Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Chilean filmmaker who in 1970 wrote, directed and starred in the groundbreaking El Topo, is also a superb novelist. Where the Bird Sings Best follows three generations from both sides of the author's Jewish family--beekeepers on one side, lion tamers on the other--in one gloriously readable, fantastical autobiographical novel.
The saga begins in the Ukraine, when his grandmother's first son tries to escape on a wooden chest from a flooding river. He doesn't realize it's weighted down with the 37 tractates of the Talmud, and drowns. Outspoken grandmother Teresa storms into the synagogue, cursing her religion and giving God a piece of her mind. She never forgives Him, and decides the only thing deserving of her love are fleas--so she begins training seven of them to perform circus acts.
Teresa is just one of the larger-than-life relatives who dominate this deliciously far-fetched, multigenerational saga. With the author's grandfather, an impractical and saintly man, she immigrates to Chile, where he becomes a shoemaker. After his right hand is caught in machinery, he begins to work miracles with the dead hand. Soon he is accompanied by a disembodied, floating rabbi, who offers constant advice. Teresa and the shoemaker's son will be the author's father.
From the other side of the family Jodorowsky introduces Alejandro Prullansky, a gigantic male dancer with long golden curls. He trains in Moscow for ballet until he becomes aware of the pain in the world and goes to work in a brutal meat-packing plant. His daughter, who sings while her father sets himself on fire for one last leap, becomes the author's mother.
One outrageous set piece follows another with an exhilarating density of imagination as Jodorowsky juggles tale within tale with Arabian Nights agility. His enormous cast includes a lion tamer who eats raw meat and sleeps naked with his lions, a dwarf prostitute, an infant of prophecy who inhabits both sexes, an Indian sorcerer who demands a molar from each person he helps as payment and thousands of mine workers marching in demonstration against nightmarish conditions.
"In memory, everything can become miraculous," says Jodorowsky. "The past is not fixed and unalterable. With faith and will we can change it, not erasing its darkness but adding light... to make it more and more beautiful." Exuberant, unrelentingly creative in its folkloric style of heightened reality, the book serves as one gigantic prequel to 2013's The Dance of Reality, his first film in 23 years and a visually dazzling masterpiece in which Jodorowsky re-creates his childhood with his parents. A master of both film and fiction, he expertly harnesses boldly surreal images to capture the gorgeous, brutal essence of life. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.
Shelf Talker: Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky tells the fantastical multigenerational saga of his Jewish immigrant family.