Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir (Hardback)

Every minute was magical, every single thing it did was fascinating and everything it didn't do was equally wondrous, and to be sat there, with a Kestrel, a real live Kestrel, my own real live Kestrel on my wrist! I felt like I'd climbed through a hole in heaven's fence.

An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham only felt himself in the fields and woods around his suburban home.

But when he stole a young Kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love; a friendship that would change him forever.

In his rich, lyrical and emotionally exposing memoir, Chris brings to life his childhood in the '70s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds' eggs and sweaty jam jars, to his feral adventures. Pervading his story is the search for freedom, meaning and acceptance in a world that didn't understand him.

Beautifully wrought, this coming-of-age memoir is unlike any you've ever read.

'It is fierce, disturbing and surprising - about the man himself and as a piece of writing. Both, frankly, are on the edge.' - The Sunday Times

'A raw, strange, mesmerising book.' - The Express

'A bewitchingly raw and unusual memoir' - The Sunday Telegraph