Bird Life

a novel

Anna Smaill

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Paperback

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English

Scribe Publications
09 January 2024

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Fantasy

The 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.

In 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.

Dinah 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.

Yasuko 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.

As 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.

'Bird Life is an astonishing book about grief, beauty, and survival ... the writing enters your bloodstream like a strange and wonderful drug.' -Emily Perkins, author of Lioness

'A beautifully lyrical tale of loss, grief, and madness, whose central characters are so deftly drawn that you find yourself breathlessly following them down. Magically strange yet horribly real.' -Mat Osman, bassist of Suede and author of The Ghost Theatre

'The two women at the centre of Anna Smaill's lovely, disconcerting novel Bird Life 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.' -Dan Kois, author of Vintage Contemporaries

By: Anna Smaill
Imprint: Scribe Publications
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 209mm, Width: 137mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 312g
ISBN: 9781761380112
ISBN 10: 1761380117
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 09 January 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Anna Smaill was born in Auckland in 1979. She holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Auckland, an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington and a PhD in English Literature from the University of London. She has published one book of poetry, The Violinist in Spring (Victoria University Press, 2005). Her debut novel The Chimes (Sceptre, 2015) was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won best novel in the World Fantasy Awards 2016. She lives on Wellington's south coast with her husband, novelist Carl Shuker, and their two children.