Hummingbirds: A Novel

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. show more 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. show less

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 show more 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) show less

Leo Binhammer is an English instructor at Carmine-Casey Academy, a private high school for girls. Adored and admired, Leo finds great contentment and solace in his profession as the only male teacher in the English department, doting girls following his every move. But Leo's world is disrupted when, one day, a charismatic new teacher named Ted Hughes arrives. This teacher is also a young and attractive man, and although he is friendly and amiable, Leo begins to feel displaced from his high perch at the school when the girls begin to notice and appreciate the attractive newcomer. As Leo learns to adjust to his new circumstances, life continues on at school and complexities and rivalries crop up in not only the students' lives, but in the show more teachers' as well. Leo and Ted become unlikely friends and Leo begins to unwittingly uncover all the many secrets and intrigues that Ted has kept hidden. Wryly amusing and stylistically deft, Hummingbirds is a cautionary and provocative tale about the overly fragile egos of two very educated men.

I really enjoyed this book, and for the most part, I would have to say that it was extremely well crafted. I was impressed with the author's writing style. It was very fluid and engaging, and in addition, most of the writing was very witty and humorous. The author seemed really adept at creating humorous situations and dialogue that really made the story sparkle and sizzle. Other sections of the book were written a bit like prose: great imagery and succinct word choices that made an impact without being overbearing. The writing struck the perfect balance for me by being neither too sparse nor too wordy, and instead I felt that the author was able to capture the emotions and conundrums of his characters perfectly. The narrative was told through several points of view, but these shifts were handled very solidly and without a lot of confusion, making the multiple narrator strategy very successful.

The story actually had three subplots: two involving the teachers, and one involving the students. It was very amusing to see that the teachers and staff had more drama and intrigue going on than the students did and that they handled their dramas with much more immaturity and snark than a group of teenage girls ever could. Though the story that focused on the students was interesting and involving, I thought that the grist behind the teachers' escapades was much more satisfying to me personally. I think on the whole, the story was integrated very well, with neither side dominating the limelight excessively.

I also thought that all of the characterizations were done very well and were remarkably detailed, though my favorite was the exasperated Binhammer, who sometimes could be a bit churlish when it came to his waning popularity. The author really had the knack for crating well rounded three dimensional characters, and I thought that he was quite brilliant in his creations of the schoolgirls. He managed to capture all the innocence and seductiveness that was teetering on the edge of their femininity remarkably well, and it was not hard at all to take them seriously as both girls and women due to their expert creation.

The only part of the book that I took exception to was the ending. Up until the last section of the book, I was happily reading along and spending most of my mental energy in being impressed by the author's turn of phrase or expert scene creation. I was completely taken by surprise by the turn the book took towards the end, and the main thing that bothered me was not the direction that the action took in the story, but the way the characters reacted to it. I don't want to say too much about the plot twist because I fear I will be giving too much away to those that are going to read the book, but after a certain point, I didn't think that the reactions of the surrounding characters were very realistic, especially in the case of Binhammer. It was almost as if he changed some of the fundamental aspects of his character. After examining it more closely, I also draw the conclusion that perhaps the reader doesn't know the true Binhammer until the ending of the book, and that these revelations about his character had always been there just waiting to be exposed under the right circumstances. Whatever the case may be, I felt that the ending left me a little bewildered, if not taken aback. I don't think that my bewilderment at the conclusion of the book drastically affected my enjoyment of it, and to a certain degree, I think it may have changed or even enriched the complexity of the story, so I can't really say that the ending was a disappointment. Rather I will say that I think it was a little unexpected and made me reshape the terms under which I was reading.

There were a lot of wonderful aspects to this story and I think that if you are the type of person to appreciate witty and satirical writing, this is definitely the book for you. The plot and character creation were first rate, as was the smooth writing. This is not only a great book to lose yourself in, it is a book that will make you think and evaluate the power of interpersonal relationships. A great read. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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.

If you like witty and satirical writing about prep school peccadilloes, this was enjoyable light reading, but I would strongly suggest "The Headmaster's Dilemma," by Louis Auchincloss, as a better example of this genre.

sweet combination of girls prep school and sultry adult goings on. great description both of being a prep school teacher and student. yummy.

2.10