{"product_id":"9781761380112","title":"Bird Life: a novel","description":"Author: Smaill, Anna \u003cbr\u003eISBN: 9781761380112 \u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Scribe Publications \u003cbr\u003eYear First Published: 2024 \u003cbr\u003ePages: 304 \u003cbr\u003eDimensions: 209mm x 137mm x 22mm \u003cbr\u003eFormat: Paperback \/ softback \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDescripition: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe second novel by Booker Prize longlisted author Anna Smaill. A lyrical and ambitious exploration of madness and what it is like to experience the world differently.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Ueno Park, Tokyo, as workers and tourists gather for lunch, the pollen blows, a fountain erupts, pigeons scatter, and two women meet, changing the course of one another's lives.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDinah has come to Japan from New Zealand to teach English and grieve the death of her brother, Michael, a troubled genius who was able to channel his problems into music as a classical pianist - until he wasn't. In the seemingly empty, eerie apartment block where Dinah has been housed, she sees Michael everywhere, even as she feels his absence sharply.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYasuko is polished, precise, and keenly observant - of her students and colleagues at the language school, and of the natural world. When she was thirteen, animals began to speak to her, to tell her things she did not always want to hear. She has suppressed these powers for many years, but sometimes she allows them to resurface, to the dismay of her adult son, Jun. One day, she returns home, and Jun has gone. Even her special gifts cannot bring him back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs these two women deal with their individual trauma, they form an unlikely friendship in which each will help the other to see a different possible world, as Smaill teases out the tension between our internal and external lives and asks what we lose by having to choose between them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'\u003ci\u003eBird Life\u003c\/i\u003e is an astonishing book about grief, beauty, and survival ... the writing enters your bloodstream like a strange and wonderful drug.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e-Emily Perkins, author of \u003ci\u003eLioness\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'\u003ci\u003e Bird Life\u003c\/i\u003e is  as richly sensory and exquisite as Smaill's previous novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Chimes\u003c\/i\u003e. The world tilts and becomes strange and marvellous through her eyes.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e-Lucy Treloar, author of \u003ci\u003eWolfe Island\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The two women at the centre of Anna Smaill's lovely, disconcerting novel \u003ci\u003eBird Life\u003c\/i\u003e feel certain something is about to happen - something that's about to change everything. These kinds of proclamations in a novel can feel unfulfillable, but when Dinah and Yasuko finally do meet, the transformations each affects upon the other are surprising, consuming, and satisfying. Smaill's crystalline prose brings us inside each of their minds as they manoeuvre through a thoroughly modern cityscape into which the natural world is forever making incursions. An unusual, empathetic, and compulsively readable tale.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e-Dan Kois, author of \u003ci\u003eVintage Contemporaries\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Ships in 10 to 15 days","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45475690283166,"sku":"UBD-9781761380112","price":29.78,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0400\/9043\/5742\/files\/9781761380112.jpg?v=1747883645","url":"https:\/\/classicbargains.com.au\/products\/9781761380112","provider":"Classic Bargains Australia","version":"1.0","type":"link"}