Laura Stanfill

Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary is historical fiction set in France and America during the 1800s. Henri Blanchard is the son of a music-box maker who would rather make lace than follow in his father's footsteps. Henri discovers his father had son born before him to one of his father's American customers. When circumstances drive Henri to flee to America, he meets his half-brother and discovers a world beyond his small French village.

Laura Stanfill is the editor and publisher at Forest Avenue Press, a prize-winning independent publisher of literary fiction and memoir. She is a fine essay writer whose work has appeared in
Shondaland, The Rumpus, Catapult, The Vincent Brothers Review, Santa Fe Writers Project, and several print anthologies. This is Stanfill's debut novel.

Singing Lessons is a warmhearted and beguiling story that will capture readers with its gentle charms.… (meer)

The title is quirky, and there is some quirkiness and magical realism in the story, but it’s beautifully crafted. It’s filled with music, magic, intrigue, young heroes, and love. Set in the 19th century in France and New York, the novel also describes in some detail the manufacturing and use of serinettes – a type of music box consisting of a small barrel organ that was configured, with metal pins, to play several different tunes. They were often used to teach male canaries to sing specific tunes. Every year New York’s upper class canaries (read: wealthy women who owned them) competed for the title of best singer, among other qualities. The birds and instruments serve as a great driver of the story and shows off Stanfill’s research skills.… (meer)

The Blanchard family in Mireville, France has long been master craftsmen in the making of serinettes, hand-crafted barrel organs used to train canaries to sing particular pieces. This gives them quite a high status among their fellow villagers and indeed among the other music makers as well. Georges Blanchard is born a colicky baby whose noisiness disturbs his father as he tries to hear each musical note. When Georges finally stops crying and is taken to the village to show the others, the perpetual gloom that has shrouded the village breaks and in a miracle, the sun comes out. Henceforth he is known as the Sun-Bringer. Problematically, the sun does not go away, which can be interpreted several ways. This is the family into which Henri Blanchard is born, son of the Sun-Bringer, quiet and sensitive boy who doesn't fit in with the other village boys, son destined to inherit his father's workshop but who wishes to learn the art of bobbin lace making like the women in the town, a family in which he has much to live up to.

This is a gentle story with elements of the fantastical and it reads like a fairy tale of sorts. Henri wants acceptance, from his father and from the others in town. He only know pieces of what make him an outsider (showing his emotions; his father's, and therefore his, status in the village; spending time with girls) but when a large secret is revealed and then an unbelievable talent is uncovered, he comes to a more complete understanding. The novel has a unique premise even while it addresses familiar issues like friendship, parenting, acceptance, and a search for selfhood. Henri is a tender and appealing character and his discovery that serinettes, while beautiful and skillful music boxes, repress canary's natural chirps and trills is very much a metaphor for his own young life. The village women seemingly have no power and yet their small rebellions show this to be untrue and ultimately culminate in something major. Stanfill's writing is beautiful, giving the novel an elegant and timeless feel. There are some fairly big plot lines that simply disappear here and the end of the story might be hard for some readers but I thought it gives the novel a hopeful, continuation sort of feel. This is an unusual, intriguing story with many layers and one that readers looking for something different should give a chance.… (meer)