When CEO Aidan Perez’s wife died he made the decision to sell the tech business he had founded and try to build a new life somewhere different. After moving from France to Singapore, where his daughter is attending university, his plans have floundered. He seeks guidance and direction from an encounter group of executives called The Nomads who share business and life tips at their regular monthly meetings. After one of these meetings, Perez comes across a manuscript promoting mindfulness and letting go of the restraints that bind an individual to the wrong path. Fascinated by the document Perez sees his attitude to life shift and sets out to find the anonymous author in the hope that he can guide him to a new future.
Aneace Haddad is a successful mindfulness coach, business mentor and lecturer. With his debut novel, THE EAGLE THAT DRANK HUMMINGBIRD NECTAR, he aims to offer the insights and guidance techniques he has developed over his career in a fictionalized format. It’s a tricky thing to get right. The very best allegorical novels are driven by narratives that prompt thought and whose meanings are slowly revealed to the reader. They can be read and enjoyed at face value while the truth they contain is not immediately obvious. A classic of course is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, the philosophical masterpiece that can also simply be enjoyed as an engrossing children’s story. Indeed, at one point in THE EAGLE THAT DRANK HUMMINGBIRD NECTAR Haddad directly quotes Saint- Exupéry, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away.” This, and other bons mots, are liberally sprinkled throughout the novel which, though always engaging, frequently fails in its ambition to be narratively driven. There is an over reliance on “business speak” which rather hinders the development of characters and the situations they find themselves in. Much of the wisdom imparted, though undoubtedly astute and perfectly valid, is delivered too literally. The quoting of the manuscript within the text is particularly problematic in that often the reader is receiving information and advice which is being decoded for them by the character on the page. There is exposition where there should be a place for imagination. That said, there are moments when Haddad gets the pitch just right. There are metaphorical memories of dreams. An arresting image of an eagle rotting under wet leaves. Lyrical passages on the flora of Singapore. When the author frees himself from having to explicitly explain his ideas, when he breaks out of the world of CEOs and LinkedIn accounts, the book, like the birds in its title, really begins to fly.
While Aneace Haddad’s THE EAGLE THAT DRANK HUMMINGBIRD NECTAR has some failings as a novel, as a business book it is full off innovative ideas and the unusual and refreshing approach to its subject warrants close reading.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader