
Published: 11/07/2019

A poised, delicate novel about isolation, both enforced and voluntary, and the unexpected connections people make at their most vulnerable. Based around an unconventional love triangle and set in both New York and London, Starling Days interrogates ideas of ennui, loneliness and alienation in shimmering, sophisticated prose.
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2019
Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the officers she's not about to jump but they don't believe her. Her husband, Oscar is called to pick her up.
Oscar hopes that leaving New York for a few months will give Mina the space to heal. They travel to London, to an apartment wall-papered with indigo-eyed birds, to Oscars oldest friends, to a canal and blooming flower market. Mina, a classicist, searches for solutions to her failing mental health using mythological women. But she finds a beam of light in a living woman. Friendship and attraction blossom until Oscar and Mina's complicated love is tested.
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9781473638372
Number of pages: 304
Weight: 406 g
Dimensions: 220 x 142 x 34 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'A beautifully weird portrayal of being alone together, millennial ennui, bisexuality and hybrid identity. It captures the brilliance and isolation of big cities as well as the struggle and strength to keep on going. A singular novel from the poetic and painterly mind of Rowan Hisayo Buchanan.' - Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti
'Starling Days is a quiet triumph - tenderly and disarmingly exploring the responsibility of love, loneliness, what it is to feel lost, and whether another person, indeed whether any one person, is capable of making us feel found. It illuminates both the difficulties and joys of being with others, but also those of being inside our own skins.' - Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
'An exquisite rendering of love, sadness, and misunderstanding . . . Starling Days is an exploration of depression without clear resolution, but it is all the more precious for that refusal. I want to share this book with everyone I know. ' - Paris Review
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