“Grief is very tiring,” says Dinah in Bird Life, the second novel by New Zealand poet and creator Anna Smaill. Her debut, The Chimes, received the World Fantasy Award and was longlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize. Elements of speculative chance infuse Bird Life: a novel, gently tipping the reader’s notion off kilter.
Dinah has simply moved to Japan from New Zealand. Her work visa is sponsored by a college the place she teaches English. She hopes that being in Tokyo will ease the grief of shedding her twin, Michael: “It’s good just being somewhere I can turn the corner without thinking of him.” Her grief fails to dissipate: if something, it strengthens – “the grief that came off her palpable” – and attracts consideration.
Yasuko is educating on the similar college. She is charismatic, bawdy and wearing designer garments. She seeks a friendship with Dinah after being instructed to take action by a peacock. Yasuko has understood animals since she was 13. “The first moments of her gift had a heavy quality, almost a dullness. It was the quality of inevitability.” The twin narrative construction offers a full sense of this inevitability. The reader is transported – wholly and gladly – into Yasuko’s perspective. Everything is sensible, even when “the world’s strangeness” is now not “held back by the ordinary routines of the day”.
The e-book’s exploration of psychological well being is tender, exacting and completely with out stigma. Characters keep away from utilizing “the right words, the words of diagnosis and explanation”. Eschewing the medicalisation of the mind cracks open the novel for poetic and narrative chance, and equally permits every relationship to be totally grounded in regular, true emotion. For occasion, Michael additionally heard sounds that others didn’t hear. When describing their relationship, Dinah says: “He built the world, and we both lived inside it. He made it up, and I believed him.”
Smaill’s sentences are the lifeblood of Bird Life. They are smoother and cooler than these in The Chimes, signalling a stunning new fashion. Her metaphors and similes expose the magic of the seemingly insignificant rhythms of life. From the method of planting a flower – “she put the earth back that had been removed and eased it in around the plant’s shoulders with great care. Like tucking a child into bed” – to the invention of a brand new piano – “Like finding that a horse or a goat had wandered inside. It was ugly and ungainly. It had too many teeth” – Smaill captures the unusual contours of the thoughts, physique and world round us. Bird Life is disquieting and comforting in equal measure.
Scribe Publications, 304pp, $29.99
This article was first revealed within the print version of The Saturday Paper on
February 3, 2024 as “Bird Life”.
For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has revealed Australia’s main writers and thinkers.
We have pursued tales which are ignored elsewhere, protecting them with sensitivity and depth.
We have completed this on refugee coverage, on authorities integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care,
on local weather change, on the pandemic.
All our journalism is fiercely impartial. It depends on the help of readers.
By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you might be guaranteeing that we are able to proceed to supply important,
issue-defining protection, to dig out tales that take time, to doggedly maintain to account
politicians and the political class.
There are only a few titles which have the liberty and the area to supply journalism like this.
In a rustic with a focus of media possession not like the rest on this planet,
it’s vitally necessary. Your subscription helps make it doable.
Purchase this e-book
Bird Life
When you buy a e-book via this hyperlink, Schwartz Media earns a fee.
This fee doesn’t affect our criticism, which is totally impartial.
