A beautiful book, written with knowledge and compassion, detailing the astonishing life cycle of the Eskimo Curlew. This was a bird that flew in such huge flocks that a single gunshot would kill 30, and maim more sentencing them to a slower death. It describes their amazing migrations and details their lives as a biography of one male bird. I knew about the mass slaughter of the American bison and total annihilation of the passenger pigeon not knowing about this other species wiped out by hunting in the US in the 1800s and early 1900. A very powerful portrait.
Driven by instinct, the graceful Eskimo curlew flies its nine-thousand-mile route from the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America and back again. Bodsworth conveys the mechanics of this single bird's remarkable flight and its instinctive search for others of its kind. The lone survivor comes to stand for the entirety of a lost species, and indeed for all in nature that is endangered.
Excellent, enthralling, and while full of vocabulary unfamiliar to me, I enjoyed encountering new words without this ever slowing down my reading. A touching portrait of a wandering soul, and post Second World War north-east England.
**SOON TO BE A MAJOR FILM STARRING HELENA BONHAM-CARTER**
FROM THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GALLOWS POLE COMES A POWERFUL NEW NOVEL A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR _______________________
'A book that always feels like summer' The Times
'What a radical thing, these days, to have written a book so full of warmth and kindness ... Gorgeous' - Max Porter, author of Lanny
'Glorious ... Leaves an indelible impression ... A moving and subtle novel in many ways, infused with a love of the minute pleasures in life, and the lasting regrets' - Scotland on Sunday _______________________
An exceptional book, beautifully written, atmospheric and brave in the way Brown admits his uncertainties and deficiencies. A moving read by a self-effacing doctor, with humour and perceptive observations of all around him.
Damien Brown thinks he's ready when he arrives for his first posting with Medecins Sans Frontieres in Africa. But the town he's sent to is an isolated outpost of mud huts, surrounded by landmines; the hospital, for which he's to be the only doctor, is filled with malnourished children and conditions he's never seen; and the health workers - Angolan war veterans twice his age who speak no English - walk out on him following an altercation on his first shift.
In the months that follow, Damien confronts these challenges all the while dealing with the social absurdities of living…
When medicine offered only limits, a mother chose possibility… When her son, David, was born with a severe / life-limiting heart condition, Dr Jane Wilson-Howarth faced a grim prognosis. Unwilling to subject him to a lifetime of needles, tube-feeds and medical cocktails that left him twitching at noises and vomiting after every feed, she made the difficult decision to take him out of the hospital system. Rejoining her aid-worker husband in Nepal, she immersed David in a culture that viewed him not as abnormal but ‘touched by god’. Surrounded by Himalayan jungles and wildlife, he lived a profoundly joyful life, free from sterile wards and full of laughter. In this powerful, uplifting memoir, Jane looks back on David’s short life of dignity and happiness, surer than ever that she made the right call.
