The Gift: The Life and Times of Birdie Mae Hayes #1

(Paperback)

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A plucky girl from small-town Alabama is in for a big surprise!

Birdie Mae Hayes has pretty much the perfect life. Her best friend Sally lives just down the street, she's becoming friends with the new boy in town, and Halloween is coming up. Her little brother Bubba drives her crazy sometimes, but whose doesn't

Except, lately, Birdie can't stop feeling like something is about to happen. Then she starts seeing things happenbefore they happen!

It turns out her Grandma Mae has the same ability. But Birdie doesn't know if she's ready to take on the responsibility of this "gift." Still, with the right attitude and some practice, she could help a lot of people. One thing's for sure: life is going to be real interesting from now on!

Reviews

The Gift is a smart, funny, heartbreaking and often sexy delight of a novel that presses hard against the boundaries of where literary and artistic performances begin and end. New York Times Sunday Book Review Its tempting to compare her to popular writers of `autofiction, such as Chris Kraus, Sheila Heti, and Ben Lernerall of whom she mentions in her workbut Browning exaggerates the genre to particularly postmodern, batty, and charming extremes. The New Yorker The narrator has an exceptionally graceful page presence: loony and profound, vulnerable and ingenuous, Barbara acts to unify the book's central concerns, giving its intellectual flights of fancy a palpable human pulse. Publishers Weekly, starred review Browning takes a book that could easily exist in hypotheticals, layers, and masks and instead grounds it in the chaos of its time, including the disruptive politics of the Occupy movement, the infamous Pussy Riot protests and arrests in Russia, and the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. The effect is indeed intimate but never inappropriate. Browning is working at the edges of her craft, and its utterly thrilling to watch. A delicious love letter to readers and co-conspirators everywhere. Kirkus Reviews, starred review "[The Gift] is a meandering, quasi-academic meditation on performance art that is somehow breezy and juicy enough to bring to the beach. The New Yorker Culture Desk The Gift is an unusual novel about the performance of life and the life of performance that tells us empathy and passion are deeply political, and that fiction that flips a finger to the boundary between storytelling and the body is an expression of hope and a way toward a different future. In so many ways, Brownings creation is a beautiful meditation on art, and a balm for readers in these difficult times. Bookforum Barbara Brownings winning and expansive novel describes one womans intimacies with lovers, strangers, culture and ideas, and family and friends during several months in NY between 2012 and 2013. Browning brilliantly synthesizes her work as a scholar and an artist into a single identity, becoming at once a master monologist, storyteller, and historian of her amorphous tribe. Chris Kraus Brownings sinuous, seductive exploration of `inappropriate intimacies is one of the most exhilarating and provocative books Ive read in ages. Nylon Where does Barbara Browning end and Barbara Andersen begin What is the difference between fact and fiction Those are some of the intriguing questions raised by this enigmatic and mysterious tale. Booklist Through this addictive, brainy and vibrant novel, which straddles nonfiction and fiction, Browning celebrates an unabashed passion for art and togetherness in a world muddled by assumed intimacy and inherent skepticism. Star Tribune As if to explain all those mysterious ukulele covers, Barbara takes us deeper than ever into her inappropriate intimacies, into the baseline feminist communism of gift economies, into the eros of collaboration, into the pain of wanting more than you want to want. The Rumpus Despite, or perhaps because of, the borderline dystopian reality in which we now live, theres more of a reason than ever to explore what it means to create a truth, if not the truth. Browning does so beautifully in The Gift, to such a degree that there ceases to be a delineation between whats `real and which characters are virtually identical, save for slight name changes. . . . But while the blurriness of what is and isnt real exists for the reader, there is never any doubt that Browning is in full control of her story. Nylon The Gift is about the connections we make with other human beings, whether in passing, in person, or via email (or even in our imagination). It feels rare to read an uplifting book . . but (the) Barbara's zest for life is extremely contagious. Anyway, read this book, I promise it is worth it. Lenny Barbaras inviting voice leads us through spirited digressions on performance, family, shame, and the history of gift-giving, each examined with remarkable aplomb and generosity. Milkweed Blog Barbara Browning's novel The Gift is a brilliant work of autofiction. Largehearted Boy In this disarming and hopeful novel, Barbara Browning explores the role of art in our lives and relationships with humor, warmth, and playful eroticism. The Riveter Through music, art, dance, and the various means of communication at our disposal, Browning makes us ponder age-old questions . . . Brownings The Gift is sure to bring some enlightenment to your life. Warby Parker blog, Summer Reading Barbara Brownings gift is delicacys embrace of edge, darings embrace of openness, dances embrace of song, in open tuning: a blues for intimacys constant rupture and repair, held out in simple and miraculous gesture. I mean to say that her sentences are carefully held out hands signing the theory and practice of generosity, speaking with such plain obscurity that what has been coveredthe lonesome miracle of what it is to be togetheris now visible. Fred Moten

Author Bio

Barbara Browning teaches in the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale University. She is the author of the novels The Correspondence Artist (winner of a Lambda Literary Award) and Im Trying to Reach You (short-listed for The Believer Book Award). She also makes dances, poems, and ukulele cover tunes.