Bird Life, the second novel by Booker Prize longlisted author Anna Smaill, is a lyrical and ambitious exploration of madness and what it is like to experience the world differently.

‘Bird Life explores the moment when lives derail – and the causes behind it. What drives that instant when a path veers off in a different, unexpected direction? Sometimes it seems to happen by chance; at other times it’s firmly chosen. What if the split was somehow inevitable, seeded in one’s memory or genetics? What if the catalyst was a powerful and singular relationship?’ – Anna Smaill

In Ueno Park, Toyko, 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 traumas, 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 a marvel. 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, author of The Ghost Theatre.

‘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 and The Forrests.

Anna Smaill is the author of The Chimes, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won best novel in the World Fantasy Awards in 2016, and the poetry collection The Violinist in Spring (2005). Born in Auckland, she has spent several years in Japan and the United Kingdom and holds a PhD from the University of London. 

She lives on Wellington’s south coast with her husband, novelist Carl Shuker, and their two children. Bird Life is her second novel.

Bird Life by Anna Smaill | Te Herenga Waka University Press | Published November 2023 | $38

For interview enquiries, review copies or for further information contact: Penny Hartill – director hPR 021 721 424, penny@hartillpr.co.nz