I have mixed feelings about this book. I would probably have given this one star, but there were some things in here that really made me think and a few sections that I genuinely liked. The main problem I had with this novel was that I just didn't care about the characters, they were all so fully of apathy that I couldn't bring myself to care either. I think if they had focused on just one, or the author had chosen to narrate it differently, I could have enjoyed it more. I guess I just don't like this author's style, or his characters. There were a few moments I enjoyed but mostly I found myself counting down the pages until I was done. ( )

Set at an elite Manhattan all girls high school, HUMMINGBIRDS is a novel of simmering high-school angst, from the perspective of the teachers as well as the students, and is not the dishy, Gossip Girl-esque novel of conspicuous consumption and extravagant vice one might expect.

The protagonist, young and handsome Leo Binhammer, is the only male teacher in the English department of the Carmine-Casey School, and he likes it that way. He loves it when students preen and fight for his attention, and he loves it when the female teachers in his department do it, too. Binhammer is naturally threatened when Ted Hughes is hired to teach English at the beginning of the new year, and his negative feelings solidify when he recognizes Hughes as the man who had a brief affair with his wife two years earlier.

When Hughes arrives, he quickly starts moving in on Binhammer’s turf – charming the other teachers in the English department and captivating the students. He seems to do everything that Binhammer does, only a little better – grading papers faster, and marking each one with more thoughtful comments; getting up in front of a classroom and teaching even more intellectual material, with even more brio. Hughes is a doppelganger – a flashier, slicker, but also nastier version of Binhammer. Binhammer wants to hate Hughes, but he can’t – they are too alike.

HUMMINGBIRDS is so titled because Binhammer thinks the students at his school remind him of hummingbirds, “their delicate, over-heated bodies fretting in short, angled bursts of movement around a bottle of red sugar water.” The novel focuses on two students at the high school: the charismatic, popular Dixie Doyle and the dour intellectual Liz Warren. They are well drawn, complex characters. Dixie has a crush on Binhammer, while Liz has a crush on Hughes – and each girl gives the teacher she likes an opportunity to make their girlish fantasies come true. Binhammer tells Dixie that, if things were different, he’d be interested – he crosses a line, but he is motivated by kindness and pity. Hughes, on the other hand, is selfish – he brings Liz back to his apartment one night and takes her virginity.

In the end, Hughes is caught and fired. But nobody ever finds out about Binhammer’s admission to Dixie, so he regains his position as the only male English teacher at Carmine-Casey.

HUMMINGBIRDS is full of frequent rhapsodies about the glorious mystery of young girls, with a LOLITA-esqe atmosphere of restrained sexuality throughout. It is a portrait of a man who has learned to look but not touch, observing an evil, darker version of himself that cannot resist temptation. The novel is elegant and insightful, but also dreadfully slow. Not much happens, and Binhammer is ultimately a little too good to be true (it’s certainly no coincidence that the author himself was once a teacher at a Manhattan high school) ( )

The Short of It:

A perfect mix of wit and self-doubt.

The Rest of It:

Carmine-Casey is a swank, all-girl prep school in Manhattan. There, girls like Dixie Doyle and Liz Warren walk the hallways, somewhat innocent of the effect they have on others but at the same time, aware that somewhere within them, lies the power to take grown men down.

Enter Leo Binhammer. Binhammer, as he is affectionately called, is the only male teacher in the English department and prides himself on the fact that nearly every female he encounters finds him fascinating in some way. His position as stud is challenged when Ted Hughes joins the staff. Ted is also witty with the ladies. So much so, that years ago he had an affair with Binhammer’s wife, Sarah. Although Binhammer keeps this info to himself, the two find themselves jockeying for a favorable position and the result is entertaining and amusing.

This is not your typical prep-school fare. The girls are blown-up stereotypes of what we know popular girls to be, but these girls are innocently charming as well as dangerously sexual and bright. Extremely bright. Young and green but on the verge of becoming something else. They possessed a freshness that I found so appealing.

The men, although full of testosterone and practically strutting the halls, had a vulnerability to them that I found wildly attractive. I could easily see myself as one of their students hanging on their every word. As I was reading, I recalled my middle school days when I had a huge crush on Mr. Taylor, my history teacher. I gazed at him every chance I could and when I had him again as a professor in college, imagine my surprise! College meant I was older and not jail bait. Get my drift? Of course nothing happened but my point is that Gaylord’s depiction of such a formative period was spot on. The fawning, the exaggerated sighs, the doubt that manifests itself in preening and five layers of lip gloss.

The other thing that impressed me is how the author managed to create such flawed, yet likable characters. I don’t recall one character that I disliked in any way. They all had their faults but their vulnerabilities saved them from being vapid, empty creatures. I enjoyed their insecurities far too much but I couldn’t help it, I was sucked into their world every time I opened the book.

I also thought quite a bit about the significance of the title. These girls flit and float around these men as hummingbirds do to flowers, but it’s more than that. To me, the fleeting quality of their youth is what stood out. Their inability to remain young forever and the unknown of what was to come is what occupied my thoughts long after I finished the novel.

I highly recommend this one. It somehow captures adolescence and adulthood in one fell swoop.

For more reviews, visit my blog: Book Chatter. ( )

AUDIO VERSION.

This book was a really strange read - or since it was the audio book - a really strange listen?

It was very uneven and kept meandering in the slowest way - taking time to deviate to all kinds of asides - rather than feeling meaty and complex - it felt really unfocused and messy. The main character Binhammer was really hard to understand. He seemed to react to experiences in a really uneven and unpredictable way. The other major character Ted Hughes was lack luster. His portrayal in the book really didn't support the adoration that he reportedly received from all the women of the world.

Really strange book - felt like a first draft that really needed some major help with direction and editing.
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The book was not helped by the reader either. She was not well practiced at male voices and employed a technique for the male characters of sort of just letting her voice peter out in to a staccato growl-y noise at the end of each thought that was really annoying. In retrospect - I find it really odd that they went with a female reader when the book is so heavily male. ( )

Leo Binhammer is used to ruling the roost as the only male in a female-dominated English department at Carmine-Casey Academy, an elite all-girls private school in New York City. And he plays the part well, lapping up the attention hoisted upon him by the nubile school girls desperate for his attention. Not in a creepy way, I mean; the man’s not a pedophile. But does he enjoy being the center of attention, doted upon by both students and middle-aged single mothers? Yes. Yes, he does.

But the joy of the girls’ hero-worship comes to a screeching halt with the arrival of a newcomer. Young, handsome and aloof Ted Hughes — like the poet, but not like the poet — comes to Carmine-Casey amid the twittering of students’ whispers, and not without a connection to Binhammer’s past. And present. And possibly future. Now faced with sharing his students’ devotion with someone he recognizes as charismatic but still despises, Binhammer is shaken to the core.

Throw in delusions of grandeur on the part of some of the students — like young playwright Liz Warren — and you’ve got a concoction for some serious dramz — just on a larger, more intellectual scale.

And that’s truly how I would describe Joshua Gaylords’ Hummingbirds — a Gossip Girl for the thinking woman or man. Of course, it lacks the salacious gossip quality of a Gossip Girl novel . . . and that’s what makes those books so compulsively readable for me.

What this one lacks in scandalous dirt, however, it makes up for through vivid characterization and an attempt to really get to the core of one man: Binhammer. Did it work, though? I don’t know. By the time I finished Hummingbirds, I can’t say I felt any more deeply for Leo than I did when first cracking the spine here. In fact, I felt one of the most dangerous emotions of all for any reader: indifference.

That was my major issue with the novel, which I read quickly but failed to truly connect with: there was an emotional component completely missing — something that would make me want to have coffee with or chat with these characters. Dixie Doyle, another of the students known less for her intellect and more for her flirtatious attitude, was someone I found fascinating on the surface — but I never got a good read on her.

I enjoyed Gaylord’s wonderful turns of phrase and keen observations — including the line providing the book’s title. Looking upon the swarms of girls roaming the halls of Carmine-Casey, Binhammer “is reminded of hummingbirds, their delicate, overheated bodies fretting in short, angled bursts of movement around a bottle of red sugar water.”

Lines like this are scattered through the story, providing a lyrical and lovely way of looking at the habits of folks here — destructive, oblivious — but that wasn’t enough to really draw me into Hummingbirds. Much as I wanted to step into the frame, I was always starkly at a distance. ( )