The Kindness of Birds

Merlinda Bobis, Deb Snibson

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English

Spinifex Press
01 May 2021

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Australian Fiction

An oriole sings to a dying father. A bleeding-heart dove saves the day. A crow wakes a woman’s resolve. Owls help a boy endure isolation. Cockatoos attend the laying of the dead. Always there are birds in these linked stories that pay homage to kindness amidst loss, grief, discord and displacement, from Australia to the Philippines, across cultures and species. When we encounter that snag in the breath, that shadow of a wing, we hope to remember kindness.

Kindness cannot self-isolate. It moves both ways and all ways, like breath.

By: Merlinda Bobis
Illustrated by: Deb Snibson
Imprint: Spinifex Press
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 226mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 10mm
Weight: 300g
ISBN: 9781925950304
ISBN 10: 1925950301
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 01 May 2021
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Award-winning writer Merlinda Bobis has had four novels, six poetry books, a collection of short stories, and ten dramatic works published. Her novel Locust Girl, A Lovesong received the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the Philippine National Book Award. Her poetry collection Accidents of Composition was Highly Commended for the ACT Book of the Year Award. For her, writing is homecoming: a return to roots, a retrieval through memory, and a reckoning with loss hopefully with care and grace. She lives and writes on Ngunnawal land.

Reviews for The Kindness of Birds

Merlinda Bobis is an utterly distinctive voice in Australian letters. In our ironic and cynical times, here are stories of heartfelt feeling fulsome, tender and unabashed in which grief and hope are equally things with feathers. Gail Jones, award-winning novelist These stories are beyond beautiful and deeply moving, raw, tender, brimming with love and pain, death and life. Like lit diamonds, to borrow a phrase from Bobiss own exquisite language. I love how birds are everywhere in attendance, signalling ancestral wisdom, pointing to the strength of the human spirit and its deep ties with all of life. I love how each story feels like a tonic for our time, illuminated from within by so much grace and kindness, it gives hope and inspires awe. Jennifer Ackerman, bestselling author of The Genius of Birds