Birdbrain

by Virginia Arthur

Set at the dawn of America's environmental consciousness, late 1970's, early '80's, pretty Ellowyn Kelsey is a redneck girl living the pretty redneck life in rural Michigan, waiting for her husband to come around...Her self-imposed lobotomy ends when she shows up at the wrong time for a church picnic, meeting a bunch of birders instead. Watching a mating pair of bluebirds tending to one another causes something in her to break. Everyone recognizes what she's going through except her--the depth of her pain and emotion holds her captive. How can she be the last to know? She is indignant, hurt, has no idea how to process the emotional sideswipe. Her pain is expressed through the crazy narcissistic melodrama of youth, her reluctant unabashed accomplice is her best friend, Patty. Part II finds her experiencing yet another major loss. She finds refuge in nature making true her mother's prediction, a chasm may form between her new and old life, between she and Patty. As the narcissism of her youth wears off, she starts to care about something bigger than herself (God forbid!), her own planet. The "rednecks and assorted white trash" of her town waste no time labeling her as their own "token environmental wacko". A new guy shows up, heart in one hand, binoculars in the other...She meets Kate, one of the first female biologists to be hired by the Michigan Fish and Game Department. A trailblazer in a male-dominated profession, Kate has spent her life fighting to "protect the environment". It hasn't worked out too well. Kate's very angry. Who wants to end up like her? Accompanied by her faithful mutt, Ellie leaves Michigan to travel "out west" where her sister lives, resulting in some unexpected experiences: spirits in the desert, an accidental crusade against a development, geographically diverse sexual encounters. Then there are those amazing sandhill cranes (who is this guy in my tent?). Is this her way of dealing with her transformation, maybe loving someone again?

Major influences: Ed Abbey, Tom Robbins, John Irving, Rachel Carson, T.C. Boyle, J.D. Salinger, Pam Houston, Kurt Vonnegut, many others.

Genres: Contemporary, Birds

375 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

In between hikes/trying to disappear in what is left of what we used to call the wilderness (now under the influence of climate change= dead and dying trees, dry lakes and ponds, fires), I am working on the next eco-fiction book.

Latest:

Stem and Leaf Plots. Ten Eco-fiction Short Stories (includes Winter Girl).

Enjoy (and review!).

https://books2read.com/u/3n880K

Thank you and be well, stay sane.

**********

Thank you for reading my work and leaving reviews.

La Dee Da

I am a (depressed) professional field biologist/ecologist of many years. (How can I not be?) I have worked all over the U.S. (including some fantastic field years in Alaska) and in some parts of Europe. Nearly every place I have worked has become ecologically more degraded if not destroyed.

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The question is if the human primate can survive the environmental destruction being caused by--the human primate. If this isn't the definition of absurdity, insanity, I don't know what is.

The human primate has no capacity to observe itself as a SPECIES. There is little to no reference in the media to "the human primate". Only the sub-variations thereof within which each seems to fight with the other for resources, recognition, money. Unless the human primate develops the capacity to assess itself, its behavior, AS A SPECIES, there is no hope. Then again, it may be a trap the human primate can never spring itself from due to biology.

The human species is failing in developing respect for its own planet, thereby threatening it's own existence. Why? I posit it is because the human primate is the only species on earth aware of its own mortality so it is inevitable this would affect human behavior=basically we are all consciously/subconsciously in a constant state of freaking out over our own pending deaths not to mention our life spans are relatively short: we are in a trap--and when will it spring shut? We have no idea, but it is the main driver of human primate behavior. Awareness of our death. It is our burden to bear.

Consider as well the current state of human evolution: still primitive regardless how sophisticated our methods for altering our environment are. All of our actions to invent, exploit, etc. are motivated by a still infantile desire for self-gratification within our OWN lifespans, this drive so strong, it overrides any real concern regarding the catastrophic implications of climate change and destruction of earth's biodiversity. (As a species, our capacity to care about future generations is near nil).

Add in an economic system that depends on narcissism, consumption, individualism, dovetailing into the biological realities of the human primate (sex, violence, and aging), and perhaps the pathetic course of the human primate as a species is inevitable. (Case in point: the incoming President of the United States).

Let's make one thing clear. We are not the "most intelligent species on earth" unless "intelligence" is defined as the capacity to destroy an entire planet. This is stupidity and arrogance, not intelligence.

We should be talking about these things but instead we careen blindly to get to the sale at Walmart to get that big flat screen T.V. We watch news about other people dying, and down that 3rd martini, anxiety driving us all mad, the most "civilized species on earth". So goes the "modern" human primate.

Reviews

[Ginger Bensman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Birdbrain is a book with important messages about the joys, costs, and heartbreak of finding and owning one’s own true self, and of discovering the mystical, unspeakable wonder of Earth and our human-imperiled biosphere (the well-spring of all life, and our one and only home).
Ellie, the book’s protagonist, experiences a dawning awareness that her life as a taken-for-granted appendage of her husband is virtually empty and she begins to long for more—to want a life that has joy and purpose. Just as she’s deciding to leave her marriage, she begins to notice, and then become passionate about, wild birds. Thus, her journey toward personal independence and an unfolding consciousness about the natural world begins.
As her marriage falls apart, Ellie has her life-long friend, Patty, and her mom to depend on, but they don’t always agree with the decisions she makes. She vacillates about her decision to leave her husband, and soon learns that a passion to appreciate and preserve the wonders of the Earth is often as much a curse as a gift when she begins to comprehend the way humans swarm, commodify, degrade, and often destroy the natural world she loves.
Ellie spends a great many pages of this 500 page book angry, confused, and in despair. The prose is rambling, and the language is often unnecessarily rough. That said, there is plenty to appreciate—descriptions of the landscapes in Michigan, California, Oregon and Wyoming are immediate and sometimes poetic ( i.e. “the smoky blue-green odor of sage,” will stay with me for a long time), and Virginia Arthur’s command of the information she imparts about the environment and the challenge of preserving life on earth is spot-on.

[David Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rare and wonderful

Wonderful, profound, earthy, moving, empathic, refreshing, inspiring - ok, maybe I should stop with the superlatives, but not before I add, above all, real. There is not a character in these pages, major or minor, that did not ring true. Ellie would laugh at me, but I think this book is important because it may reach people who wouldn't otherwise read "eco-crap". Then again, Ellie might sympathise with my naive enthusiasm. Some books are as rare as the not-so-mythical snipe, and should be treasured proportionately. Some books explode in your heart with an unexpected "boom!" This is one of those very special books. You will probably never find another one like it, so, please, read this one. Before they all go extinct.

I received a free copy. My review is honest, objective (as much as I could be, since I loved the book so much), and my own.

[Sarah (SB) ღ · Rating 4 out of 5]

50% The west had done been settled and wandering now meant running into a fence, a sign, or a gun. Michigan still had it's open spaces, like the Upper Peninsula, and some ares close to Canada but these were calculated spots. Ellie thought as she was driving down Highway 15 in San Diego County, where the development was hot and heavy, how it was getting to the point in America where you have to calculate how to get to certain locations so feelings of freedom can be evoked. But it calculated freedom really freedom? she wondered...

38% She often thought, if they would only plant a tree when someone dies instead of erecting dead stone monuments, there would be grand forests all over the country, life giving memorials commemorating the dead past. She and Marilyn had discussed this while visiting her father's grave. Marilyn loved the idea.
"Plant a tree on my grave when I die Ellie, instead of one of these dead, cold things."
"Just don't die, Mom," Ellie would say. "I could not take it."

Stellar idea!


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21% Ellie felt she was connecting with something grand and precious and the more connected she felt in this world, the more resentful of human distruction she became. This was the penalty for her increasing awareness. Before, she never really cared about a new store or apartment building going up in a wild field. Now she did. The field harbored life. There was a brutality about her own species she was becoming aware of. An uncaring, anthropomorphic drive and disregard for non-human life as humans ceaselessly try to complete themselves.

I know what ya mean Ellie girl :(

[Melanie Page · Rating 2 out of 5]

Birdbrain is a self-published (2014) novel by Virginia Arthur. Clocking in at 500 pages, Birdbrain covers a lot of ground. The novel starts in Michigan in 1982 with 26-year-old Ellie sitting at home, waiting for her husband to love her more than the TV. When she accidentally goes on the wrong day to her church picnic, she discovers a group who loves bird watching, which becomes the catalyst for her divorce. Although she meets new men along the way, including one who loves and waits for her, Ellie is mostly focused on watching birds. Over a year later she eventually returns to college to get a degree in biology, but once she finishes, she realizes that there are two kinds of biologists: the academic who wants to study wildlife to write a paper for recognition, and the field biologist (a dying breed) who tries to do something about the problem of over-development of open areas. Ellie spends a good amount of time in San Diego with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend where Ellie sees that development happens everywhere, which she considers a horrible disease of mankind that breaks her heart.

Unfortunately, the choice of when to go into depth with the plot feels a bit misguided. In the first 175 pages, Ellie gets divorced and discovers she loves watching birds. For about a year she lives with her friend Patty and won’t get a job. We’re told Ellie took $2,000 from her ex-husband when she left, but in what way does this money last for a year? Though I wanted to be patient with Ellie, I grew annoyed with her. There is also a lot of repetition in the first 175 pages, such as telling the same stories and experiences or visiting certain places, which didn’t push the story forward.

However, two characters, both Michigan Department of Fish and Game employees, are introduced during this time, and while it seems convenient that Ellie might fall in love with one of them, she doesn’t and for that I was thankful. Should the author choose such an obvious way to get Ellie, with her newly-broken heart, to “move on,” I would have felt disappointed. Ellie seems in control of her relationship with men, once she’s divorced.

After those 175 pages, Ellie still isn’t a likable person; she decides to go to school for biology, a degree for which her mother is paying, and in the first semester she signs up for two classes she doesn’t need (one of them being “Camping I”) and biology. The day before school starts, Ellie decides she’ll be sleeping through the camping class, which is before her Biology class. I just really didn’t like Ellie.

Once she does get to class, though, I can see her trying to organize her life in a way that no one else around her has, so she’s a pioneer, really, in her small Michigan town. While her friends get married young, have babies, and enjoy trucks and barbecues, Ellie feels jealous but cannot settle for the life she’s told she was “supposed” to lead–and was on the path to lead with her husband.

Ellie visits her sister in California, which shows Ellie that even the open spaces of a desert area are being destroyed in the name of progress. It does take two separate trips to California (once when she starts college and once after she’s graduated) for Ellie to really get moving as a character, once again proving that Birdbrain moves too slowly for its own good. It’s after she graduates and heads west for a visit that Ellie finally battles “progress” in California. She learns that 400 acres of land–full of animals, insects, and plants–are going to be bulldozed to create lots for houses. When Virginia Arthur gets to the heart of a fiction book about biology, her work really shines. Here is an example:

"It had been about two weeks since the massacre [of the 400 acres]. Unbeknownst to Ellie, Ben, and Liz, hundreds of people had shown up on the property much to the annoyance of the construction company. All kinds of people cased the place, a few looking to see if the lots were for sale yet. Flowers were thrown out across the new housing pads and roads, or stuck directly into the newly graded land, as if for a dead person. (The fact that most of the flowers strewn on the land were nonnative horticultural plants the species of which would ultimately be included in the water-sucking landscape for the new housing development, seemed fitting somehow)."

The author’s almost brutal point that the flowers people used to mourn destroyed land are also harmful because they are not indigenous is a striking point. She shows the ignorance of the common person, no matter how kindhearted.

Keen readers will notice in the above passage that there are some problems with commas. Though I try not to focus on the punctuation in books (an error or two are bound to crop up), self-published works can be some of the worst offenders simply because the author is trying to play too many roles: storyteller, editor, publicist, etc. Comma problems were the most obvious (splices, run-ons), as were the unusual use of quote marks. Instead of thinking in italics, which is common practice, characters thought with quote marks. A tag phrase of “thought so-and-so” at the end of a thought meant I had to go back and reread the passage because I was under the impression he/she said something. The quotes around and inside dialogue got confusing, too. Ellie’s friend Patty asks:

“What do you mean they’ve’ 'come over from another country?' What? They all got together and decided they could make higher wages and a better life for themselves here, so they all just flew over?” Patty chuckled.

While I get what Patty is saying here, in many places I had to keep track of quote marks to be sure dialogue ended and began somewhere, though in some cases there wasn’t a closing quote mark. And, I’m not sure why one single quote mark appears every few pages, such as they’ve’. Basically, a small problem like multiple quote marks isn’t, overall, a huge deal, but it is asking the reader to do more work–unnecessarily.

The last 100 pages of the novel were some of the best, because this is where the book becomes humorous and the action takes place. Ellie tries to save the plants and animals in San Diego, which gets a lot of local attention, and the story zeros in on both biology and community, giving it life that earlier parts lack.

After the section about trying to save those 400 acres, Ellie is able to travel across America–from California to Washington and eventually back to Michigan. She is alone, but meets all sorts of people with whom she discusses birds and biology at campgrounds. By this point in the book Ellie is a woman in her early 30s who has an idea of who she is and what she wants, though not a life plan to implement, which seems to suit her okay for a time. She is in control sexually in a way that most women are not in fiction, and I respected her for that. Ellie doesn’t shy away from situations because she is alone; her family and friends may worry, but Ellie isn’t going to wait for a boyfriend or husband to take her hand and be her “protector” through her adventures:

"Ellie made a mental note that the two women in her life she loved most seemed to be really curt with her lately and both very anxious for her to “settle down.” She chalked it up to their being jealous and yes, there was an element of this but what she did not fully grasp was that they were also genuinely concerned for her safety; having to worry about her on top of everything else in their lives was an extra burden. It even kind of pissed them off."

Despite the occasional humor near the end (where Arthur really seems to hit her stride) and an intelligent theme for a novel (the author is a field biologist who can speak credibly about the subject), I had trouble getting over inconsistencies in the plot. A character has a baby in one scene and the baby is gone later. A broken radio is returned to its owner only to be in Ellie’s kitchen for repair in a page or two, which then has to be given to the owner again. Patty says it’s good Ellie got a goodnight kiss from her date only to say a little while later that she feels bad that man didn’t get a goodnight kiss. In the end, when Ellie is in her 80s, the author seems to have forgotten the dates and ages she established: if Ellie is divorced at 26 in 1982 and is single into her 30s, it’s not possible in the end for her to become a widow at 64–after 40 years of marriage. And if the story ends with Ellie in her 80s, it’s important to note that readers are now in the future, somewhere around year 2040. How would development and biology and environmental concerns be different so far into the future when policies change and lands are destroyed so quickly today? It seems suspiciously like 2015 when Ellie is in her 80s.

I kept waiting for the book to be how it was described on Goodreads and in the press release: parts Tom Robbins, TC Boyle, Barbara Kingsolver, Pam Houston, Ed Abbey, Vine Deloria, and John Irving. Personally, I feel it’s a mistake for authors to compare their works to famous writers because readers go in with certain expectations that are almost never met (one of the reasons I don’t do such comparisons in my reviews) and fail to see the originality of the book they hold in their hands.

Overall, Birdbrain still has a lot of promise, which is the beauty of self-publishing; it can be edited. I loved the momentum, humor, and character development–in the last stretch–but had I not been reviewing the book (I always finish a book I review), I wouldn’t have gotten past 100 pages.

*I want to thank Virginia Arthur for sending me a copy of her novel in exchange for an honest review. I have no personal, familial, or professional relationship to this author.

Review originally published at Grab the Lapels.

[Lita Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Birdbrain by Virginia Arthur is a contemporary novel about a young woman’s life as a passionate environmentalist. I purchased a copy of this book.

Birdbrain covers the life of a 1970’s young woman named Ellie and her laughter, losses, and struggles to save the wilderness she loves. Disaster and delight swirl around her. It starts when she mistakes the date for an outdoor picnic, discovers birding, and gets the courage to divorce her emotionally dead husband.

The chapter about Ellie’s struggle to save the doomed plants and animals of an open space next to her sister’s California home made me weep. Arthur’s description of a fox killed by bulldozers will haunt me now whenever I see one of these beautiful animals in my back yard.

A memorable character is Tomas, a young Native American park ranger that Ellie meets on her wandering road trip to heal from the California wildlife massacre. He explains the spirit shapes she sees dancing on the land, talks of the land’s decline, and gives her a totem made from his hair and an eagle feather. Tomas represents the land’s passionate soul for the second half of Ellie’s life.

Ellie was an outspoken advocate, and sometimes her convictions dominated the narrative. I thought these passages were appropriate for Ellie’s mindset. Other readers may think differently

Birdbrain ends by coming full circle, when Ellie saw her first bird through borrowed binoculars. With Birdbrain, Virginia Arthur has created a funny and poignant story.

[Emily Kestrel · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the whole, I did enjoy Birdbrain quite a bit. It is the story of a lonely housewife who leaves her husband in the early 1980s and falls in love with birding and nature. Along the way she gets an education, travels the country, and tries to defend the last open spaces being quickly gobbled up by rampant development. I loved the birding, enjoyed the author's descriptions of natural landscapes, and wanted to cheer Ellie on as she tried to save the coastal sage habitat in California. There are also some funny scenes, like the infamous snipe encounter at the beginning of the book. (Yes, snipe do exist! How many times have I had to explain their reality to non-birders and even whip out my field guide as evidence!)

Structurally, however, the book is a bit of a mess. From the author's note, I gather that a lot of the events are semi-autobiographical and, as in the case of many such stories, it reads more like a series of fun anecdotes than an actual novel. I didn't like how the author would switch POVs quickly, sometimes to minor characters and back, or how she would lecture the reader directly about an issue for a couple of pages (rather than letting the characters do it, or better yet, by just showing and not telling as the events unfold). There were also a few continuity issues (although some only a birder would notice), such as mentioning Ellie looking for migrating warblers the weekend before her classes start...when we've already been told that the semester begins in January. In Michigan. But that time fall migration is long over, and she would have been looking for winter finches.

I don't mean to be so negative about a book I did enjoy, especially when it is about subjects so dear to my heart, but it was frustrating, because it could have been so much better with another revision or two. But if you love nature and birds, you should definitely give this book a try, and I hope Arthur goes on to write more in the future.

[Samantha Henthorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! A mouthful, I really enjoyed reading this. If you enjoyed Thelma and Louise and/or Benjamin Zephaniah’s poem Trees Please (available on a variety of poetry websites) then this book will appeal to you. This may seem like a never the (literary) twain shall meet, but the book starts with the protagonist Ellowyn (Ellie to her friends) starting a journey of self discovery- out and about with her friend Patty. Ellie suffers life’s ups and downs, without spoiling, the ups are the message of this story, she becomes interested in birds and the environment. She has further adventures with her sister and brother-in-law involving ecology campaigns. There is romance, success, failure and a ‘What will she do next?’ intrigue in this book. When I started reading it, I thought ; two books for the price of one? But it isn’t, I was glad that part 1&2 are published together because it really completed the journey. What a treat it has been to read this, outside, accompanied by birdsong during a rare sunny week.

[Michael Guest · Rating 5 out of 5]

A subtle spiritual message underpins this book’s complex of themes and more overt calls to environmental awareness and action — to “make a difference in the world.” The theme is along the lines of, We take one walk through this existence. Don’t miss a second, make the most of it: a moral that keeps returning as a kind of tacit mantra.

Semi-autobiographical protagonist Ellowyn (Ellie) expresses it most directly in a realization about the stunning, multifaceted, but generally undervalued, spectacle of birds: “What a crime of life, to miss these precious things of nature!”

In the beginning, Ellie is twenty-six, living an uninspiring domestic life in a small town near Detroit, Michigan, with Eddie, her husband of six years. One of life’s sleepwalkers, he doesn’t seem to care too much about Ellie, or anything much else apart from his job, the state of his hamburger, getting stoned, and what’s on the TV. He barely notices the divorce go through.

An epiphanic birdwatching experience startles Ellie from her post-divorce haze into an appreciation of nature, but bewilders her long-time girlfriend Patty. Patty coins her nickname “Birdbrain” because of her newfound obsession with binoculars and birds.

The two characters are almost a “Thelma and Louise”-like combination, with their wisecracking, sometimes cynical take on aspects of Midwestern life: ”Patty was (predictably) shit-faced, dancing next to the jukebox, cramming it full of quarters.”

Infectious, earthy writing, a highlight of Arthur’s style, prevents it from becoming preachy: “Wow. What a happy little bird,” Patty said drolly. “I think I’ll kill it.”

Poetic gems sparkle throughout. It’s easy to pick up a few at random:

“The little yellow flash of life [a yellow warbler] gracefully maneuvered through the weeping willows.”

“She spotted a cardinal and watched it fly towards a blue jay, flushing it away.”

“… where the goofy grackles waddled between the shopping carts.”

“A flock of finches streamed by the window flying in that body-surfing way they have, riding up and down on a wave of air.”

Casual everyday observations are convincing and often very funny, in a way that spices the gravity of the central themes. Who doesn’t like a touch of black humor?:

“I can fuckin’ drive.” Redneck #2 said. “I ain’t had that much …” “Fucker, you had a whole bottle of Tequila!” “Yea, two hours ago.”

The structure is quite loose and spontaneous, intensifying the drama of individual scenes while drawing us along the several strands of Ellie’s education and life-development as a feminist-influenced ecological activist and fully formed human being. You feel you really get to know the likable, and indeed admirable and accomplished, Ellie/Arthur.

Moving to San Diego she encounters first-hand the ravages of capitalist development, its devastating impact upon the environment. She organizes teams of volunteers to rescue flora and fauna from the path of the bulldozers, a scene of high drama.

My favorite scenes, however, come later, her Castaneda-like encounters with shape shifting “spirits” in the Mohave Desert and again at a place called Vedauwoo on the high plains in Wyoming, during a meandering journey home across the southwestern desert country.

I enjoyed this book. I found it most entertaining, and it heightened my sense of my own belongingness in nature. That’s part of the beauty and significance of birds, too, as Arthur implies, their “wake-up call” to the urgency of acting to protect the environment.

[Elliot Jackman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Virginia Authur tells us a story about a young woman, Ellie, that was been lulled into complacency in her life until she has an epiphany while accidentally getting involved with a bird watching group.

She knows she's unhappy and bored with her marriage but doesn't really have a plan on what to do about it. Once she decides that she can't stay in the relationship any longer, she begins a long and hard process of what could be considered a type of spiritual growth. Not spiritual in the religious sense, but more emotional and intellectual.

She can't really afford to just go find a new place to live, so she bounces around between her best friend, her mother's house and her sister in San Diego, CA.

During this time, she also realizes that she needs to do something to improve her life. With some pushing from her mother, she completes her degree in biology. She can now realize her dream of making "bird watching" a career.

This natural progression also causes Ellie to realize that what the average person calls progress, is really mass destruction, murder and genocide of many species of animals and plants. This sets her on a path that all her friends, family and acquaintances label as "environmental activism."

Involving herself in many battles, most of which are lost, she eventually finds her niche in life and can channel her feelings in a way that makes her abilities and knowledge more productive.

The story itself was compelling enough that I wanted keep reading. It wasn't because there was necessarily always some drama that was unfolding for which I needed to see what was going to happen, but more because Ellie's transformation seemed to be a very real and plausible progression for someone to follow. It outlines the types of outside and inside influences that can completely transform the way someone views the world and society.

Overall, the book is well written. There is some dialogue in the first portion of the book that, I must admit, I reread twice and still didn't understand what the people were talking about. This didn't turn out to affect my enjoyment of the book.

I enjoyed watching Ellie's transformation, without having the author "talk down" to me about any particular environmental crusade. The story made the point solely by showing Ellie's intellectual progression and the way her thinking changed based on the behavior of people around her, along with her changing relationships with her friends, family and lovers.

I have to go now, as I suddenly feel the need to grab my binoculars and go watch some birds!

[Joe Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book itself, as a physical object, is poorly constructed and replete with typos (some of which have been corrected by hand!). The story is told in the vernacular, which I find refreshing. There is sex and there is violence. The violence is towards the Earth and this violence breaks the protagonist's, Ellie's, heart. Ellie's love for birds, and for nature, sets her apart from those around her who don't understand. It certainly is sad to stand witness to a biosphere in decline. I don't ordinarily read novels but found this one touching. There needs to be more Ellies (and Virginia Arthurs) in this world. If the book was professionally published and better edited, I'd rate it five stars.

[Haris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. I loved the character of Ellowyn and was on board for her journey. I loved the humor and felt her predicament. Her dissatisfaction with her life and her marriage. John Prine recently passed and I'm a huge fan. His song, "Angel From Montgomery", explored some these same issues and Birdbrain resonated with me the same way. I know nothing about birding, but I found the details fascinating and I found it totally believable that Ellowyn would use birding as a way to reconnect with herself and the world. The descriptions of the natural world are wonderful and her dialogue is smart and funny. A great read.

[Mary Nee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book . I enjoyed it !

[Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, I admit it: I am a nature nut. An enviro. A person who gets pissed off when yet another house gets built in some suburb. I mourn the loss of habitat to the extent of being nearly pathological. I love Ed Abbey. I'm with him when he said "the ideology of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell".

And so it isn't often I read a novel that understands such themes. Virginia Arthur takes her time with the book. She sets up the characters and let's them be what they are. She doesn't shy away from themes of class. And I think the cover of the book, with the beautiful Ellie, looking into the future with a couple of bulldozers around her and a binoculars at her feet, well, that cover is perfect.

In this case, you can judge a book by its cover.

Some might say the thing is a bit long and wordy. That the author could cut something here or there. No. Our lives are long and fun and tragic and good and bad and sometimes tedious and sometimes disastrous and sometimes magical. This book understand that and so it takes its time as Ellie leaves her husband for the love of birds.

And I come away from the book, borrowing a line from it often: to be an environmentalist is to live constantly with a broken heart. Oh so true.

I'm told that this work took 13 years to write and is loosely based on the author's own experiences. It takes a whole lot of effort to create such a story that includes themes of environmental loss, yet inspires hope that maybe, just maybe, others will get the bug of watching birds, or whales or trees---and figure out that they are worth saving.

Books that inspire you to become active outdoors are few and far between. Most nature books are written with adrenaline in mind. They are about climbing Everest or doing the seven highest peaks or climbing the highest tree. Or climbing a rock. Having an adrenaline experience is what the outdoors has become to a generation that comes after generation X. The slopes of a mountain have given way to the artificialness, and adrenaline, of a snowboarders half tube. This book isn't about adrenaline. It is about enjoyment. Solitude. Love.

We need more novels like this. We need to encourage writers who write books like this. A wilderness experience has become so rare that it rarely becomes a setting or subject of a novel these days (except to spur adrenaline). Virginia inspires something else; she inspires action. Beauty. Reflection. Listening. Watching. Being observant. In a world where the Pacific Crest Trail is only mentioned in regards to speed records, Birdbrain presents something better: take a look around and enjoy what you got because it ain't gonna last long unless you get off your butt and take care of it.

Buy this book. 0

[Juliet Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellie falls into birdwatching by accident when she gets the date of a church picnic wrong and finds herself surrounded by birdwatchers. Seeing the care and attention that a pair of bluebirds pay to each other, she finally relaises she needs to work up the courage to finally leave her no-good husband. So she packs her belongings into her truck and takes her dog off to her best friend Patty's place.


The two of them become more and more interested in birds and sign up as volunteers at a local nature reserve, Ellie with considerably more enthusiasm than Patty. As Ellie returns to college to study biology and realises that life doesn't need to be the consumerist normality sold us by the media while Patty follows her new carrer in the business world, the two friends grow apart.


This is an entertaining story about friendship, very perceptive about human relationships and our relationship with nature both on the personal level:


"Her new habit of self interrupting whatever she was doing 'just to look at a bird' was in the eyes of her friends and family..... an endearing if not odd affectation. This irritated her, the idea that anyone who notices anything outside the selfish human world is immediately considered a bit odd. "


and also in detailing the unscrupulous destruction of biodiverse, ecologically valuable wild land to build strip malls, including a heartbreakingly detailed description of Ellie's involvement in trying to save an area of Californian wild land slated for development.


I really enjoyed the portrayal of Ellie's growing awareness of nature, with all the descriptions of the birds she sees, the knowledge she gains about them and her growing impatience and dislike of the way the human world encroaches on nature. These descriptions feel totally integral to the story, rather than added on as afterthoughts and erven where Ellie's feelings about over-development verge on becoming rants, they're Ellie's rants rather than the author's and so are convincing.


This book reminded me to some extent of Barabara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour (which I review here), but though not as well written as that (and in places needing a finer editing), it is ultimately a more engaging and more passionately felt story.


It's a moving and thoughtful story of family, friendship and our failed relationship with the natural world that surrounds us.

[Robert Zwilling · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I liked about this story was that the journey was the destination, which continually evolved. The beginning is always slow but once launched the story soared like an eagle, allowing the reader a beautiful view of the surrounding world, our world. And the idea that change was still in the works, still happening. One person at a time.

[Cassy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as a Goodreads winner. Really liked this book. Enjoyed the environmental theme and the relationships the main character goes through especially the one with her oldest friend.

[Virginia Arthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote it so what the hell, it's terrific!