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
Melanesia. Travels in Black Oceania
With 28 million people and growing, Melanesia is emerging from its colonial past. The region should be of great strategic interest to Australia. The arc of islands to the north and north-east of Australia takes in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Vanuatu, Fiji and some of New Caledonia.
Hamish McDonald, a former foreign correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, takes us through the region as he travels by ferry, fishing boat, car and truck. McDonald provides a brief history of each nation he visits as he meets with politicians and everyday people alike to sketch a fascinating snapshot of our neighbours.
Melanesia. Travels in Black Oceania is enjoyable, readable and a work of considerable scholarship. Highly recommended.
Brendan Atkins
Author of The Naturalist. The remarkable life of Allan Riverstone McCulloch (NewSouth, 2022).
What a comprehensive, well researched expose of our iconic apex predator, the Dingo. So maligned since colonisation and the arrival of pastoralists, thus the target for myth making, bounties, shooting and trapping, Roland explores the fact that Dingoes are now hovering between endangered and in certain areas potential extinction. Will the Dingo become the next Thylacine.
He brings new hope as science is now proving that Dingoes are integral to maintaining ecological balance, partly by keeping, foxes, wild pigs and goats under control and maintaining healthy numbers of kangaroos.
Always embedded in indigenous Dreamtime lore then to a scapegoat and outlaw with a bounty on its head will the Dingo become once again a cultural icon if we allow it the freedom to save our fragile ecosystem
This book was impossible to put down. Equally discomforting and fascinating, the stories within are never fully told, leaving your imagination to fill in the gaps. This book is everything that our ever-increasing AI world is not. Painfully and beautifully human, with no punches pulled.
This book was interesting to see how in the animal kingdom, there is a lot of sexual diversity, and the males and females of each species are cared for equally in the group. I was disappointed that Erna found it necessary to bring in a quote from the bible, Corinthians, to show that women were kept down and in their box in that era. What that verse meant was that women weren't allowed to discuss or argue biblical meanings in the church with the men. That was to be done at home. I think that would have been because the men were educated in the church ways whereas the women weren't. It still shows that the women were not given the same rights as men but what it doesn't show is that women weren't allowed to sing and young men were castrated so they could sing with a boy soprano voice.
I was also disappointed that there weren't so many stories of zoo keeping. I was hoping it would be like a James Harriot of zoo keeping book.
Cultural practices have discriminated against women through the ages and continue to do so but it there has been great headway and continues to be. I thank Erma for being one of the women who fought for the right to be treated respectfully in that all male domain.
Melanesia. Travels in Black Oceania
With 28 million people and growing, Melanesia is emerging from its colonial past. The region should be of great strategic interest to Australia. The arc of islands to the north and north-east of Australia takes in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Vanuatu, Fiji and some of New Caledonia.
Hamish McDonald, a former foreign correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, takes us through the region as he travels by ferry, fishing boat, car and truck. McDonald provides a brief history of each nation he visits as he meets with politicians and everyday people alike to sketch a fascinating snapshot of our neighbours.
Melanesia. Travels in Black Oceania is enjoyable, readable and a work of considerable scholarship. Highly recommended.
Brendan Atkins
Author of The Naturalist. The remarkable life of Allan Riverstone McCulloch (NewSouth, 2022).
Melanesia
Andrea Phelan
The Dingo a most maligned animal
What a comprehensive, well researched expose of our iconic apex predator, the Dingo. So maligned since colonisation and the arrival of pastoralists, thus the target for myth making, bounties, shooting and trapping, Roland explores the fact that Dingoes are now hovering between endangered and in certain areas potential extinction. Will the Dingo become the next Thylacine.
He brings new hope as science is now proving that Dingoes are integral to maintaining ecological balance, partly by keeping, foxes, wild pigs and goats under control and maintaining healthy numbers of kangaroos.
Always embedded in indigenous Dreamtime lore then to a scapegoat and outlaw with a bounty on its head will the Dingo become once again a cultural icon if we allow it the freedom to save our fragile ecosystem
Dingo: The true story of Australia's most maligned native animal
Brian
Perfect for a new DM, well made and full of useful stuff
This book was impossible to put down. Equally discomforting and fascinating, the stories within are never fully told, leaving your imagination to fill in the gaps. This book is everything that our ever-increasing AI world is not. Painfully and beautifully human, with no punches pulled.
The Red Light Starts Blinking
Brian Baxter
A true gem!
Sometimes in movies you see a bookstore with nearly everything you want, staff full of knowledge and knowing advice. That place feels like magic. This is that place
