the quiet assuredness as well as the brevity of Cary Fagan’s new novel is so refreshing. A Bird’s Eye is set in Toronto just as the Great Depression is ending and the Second World War is beginning, and it packs a lot into its modest 182-page frame...Other subplots work better. Indeed, it’s in the background and in the margins of Benjamin’s coming-of-age tale that Fagan’s novel really takes flight. Characters like Hannah, Benjamin’s unmarried aunt, who feels like a prisoner in the new world and longs to return to Eastern Europe, and his Uncle Hayim, a Duddy Kravitz eye-on-the-main-chance type, give the novel its richness, its layers of grown-up complexity.

Fagan is no minimalist — his prose is quite lyrical at times — but he does understand the danger of overreaching and the virtue of doing more with less.......A Bird’s Eye is written exactly to the scale it should be.

With its brief chapters and empathetic narrative, Cary Fagan’s slim new novel stands out from other coming-of-age stories. ..With the punchy impact of a short story, A Bird’s Eye boasts a strong setting, imaginative characterization, and a captivating narrative voice. In the closing pages, Fagan nicely brings his story full circle with a moving, satisfying ending.

Fagan is both graceful and unsparing on the subjects of race and origin. His characters come to the city from all over the world ... Fagan conjures up the spectrum of human differences, and the show is breathtaking.....I was overtaken. A Bird’s Eye consumed me like a memory, warm and sweet and sad. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was magic.