PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- Elva has moved to Iceland in the hope that her disappeared mother (a native of Iceland) may turn up there. Her beloved grandfather is her only other relative; he is a renowned if reclusive author, famous for his macabre children's tales which feature a character with her name. She works in a shop that specialises in weird and wonderful curiosities, is teaching herself taxidermy from internet tutorials, attending Icelandic language classes, and has a secret she keeps in the furthest part of her attic flat - and one she keeps in the deepest reaches of her past. When her grandfather has a stroke, Elva starts to freefall into her obsessions… A strange and otherworldly story of imagination and displacement, of running away from your past into a present that holds no sanctuary from it, and of finding beauty in the off-kilter and overlooked. Lindy
Rijn Collins is an award-winning short story writer, published in many journals and anthologies, as well as having numerous audio stories produced: 'Almost Flamboyant' won the inaugural Sarah Awards for International Audio Fiction in New York. She has been a guest at many Australian writers' festivals. Rijn has also enjoyed two bitterly cold writing residencies: at Listhus in Olafsfjoerdur, an Icelandic fishing village that inspired this work, and at Haihatus in Joutsa, a rural forest community in central Finland. She currently lives in Melbourne.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- Elva has moved to Iceland in the hope that her disappeared mother (a native of Iceland) may turn up there. Her beloved grandfather is her only other relative; he is a renowned if reclusive author, famous for his macabre children's tales which feature a character with her name. She works in a shop that specialises in weird and wonderful curiosities, is teaching herself taxidermy from internet tutorials, attending Icelandic language classes, and has a secret she keeps in the furthest part of her attic flat - and one she keeps in the deepest reaches of her past. When her grandfather has a stroke, Elva starts to freefall into her obsessions… A strange and otherworldly story of imagination and displacement, of running away from your past into a present that holds no sanctuary from it, and of finding beauty in the off-kilter and overlooked. Lindy
‘Fed to Red Birds is dreamy and immersive … both travelogue and beautifully written literary fiction. It is for readers who loved the insightful prose and armchair travel of Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au and the brooding, fairytale-esque feelings of Hydra by Adriane Howell.’ * <i><b>Books+Publishing</b></i> * 'a tender ode to the wonder in the macabre ... [A] captivating debut' * <B><I>Australian</I></B> *
