Para el niño de ocho años Bunny Morison su madre es una presencia angelical sin la cual nada parece tener vida; para su hermano mayor, Robert, su madre es alguien a quien debe proteger, especialmente desde que la gripe ha comenzado a asolar su pequeña ciudad del Medio Oeste norteamericano; para su padre, James Morison, su mujer Elizabeth es el centro de una vida que se desmoronaría sin ella.

This autobiographical novella about a family during the 1918 Influenza is narrated by three characters, two of whom made me misty. I was wow-ed by how each passage revealed so much subtext. I must read more by Maxwell. ( )

The magic of William Maxwell is his ability to get inside his characters and expose them to you, heart, soul, flesh and blood. This story opens on the Morison family as seen through the eyes of its youngest member, Bunny. A timid eight year old, Bunny is very attached to and dependent upon his mother.

In the second section, Maxwell switches point of view to Bunny’s older brother, Robert. A pre-teen who has lost his leg in an accident, and goes to great lengths to be normal, active and self-sufficient. Robert loves his mother, as Bunny does, but holds her, and his Aunt Irene, at an arm’s length, to protect his perceived manhood.

In the final section, we hear from the father, James. Also dependent upon his wife, the center of not only his universe, but the person who knows how to run the house and guide the children.

What we get is a full and complete picture of this family and of the mother they adore. The Spanish flu epidemic is in full swing, and as one family member after another succumbs to it, we know this is about to be a story of loss, desperation, and sorrow, but also about love and connection and the unbreakable nature of family.

This story is largely autobiographical, which makes it all the more poignant. There was nothing sentimental about it, and yet it wrenched at the heart and caused me to fight back tears. In its short 174 pages, it exposes the depths of feeling in a host of characters as they navigate their ordinary lives.

He knew only that there was frozen ground under his feet, and that the trees he saw were real and he could by moving out of his path touch them. The snow dropping out of the sky did not turn when he turned or make any concession to his needs, but only to his existence. The snow fell on his shoulders and on the brim of his hat and it stayed there and melted. He was real. That was all he knew.

The losses in this book are very personal, but Maxwell knows, and conveys to us in his beautiful prose, that whatever we feel is never exclusively our own.

And he saw that his life was like all other lives. It had the same function. And it differed from them only in shape–as one salt-cellar is different from another. Or one knife-blade. What happened to him had happened before. And it would happen again, more than once.

This tale is soft and sharp, it is sad and joyful, and it is filled with the stuff that makes us human and helps us to understand others, as we seek to understand ourselves. William Maxwell is an under-rated writer; his name should be listed with the greats–he never disappoints me. ( )

A hilarious tale of the author when he was a young boy. This at least my second reading. ( )

A poignant semi-autobiographical story set during the 1918 flu pandemic, They Came Like Swallows traverses the deliberate change in living as the first world war reaches an end and the H1N1 virus spreads. Through the story of the Morison family, the casualties of the pandemic don't rely on dying people denoted solely by numbers but the personal aftermath they leave. Much more to two siblings who come face to face with the threat and eventual ambush of mortality. What makes this utterly unfortunate is how they don't get along at all. And some pinch of sibling envy and selfishness keep them far apart. Although the pandemic itself persists to be secondary with the complicated family dynamic hampered by gender roles and their complications at the centre, the response of the people is glaringly similar to current responses with the COVID19 pandemic. Indeed, a minor character disagrees with the closure of religious establishments because no way is the virus going to spread in an hour eucharistic celebration. And why will God let people die in his house? Another passing thought to consider is the skewed understanding of children about the pandemic. One kid slightly celebrates the school closures. Yet, They Came Like Swallows is essentially a novel about grief; the struggle to hold it together. The ultimate realisation that the beloved wouldn't come home again, comb their hair again nor even rest their hand on your shoulders again. A loss of innocence happens in parallel as well. And Maxwell writes in pulses of striking imagery and emotional bleakness. Every paragraph is saturated with delicate melancholy and bittersweet sentiments. The departed is perceived through others without really having a voice in the novel; a tearful set of memories in-transit that ceaselessly ripples across the absence they leave.

I am only rating this a tad lower than I should because it's too depressing for the current circumstances. To read a story about the pandemic while experiencing it in real-time is tacit masochism it seems. ( )