Bird Life

I loved Dinah and Yasuko. The book is a very poignant exploration of mental illness. Beautifully written and very sad. Almost too beautiful to describe the condition if that makes sense. I shall now read The Chimes

Set in Tokyo, Bird Life opens arrestingly with two women in a city park, one a foreigner prostrate on the grass, carefully ignored by passersby, the other striding out perfectly groomed but with one shoe missing. Dinah has taken a job as a native English teacher in a technical university where Yosuko also teaches, fleeing a terrible grief for which she feels responsible. Sensing her misery, Yosuko draws Dinah into her orbit, convinced the young woman will help her find her son who has suddenly left home. Yosuko’s carefully polished beauty and exquisite grooming hide her inner turmoil. Since childhood, she’s been bedevilled by manic episodes, episodes that her son has come to dread yet she almost longs for.
Anna Smail slips smoothly between these two women, unfolding their stories of madness and loss in gorgeous dreamlike prose. Both Dinah and Yasuko are expertly drawn – Yasko’s glittering vividness attracting Dinah whose own quiet suffering is carefully sealed in. This is a character driven novel, little in the way of plot, yet it gripped me from its striking setup. Grief and madness are difficult themes to explore but Smail does it with great skill and a lyrical delicacy leaving her readers with much to think about and much to admire.

An absolutely beautiful and haunting novel by Anna Smaill, author of The Chimes. Set in Tokyo, the book follows the gradually intertwining stories of Dinah, a New Zealander who has come to Japan to teach English, and Yasuko, a sophisticated older teacher at the same language school. Both women are dealing with loss and betrayal and the narrative gradually explores their backstories whilst interweaving elements of (possibly) magical realism or (possibly) mental illness. This was an exquisitely crafted novel which is still staying with me days after I have finished it. Highly recommended.

What a delicate book about two women (Yosuko and Dinah) with difficult pasts who are trying to get through their day-to-day life in Japan. Anna Smaill's writing is so beautiful and emotionally resonant especially in how the two characters process their lives (routines, looping thoughts, specific purchases, etc.). Throughout the book, Smaill focuses on the details that make up the characters' existence (workplace relationship, loneliness of a big city, difficult relationship with parents, etc) so that we grow to care about them. The novel was a wonderful and beautiful story. Recommended.

Published 9th November. This book has an almost dreamlike quality at times as we wander between the interior lives of Yasuko and Dinah, our main characters. Dinah has travelled from New Zealand to Japan to teach English in a Tokyo school. Yasuko teaches at the same school. Both women are suffering from loss - Dinah of her twin brother, Michael, who she was very close to and Yasuko of her son, Jun. Believing that Dinah has been sent to help her, Yasuko befriends her to try to get her to engage with Jun. When she was 13, Yasuko discovered that she could talk to animals, and they would tell her things. They told her that her mother would die and her father would not take her seriously - something that causes them to become estranged. Later when she is a single mother, she believes that her father is trying to take Jun from her and so runs away. Her 'powers' later return which causes Jun to leave home. Dinah finds it difficult to be in the world, even to be in her flat and so spends her nights sleeping on a bench in the park until Michael's presence comes to stay. As I said there is a magical realism quality to some of the events in this book and there is also, I believe, an exploration of mental illness. But - there is also a lot about how our relationships with others can affect us. Superbly crafted.

This book beautifully captured grief and emotions and mental illness as a whole. I loved reading the development of these two women and their interactions with the wider world.