Dominique dreams of her father’s face in the waters of Angel Falls in Venezuela and shortly after, he contacts her for the first time in 30 years. She travels to Paris for answers in My Hummingbird Father.
When artist Dominique receives a letter from her dying father, a reckoning with repressed memories and a pull for romantic and familial love sends shock waves through her life, as she journeys to Paris to face the places and events of her early years.
Balanced with visits to the Venezuelan Amazon, where Dominique explores a spiritual and loving longing (meeting a young guide, Juan), a raw and tender unfolding of this love story is a parallel to the uncovering of the shocking truth of Dominique’s birth, and her parents’ relationship.
My Hummingbird Father opens with a memory or a dream sequence of a traumatic childhood experience; it’s animal imagery is evocative and earthy as well as fragile and delicate.
Later, the hummingbird will stitch her wounds with cobwebs, weave a nest in her mouth… mend every tear with moss and eagle down feathers, with leaf veins and hairs of the sleep sloth.
As Dominique seeks answers to her questions and attempts a reconciliation with her father, we travel with her to Paris, as she revisits and explores her childhood city; back to Venezuela, the South American landscape in which she dreamt of her dying father; and to Wales, where sister, Vero, cares for mother.
Pascale Petit’s descriptive writing is dreamlike yet interrogates what she sees with an artist’s perception of her surroundings, with all their potential for creative interpretation and inspiration. There’s a precision and focus to her wandering around Paris which helps her to unlock the neighbourhood she lived in, the apartment buildings they lived in as a family or the hotels her father was in when he was single or later estranged from the family.
The scenes between Dominique and her father are understandably frustrating and painful but interesting to see that while she visits, she does so on her own terms, not compromising the work she needs to complete for her art shows and fitting in time for her own exploration of the city. I loved watching Dominique scale the stairs of Notre Dame to find the chimeras on its roof, experience her joy at feeding the starlings and finding first the photograph then the hummingbirds themselves, while finding connections to Venezuela by visiting the zoo to see the king vultures and the jaguars. She unlocks the Paris of her childhood by revisiting old apartments but also rediscovers the city, so that she can find her place within it.
I wondered how it would work having two such diverse locations as city of Paris and the Angel Falls in Venezuela but Pascale Petit draws them together well, making good use of the birds, animals and chimera to find connections between the two. When Dominique travels to Venezuela the imagery is as lush and verdant as the surroundings and the animal wildlife; she swims with a green river snake and sees jewel-like hummingbirds hovering. The mountains seem mystical and ethereal and their sheer scale and power induce a reverence similar to being on the roof of Notre Dame. She finds herself opening up to her guide, Juan, because she also feels freer from her past here and open to the myths and legends, wildness and freedom, which feed into her art.
When the air shimmers with copper-green and ruby topaz, her… sketchbook is filled with new colours to paint with, colours only flowers have seen before, as the hermits and Incas drink their nectars, and the Hummers’ throats change colour with every sip.
Pascale Petit navigates the difficult terrain of parent-child relationships and abuse by balancing the ordinariness of Dominique’s mother’s Black Trunk of family letters and her father’s reduced state of being confined to his small rooms in Paris, with the way that Dominique translates this into her artwork, using the vibrant colours, wildlife and scenery from South America. Her use of animal and bird imagery is incredible and offers a deep insight into inspiration, creativity and interpretation, and art and the artist. My Hummingbird Father is a haunting, hopeful and illuminating look at the artist and her life, her loves and her work.
My Hummingbird Father by Pascale Petit is published by Salt Publishing as an ebook and in paperback. It is available from Salt and also from Amazon (affiliate link), Bookshop UK (affiliate link) and Waterstones. Pascale Petit’s debut novel is written in dialogue with her Laurel and RSL Ondaatje prize-winning poetry collection, Mama Amazonica.
My thanks to Helen Richardson for sending me a review copy and inviting me on the blog tour.
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