Irene’s grief, only the acuteness of her suffering as she finds herself able to live in a place with no associations to her loved ones. This grief, too, reshapes her, as she identifies herself as a mother to few people, Walter being one of them. When Diana arrives and asks Irene about her life, Irene is unable to speak of Arlo. When Diana says she hoped she would be a grandmother, Irene grapples with the grief that the child she bore is gone. When she briefly tries to imagine a life with Jerome, Irene can only picture having a daughter; still grieving the son she lost, she cannot bring herself, even in thought, to replace him. The grief that endures, and from which she finds refuge in painting, is testament to her continuing love.
This theme of faithful and enduring love is echoed by other characters, most notably Tom, who writes in his letter that he will love Irene for the rest of his life. Elmer provides another example; though he is young, he proves his devotion to Mirabel when the volcano erupts and the town is in danger. Both characters find their love returned in time, suggesting that, while love can be intertwined with loss, fidelity in love eventually yields a reward.
The Search for Family
The novel explores the power of family attachments through several angles and suggests that family arrangements can take many forms. The image of the independent but still nurturing woman stands, paradoxically, at the center of the novel in the form of Irene and, before her, Leila. These women do not have partners and did not raise their children to adulthood, but they provide shelter and support through the hotel and their connections to the community. Amalia, the German-born woman who mentors the village’s children, is a similar figure. But the multitude of other familiar arrangements speaks to the role that family plays in human attachment and its contribution to the quality of a life.
The families she finds at La Llorona, those that are broken and those that endure, confirm the emotional weight of such attachments. Irene feels for a time that Gus’s family becomes her own, with him taking the role of a brother who provides amusement, though he doesn’t earn her respect. Irene does respect Dora’s commitment to her family, of whom she is clearly protective, an attitude Irene understands. But this sense of family is turned against her when Gus and Dora explain to Irene why they felt they deserved to inherit La Llorona from Leila and were willing to cheat Irene to get the property: they were looking out for their family, Gus says, which suggests that just as family members forgive and see past one another’s flaws, all manner of actions are permissible in service of protecting and advancing the security of one’s own family. Elmer engages in this sort of thinking when he steals to replace the money taken from him, which he was saving so he might propose marriage to Mirabel. This betrayal is all the deeper because of the familial attachment Irene felt.
The novel looks particularly at the role and power of mothers, and not just through the impression that Diana’s loss makes on Irene. For all Leila’s accomplishments, the regret of her life is that she was parted from her daughter, which further shows how the absence of family can deal a lasting wound. Irene is particularly sensitive around the issue of mothers who have lost or not reconciled with their children, shown in her reaction to the woman alleged to be the birth mother of Sandra, the child adopted by the American couple. Irene is grief-stricken when Rosella dies giving birth to her twins, and she is fascinated by the pairing of Raya and Alicia, seeing in their mutual adoration a kind of ideal. Yet despite her longing for her own mother, when Diana/Dawn is before her, Irene can’t bring herself to a reconciliation. Hurt by her mother’s long absence from her life, she is unable to feel a bond with her, but she acts without thinking when she finds Mirabel’s child floating on the water and retrieves the boat, compelled to reunite mother and son because she understands the power of that bond.
The character of Tom offers another slant on the search for family; he has been searching his whole life for justice for his father, wanting to confront the woman he believes played a role in his father’s accidental death. This search leads him to Irene, and then love, in a way repairing that early loss. Though Irene wouldn’t say she has replaced her earlier family, the hint at the end that she forms a new one with Tom shows the power and attraction of this human bonding.
The Gradual Process of Healing
Over and over, in a novel driven by loss, Maynard explores the many ways that people and communities can confront and heal from devastation. Love for others proves a powerful motivator for recovery, but the novel also probes the healing and sustaining power of art, community, natural beauty, and cultural traditions as modes of resilience and renewal. The compelling power of hope is likewise embodied in the name of the village, La Esperanza, though that hope takes as many forms as there are those seeking it.
The village as whole survives more than one natural disaster in the course of the novel, and each time, the community rebuilds. No less destructive, in another sense, are the outside forces of global capitalism and the tourist trade that propose a painful compromise for the locals: An infusion of foreigners boosts the local economy, but the foreigners also cause environmental and cultural harm. Irene witnesses the stripping of ancestral land as families sell to wealthy foreigners, leaving their children to find another livelihood. Irene makes an effort to restore this balance when she gives part of her property to local families, replacing the cash crop that Gus and Dora had cultivated just as the layer of volcanic ash replaced the soil.
This move toward restoration and reconciliation figures in many of the emotional arcs in the novel as well. Irene eventually heals from grief and falls in love; Charlotte learns about her birth mother; Tom and Diana reconcile and forgive; Elmer wins his beloved Mirabel, providing her with love, family, and healing after her assault by the Lizard Men. The natural beauty of the setting also serves as a healing influence, something Irene feels when she paints the birds and plants of La Llorona. Healing and regeneration manifest in the symbol of the baby-making herb, the rare and miraculous plant that Jun Lan discovers; its power to restore fertility attests to the healing power of the landscape.
But the real power of recovery lies in the nature and spirit of the people of La Esperanza. Irene defines them as practical in their outlook, not dwelling on loss in this world because their ultimate prize is admission into heaven. They are less concerned with comfort than survival, but their resilience is embodied not only in their response to disaster but also in the babies that Irene sees everywhere: every season, more babies, a visible symbol of hope for the future. Even as their culture is slowly changing due to the incursion of outside influences—captured by the death of the old man who makes the maguey bags, an art that vanishes with him—the residents of La Esperanza remain protective and supportive of their own. The deep roots of culture and community keep them grounded and able, in time, to renew and regenerate, just as Irene does when she makes her home in La Llorona beside them.
