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Life, family and the echoes of generations examined through the prism of a love affair with birds, in this breathtakingly assured memoir.
Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2021
'Wonderful - I can't recommend it too highly.' - Helen Macdonald, author of H is For Hawk
This is a story about birds and fathers.
About the young magpie that fell from its nest in a Bermondsey junkyard into Charlie Gilmour's life - and swiftly changed it. Demanding worms around the clock, riffling through his wallet, sharing his baths and roosting in his hair...
About the jackdaw kept at a Cornish stately home by Heathcote Williams, anarchist, poet, magician, stealer of Christmas, and Charlie's biological father who vanished from his life in the dead of night.
It is a story about repetition across generations and birds that run in the blood; about a terror of repeating the sins of the father and a desire to build a nest of one's own.
It is a story about change - from wild to tame; from sanity to madness; from life to death to birth; from freedom to captivity and back again, via an insane asylum, a prison and a magpie's nest.
And ultimately, it is the story of a love affair between a man and a magpie.
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
ISBN: 9781474609487
Number of pages: 288
Weight: 260 g
Dimensions: 198 x 126 x 24 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Featherhood is one of the best books I've ever read. I urge you to seek it out, buy it, and be enchanted. It's incredibly moving and I loved every single page.' - Elton John
'The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years. It announces Charlie Gilmour as a major new writing talent.' - Neil Gaiman
'Wonderful - I can't recommend it too highly.' - Helen Macdonald
'Beautiful, wise, compassionate and powerful, Featherhood is one of those rare, enchanted books that sings to the soul of what it is to be' - Isabella Tree
'What a book! I was entranced. A personal reckoning which is simultaneously brutal and joyous. It's full of light. I want to tell everyone about it' - Cathy Rentzenbrink
'Featherhood is an incisive, funny and at times traumatic study of the damage done by destructive father-son relationships and the struggle to smash generational cycles.' - Evening Standard
'An affecting and beautifully written memoir.' - The Bookseller
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“Featherhood”
I bought this book after hearing the author talking about the book on Radio Sussex. It is very funny , sad and uplifting all at the same time. Beautifully written and I raced to the end hoping for a happy out come... More
“Astonishing memoir”
There is so much to praise in this beautiful work. Charlie Gilmour's journalism has always been utterly sharp and incisive. This is that and more so - it is at times raw and at the same time heart warming. The... More
“A marvellous melding of memoir & natural history”
Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour is a remarkable combination of memoir & nature writing. Either element on its own would make for a fascinating read, yet together, they merge to form one of the very best books... More
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