Starling Days

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the officers she's not about to jump but they don't believe her. Her husband, Oscar is called to pick her up.

Oscar hopes that leaving New York for a few months will give Mina the space to heal. They travel to London, to an apartment wall-papered with indigo-eyed birds, to Oscar's oldest friends, to a canal and blooming flower market. Mina, a classicist, searches for solutions to her failing mental health using mythological women. But she finds a beam of light in a living woman. Friendship and attraction blossom until Oscar and Mina's complicated love is tested.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Mental Health, Queer, Literary Fiction, LGBT, Mental Illness

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 9, 2019

Reviews

[Roxane]

Meditative. Struggled to find a way into the story. Moments of brilliance. POV shifts were a bit odd.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was attracted to this book on NetGalley (my thanks to the publisher for approving my request) by two things. Firstly, the book blurb says, ”Mina, a classicist, searches for solutions to her failing mental health using mythological women.” and secondly a quote on the front cover says it is ”beautifully weird” (I like books that are beautiful or weird, so both together sounded great).

Unfortunately, having now completed the book, I am not sure where either of those descriptions comes from. Yes, it is true that Mina has mental health problems: the book starts with her walking over a bridge in New York and being unable to persuade police officers that she wasn’t planning to jump. The story moves on from there as she and husband Oscar move to London to give her opportunity to get away from things and build a recovery. And, yes, it is true that Mina is a classicist working on a paper about women in Greek mythology who survive. But the strand of the story that deals with mythological women is very under-developed which felt to me like an opportunity missed (I was surprised, given the blurb, that only about a dozen paragraphs in the whole book focussed on mythological women - it seemed that each time that subject got started, the chapter suddenly ended and the story moved on to something else).

And I know it might just be me and the other books I have read, but I failed to see anything at all weird about this story. Mina meets Phoebe. Mina is bisexual. Mina is attracted to Phoebe (as the blurb puts it ”…she finds a beam of light in a living woman.). I don’t quite see what is weird about that. And there certainly isn’t anything weird about redecorating some flats in London. Given that quote, I was expecting the characters, the story, the writing style or the structure to be “beautiful” or “weird” and none of them are. The story starts at the beginning and goes to the end via the middle - that’s not weird. The writing is straightforward story telling - certainly not weird.

I’m sounding a bit negative. That’s because the book wasn’t what I was expecting (and hoping for) based on the blurb. But, on the positive side, the actual story is fine.

The story we do get is a compassionately told study of a troubled mind mixed with a compassionately told study of a person who is married to someone with a troubled mind. We spend time with both the main characters, seeing things from both points of view even when they are physically separated. It is written in a very accessible way that flows through the story. It is not a cheerful story, but I can imagine that anyone who has experienced mental health problems themselves or in a relative or friend will relate to a lot of what Mina and Oscar think and feel.

There is nothing in this book that made me actively dislike it. But equally, there is nothing that made me excited as I read it. That’s the definition of 3 stars for me.

[Nikita Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much brilliance in this beautiful book. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's writing is truly breathtaking. Rich, poignant prose, along with a gorgeous plot full of the complexity of human relationships make this book one of the best I have ever read.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. Her husband Oscar comes to get her but only he knows she might not be telling the truth - she tried to kill herself on their wedding night. It's a story of mental illness and identity and how relationships and work intersect with these things - Oscar is struggling to work with his father (who was absent most of his life) and travels to see him, but then doesn't seem to want to return, maybe he's over Mina, maybe he needs a break, maybe he's punishing her? But in the meantime Mina begins a flirtation with Oscar's best man's sister. To me, it was hard to tell if she felt connected to her or just needed more in her life.

I've been wanting to try this author for a while but I'm not sure this was the best way in; I can't say I enjoyed the book, per se.

I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss and it came out April 7, 2020, but last fall in the UK.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earlier this year I read the moving memoir “Mind on Fire” in which the author recounts his experiences with manic-depression, suicidal thoughts and the destructive impact his mental health issues have upon his personal relationships. An experience similar to this is dramatically rendered in Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s new novel “Starling Days”. It’s the story of Mina and Oscar, a young married couple living in New York City who temporarily move to London so Oscar can help his father prepare some run-down properties for sale. But Mina struggles with feelings of sadness which threaten to overwhelm her and self-harm. Her issues with mental health are portrayed with equal weight against Oscar’s no less heartrending emotional negligence being born as an illegitimate child who seeks to forge a connection with his aging father. Amidst their struggles, Mina makes a strong romantic connection with Phoebe, a red-haired English blogger whose presence brightens the world for Mina when she begins to feel overwhelmed by a suffocating loneliness. It’s noteworthy how this novel realistically and sympathetically portrays the experiences of a bisexual character. But Buchanan portrays all her characters’ journeys and dilemmas with a great deal of sympathy that made me feel wholly connected to them.

Read my full review of Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan on LonesomeReader

[Raquel · Rating 2 out of 5]

For being a book about highly emotional subjects, like depression, marriage, mortality, and affairs, this book was curiously emotionally flat. I didn't connect with any of the characters. I couldn't understand why Mina was so smitten with Phoebe, who was shallow and emotionally avoidant. Oscar was really terrible to his wife while she was suffering through serious depression and basically acts like a robot with no empathy, finally deciding wants to separate. Mina meanwhile went fully off medication and rarely went to therapy, even though her depression was serious. She finds out she has PCOS and that this could be causing her depression, but doesn't seem particularly bothered to seek further care upon this revelation. Oscar's dad gets sick and all he wonders about is whether to take over the family business and how to get his dad to exercise. He also finds a clue as to his childhood (he is the product of an affair), but instead of him having to struggle to piece things together, he's told the story in full through expository dialogue. Mina perfectly encapsulates the tired stereotype of bisexuals being unfaithful, and it's so cliche she has a moment in the book where she thinks about how she IS a bi stereotype.

This book just has a lot of things start with no real reason or resolution or meaning, it skims the surface emotionally, and it gives us no one to root for. I admire that the author tried to handle hard topics like depression and PCOS and affairs, but it feels like a draft that needs more development than a finished narrative.

[Paula Bardell-Hedley · Rating 3 out of 5]

“People said that drowning was a good death, that the tiny alveoli of the lungs filled like a thousand water balloons.”

Rowan Hisayon Buchnan knows the sheer unrelieved monotony of depression. She sees the way in which it saps life’s colour and drives loved ones to despair. She understands these things because she has experienced first-hand the “struggles of people very dear to [her] and [faced her own] challenges”. In an Author’s Note she says: “Not everyone who is sad is sick but I have been sick and I have loved those who were sick.”

Starling Days, which follows closely on the heels of her Betty Trask Award-winning Harmless Like You, is the complete antithesis of an uplifting novel. It is stark, joyless and authentic – it also poses difficult questions. Can love defeat misery? Should we expect those closest to us to save us from ourselves? Is it fair even to ask?

The story begins one humid night in August with Mina, a twenty-something classicist and associate professor, as she walks barefoot and alone across New York’s George Washington Bridge. The water below is “dark as poured tarmac” and she wonders about the people driving past in “their shadowy cars.” The lights suddenly become brighter as a police car pulls up beside her. A young officer tells her to “step away from the rail.” It doesn’t look good, “normal women, innocent women, [don’t] walk alone on bridges at night.” She may be there to jump. She insists she is merely clearing her head. Her husband Oscar is called to retrieve her. He’s been through this before – on their wedding night, only six months earlier, she attempted to kill herself.

The narrative moves between New York and London as Oscar seeks ways to alleviate Mina’s unhappiness, but she has struggled for many years and there is no simple answer. He becomes obsessive over her whereabouts and worries when she is left alone; she comes off her medication to “learn the floor plan of [her] sadness”. Then something snaps in Oscar and, using his father as an excuse to escape the situation, he crosses the Atlantic and goes to ground, leaving his suicidal wife to cope in a cheerless apartment.

I can’t claim to have ‘enjoyed’ reading Starling Days, it is far too gloomy a book to be pleasurable in any sense of the word, but it is well written and it held my interest throughout; I’ve no doubt readers will find it relatable. However, while this may not be Hisayon Buchnan’s magnum opus, she is quite clearly a talented writer and one feels she is on the cusp of something special. A novelist to watch.

Many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for providing an advance review copy of this title.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) Buchanan’s second novel reprises many of the themes from her first, Harmless Like You, including art, mental illness, and having one’s loyalties split across countries and cultures. Oscar and Mina have been together for over a decade, but their marriage got off to a bad start six months ago: on their wedding night Mina took an overdose, and Oscar was lucky to find her in time. The novel begins and ends with her contemplating suicide again; in between, Oscar takes her from New York City to England, where he grew up, for a change of scenery and to work on getting his father’s London flats ready to sell. For Mina, an adjunct professor and Classics tutor, it will be labeled a period of research on her monograph about the rare women who survive in Greek and Roman myth. But when work for his father’s Japanese import company takes Oscar back to New York, Mina is free to pursue her fascination with Phoebe, the sister of Oscar’s childhood friend.

Both Oscar and Mina have Asian ancestry and complicated, dysfunctional family histories. For Oscar, his father’s health scare is a wake-up call, reminding him that everything he has taken for granted is fleeting, and Mina’s uncertain mental and reproductive health force him to face the fact that they might never have children. Although I found this less original and compelling than Buchanan’s debut, I felt true sympathy for the central couple. It’s a realistic picture of marriage: you have to keep readjusting your expectations for a relationship the longer you’re together, and your family situation is inevitably going to have an impact on how you envision your future. I also admired the metaphors and the use of color.

The title is, I think, meant to refer to a sort of time outside of time when wishes can come true; in Mina’s case that’s these few months in London. Bisexuality is something you don’t encounter too often in fiction, so I guess that’s reason enough for it to be included here as a part of Mina’s story, though I wouldn’t say it adds much to the narrative. If it had been up to me, instead of birds I would have picked up on the repeated peony images (Mina has them tattooed up her arms, for instance) for the title and cover.


Readalikes
Everything Here Is Beautiful
The Dogs of Babel

(I haven’t read it, but the character of Mina reminds me loads of Esmé Weijun Wang and what I know she reveals about herself in The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays.)

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone who has ever been or who currently is feeling depressed, this book is for you. It perfectly incapsulates the beautiful and heartbreaking intricacies of a damaged or broken mind going through mental illness, whilst also leaning us gently towards a glimmer of hope that we can overcome our demons and be happy again.

[Jerrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tries to look at depression and suicidal ideation in the context of a young married couple. To summarize - they handled it poorly. After the wife’s latest suicide attempt, the couple decides she should stop all medications and they then move to another country where she is left alone a lot of the time? Made no sense to me. For most of the book, the couple is not physically together. It just confused me.
Aside from the structure, though, there is some valuable insight here.

[Gabril · Rating 3 out of 5]

«Voleva studiare la planimetria della sua tristezza. Nel loro appartamento di New York era in grado di camminare al buio. Il suo corpo si sintonizzava con gli ostacoli e trovava automaticamente la via libera. Esplorando quella tristezza, avrebbe trovato il modo per attraversarla».

Mina e Oscar sono una giovane coppia con un legame solido. Lei è professoressa universitaria a contratto, studiosa di latino e greco, amante dei miti classici che le rivelano sempre qualcosa di intimo e profondo.
Ma soffre di depressione, il suo cervello le suggerisce continuamente di farla finita. Infatti la vediamo fin da subito sopra la ringhiera di un ponte, pronta a volarsene via.

Riuscirà l’amore di Oscar a salvarla?

Questo è il tema del romanzo che dedica spazio a entrambi i personaggi, con diversi momenti di noia, però, soprattutto nella descrizione delle problematiche di Oscar.
La condizione di Mina suscita più interesse, soprattutto quando intraprende una relazione affettiva con l’affascinante Phoebe, e il racconto si anima un po’, ma la sua vita interiore nel complesso viene poco esplorata e approfondita.
Interessante invece il riferimento ai miti e alle loro diverse suggestioni.

Nei momenti di stanca si è abbastanza tentati di abbandonare la lettura…
Per rispondere alla domanda: può l’amore salvarci da noi stessi, però, bisogna proprio arrivare alla fine della storia.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am again stunned by the prowess in Buchanan's words. There are so many stand-out sentences that made me pause to consider how she's using the language in a way few would, but in a way that bleeds beauty through the page and deep into my writer's weary soul. In addition, the writing, and the story, has a dull, aching quality that stands out differently, allowing me to indulge in a hundred pages in a sitting as the main characters, husband and wife, remain in place, together but apart, pondering what the hell they're going to do next and whether or not that will include staying together and/or alive.

**TW/CW: Suicidal ideation, depression**

From the author's note:
"If you are fighting with your own sadness or love someone who is, this note is for you. The seed of this book emerged from the struggles of people very dear to me and from my own challenges. Not everyone who is sad is sick but I have been sick and I have loved those who were sick. However, the characters within this book are fictional beings. Their views are their own and should not be taken as advice.
Whether you have a long or short road to health is a mixture of luck, circumstance, and biology. In writing this book, I hoped simply to write the story of two people attempting to walk that path together.
But I would like to say this:
Every day you try again is an act of bravery. Although this is worthy of pride, you may not feel able to be proud of yourself. So I would like to wish you congratulations on being here today."

The first pages find Mina literally and figuratively on a precipice. She stands at the edge of a bridge between New York and New Jersey, considering if this is the attempt that will end her life. A police officer stops her before she can make a decision and calls her husband, Oscar. They're still newlyweds but on the very night of their wedding, she took many pills and nearly died. The pair have been together a decade, but it could be that Mina's mental instability will be the wedge that drives them apart despite her need for his help and care and his desire to give her just that. In a final ploy to better his wife, Oscar takes them to London, for a breather. He works for his father's import company and can do so from anywhere and takes it upon himself to live in and freshen up the pair of apartments his father has held onto for decades, readying them for sale. Mina takes a leave from her university work to take on a research project, and leaves all of her medications behind, even her birth control, because she is sure that her pills weren't doing anything for her mental health and wants to prove to her psychiatrist that she can level out, all on her own.

In the new surroundings, they seem to do alright. On shaky footing, Mina does her best to not be needy and Oscar puts down firm rules, including insisting on a tracking app on her phone so he knows where she is at all times. He pushes her to try even harder to take care of herself, without his prodding, and "just be happy". Early on Oscar's best school friend Theo and Theo's sister Phoebe come over, and Mina becomes a touch obsessed with the other young woman, frazzled as she enters the end of an acrimonious divorce. The obsession becomes a friendship, between the women and Phoebe's big, fluffy dog Benson, and just in time as Oscar is called away to dote on a client in person back in New York. Mina promises she'll be fine and Oscar insists that she will be, though he's nervous and it is then that both know this will be the deciding factor in their relationship and their lives, as they separate physically and their emotions work through each with a volatility that could mean a legal separation is also in their near future.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not an easy book to read. Some of you will find it familiar. Too familiar. And if you've struggled with depression or suicidal ideation, this might be tough territory for you to tread.

If you love someone who is introverted, depressed, bisexual, or all three, and really want to do the work to understand them (and truly knowing another is often work) it may help you to read this novel.

I found myself feeling very sympathetic towards Mina, but aggravated with Oscar. I realize that Oscar represents characteristics about myself that I don't like: a tendency towards perfectionism, a desire to control emotions by controlling everything in one's environment.

The one way I contrast greatly with Oscar (and the main reason his character makes me bristle) is his tendency to say absolutely the wrong things. Instead of diffusing, he accelerates difficult situations. He sees the world as a series of problems and solutions, and everything can be solved, even people. You can't tell a depressed person to "try to be happy" anymore than you can tell someone to try not to have the flu, or to try not to give in to a broken leg. Depression is an illness, not a lack of character or willpower. Pretending to be fine just leads to exhaustion.

I also highly recommend reading the Author's Note at the end.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel was the April selection of the Nervous Breakdown Book Club. I hesitated to post my review since it was the least favorite of the books I read in August. It features a main character who suffers from depression and was hard for me to read at times but I decided to share what I got out of it because it was important to me.

Mina and Oscar have been a couple for many years and finally marry. Mina is a highly educated young woman who teaches and is working on a PhD in literature, specializing in Greek myths. Oscar works as a salesman for his Japanese father's liquor business.

On their wedding night, Mina attempts to end her life with pills. This we learn in the first chapter when Oscar is called by police to pick up Mina, whom they found at midnight leaning over the edge of the George Washington Bridge, known as a location for suicides.

Oscar decides to move them to London while he does some work there on his father's property, thinking a change of scene will be good for Mina. It does not help much, her depression has it in its grip, her meds are not working, and though Oscar tries to protect her he is becoming overwhelmed.

As the story goes on, it reveals the many early traumas of both. I liked the ways the author described each one's coping mechanisms but the choices both were making made me wonder if they would make it. I grew a little weary of being inside their heads and could not guess whether the ending would be happy or tragic.

I am not sorry I read Starling Days because it helped me understand a few things. I have always had an aversion to the subject of mental illness. It frightens me. After I finished the book I realized that I was raised to repress my own moods and occasional bouts of depression, to pretend I was fine, to keep up with life and family and work duties no matter how I felt.

I guess I am fortunate to also have a strong, even sometimes happy side and to have never succumbed. Currently I have a friend who suffers from depression and have had to figure out how to relate to her when she is overcome. Buchanan's novel gave me insight into and more empathy for my friend.

[T Madden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quiet and scorching, this is a story about mental health, desire, and the myriad mythologies we both build and destroy. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan has offered us another supreme gift of a novel, a rare opportunity to love and forgive our darkest and most shimmering selves.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s debut novel, Harmless Like You, which focused on art dealer Jay and his estranged Japanese mother Yuki, flashing between Yuki's youth in 1960s New York and Jay's contemporary journey. What I found particularly fascinating about the way that Buchanan portrayed Yuki, who is determined to pursue a career as a visual artist, is that she hurts others so much precisely because she believes it’s impossible for her to have much impact on others’ lives; she believes nobody can really care about her. There’s something of that in Mina, the Chinese-American protagonist of Buchanan’s second novel, Starling Days; but unlike Yuki, I felt that we never really got to know Mina.

 Starling Days is a novel about clinical depression, self-harm, and suicide, and it felt right that I was reading it when I went to an exhibition about these themes by a female Chinese artist, Chen Ze, in the White Rabbit gallery in Sydney. However, I found it very difficult to engage with Mina’s state of mind for the majority of the text, especially because the narrative is split between her point of view and that of her husband Oscar; I wasn’t sure what Oscar’s sections added. Moreover, the novel starts with Mina thinking about her dual heritage (plus the Japanese last name she’s inherited from her husband, who is desperately trying to learn kanji through playing children’s games on the computer) and her bisexuality, but has very little to say about either. Instead, she feels so self-focused, which is unsurprising due to her illness but which doesn’t induce empathy in the reader.

The writing also felt off-kilter for much of Starling Days, which surprised me, because Harmless Like You was so on point. It often feels a bit try-hard; ‘a breeze ran through the tree, and the leaves applauded’… ‘a body in scrubs the colour of the swimming pool where she’d made her first tentative laps as a pre-schooler’,  while sometimes hitting the right note; ‘The river was as dark as poured tarmac’. Buchanan’s prose was really what carried Harmless Like You, so I was disappointed by the frequent clunkiness here.

I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.

[Leah Bayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those novels that resonates on such a deeply personal level that at times it felt like reading pages of my own diary. It will not work for everyone—in fact, I think for the majority of people it will simply be another “sad woman in a big city” book. But as a clinically depressed woman who lives in NYC... yeah, parts of this literally could have been about me. It’s rough seeing dark parts of your heart on a page someone else wrote, but also uniquely gratifying and freeing. Because no matter how dark the narrative gets, the overall message is “you are not alone”

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Thought the writing was beautiful and poetic and I really enjoyed it at first, but I started to struggle with connecting to the characters as no one was particularly likeable. I expected a slightly different story based on the blurb.

[Allison Terfloth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author made an artsy book about mental health. I gave it a go but just couldn't get into it.

[Beth Clifford · Rating 2 out of 5]

Struggled with this one. Two stars for a 2D book.

[Sienna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The older I get, the taller my to-read stack, the closer to death, the easier it is to give up on books that don’t speak to me. But this author’s work was recommended by a coworker who knows her, and whose perspective as a reader I trust, so I pushed past my misgivings about the lackluster writing that opens the book and settled into discomfort.

“Can you do that for me? Try to be happy?”

For anyone whose mental health has impacted their relationships — for anyone who has loved someone whose mental illness makes that person “harder to love” — (this is most of us, I think) — Starling Days is a challenge. Sympathy only goes so far, and true empathy is impossible coming from the perspective that trying to be happier will produce happiness.

Oscar wanted to sigh too. But you didn’t get to sigh when you were the healthy one.

“Do you have any idea how tiring it is to always be wondering if you’re okay? I need you to meet me halfway. I’m doing everything I can. What else do you need?”

The passages I highlighted all connect to the ways we diminish ourselves and one another, the despair, the gaslighting, the way we lash out when fatigued or uncertain. The truth is that we will always run out of energy; certainty and stability will elude us forever.

We have to learn to listen and to talk, to recognize that hard times will follow the good, and be prepared not to give up. Marriage doesn’t have to be a prison of our own making, confining us to promises that clash with our dreams. We can treat love as a verb, changeable and powerful, rather than objectifying it as a noun meant to fix us. We won’t be repaired or kept still. But we can learn.

Overall, not my jam — there are moments of beauty, but mostly this has the feel of middle-grade fiction featuring adults communicating poorly, which I think we experience enough in life. It made me reflect in new ways on past lives I’ve largely chosen to leave behind, but I kinda would have preferred to read the monograph on the mythological women who survived that Mina spends, like, three seconds researching and five minutes referencing but never actually writing.

P.S. - Read Ursula Le Guin’s take on Lavinia before dismissing her as devoid of personality. Sometimes it just takes the right storyteller.

[Harmony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished Starling Days at night, and it stayed with me for all of the next day. Something about it felt so real, and I couldn’t get it off my mind. Despite the blurb setting it up to be a sad story, it was sadder than I thought it would be.

The characters were imperfect but authentic, with contradictory thoughts and actions. They often seemed to struggle to understand themselves or other people, teetering between confidence and shame. Despite the frequent juxtaposition between thoughts and action, and their moral compasses being effected by emotions, I found myself understanding why they were the way that they were. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s attention to the details of life added depth to the characters that a lot of books struggle to convey.

Starling Days managed to make me reflect on myself and understand things about myself which haven’t always been so easy to comprehend. I will definitely be reading this book again, probably soon.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compassionate story of a young couple struggling with Mina (the wife’s) depression and suicidal thoughts, although as they spend most of the novel apart from each other the narrative mostly alternates between their individual reactions to her struggles. There are some beautifully written sentences in the book, and I thought Phoebe as a character was very well-written and the affair between her and Mina was the part of the book that flowed the best. Otherwise, the story seemed to hang together a little strangely - there were lots of elements that I was expecting to be more fleshed-out, e.g. Mina’s career as a classicist and the monograph she was working on, and Oscar’s reaction to his discovery about his family about two-thirds of the way through, which were suddenly just dropped and made it feel a bit hollow in places.

[Hella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mooi dromerig en poëtisch boek, wel met plezier gelezen.

[Meneghin Livia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly a beautiful story with characters as real as the people in my life. The writing is poignant and quiet at the same time, prose full of heart and truths. Highly recommend.

[Thomas Goddard · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is going to be a very short review. I really did want to like this one. The blurb sounded really really interesting. It just failed to deliver what it promised.

First the good. The story explores some decent ground in relation to the way mental health can warp your perspective and responses to people and the world generally.

The relationships are blurred but it's refreshingly honest as a representation of what real people's connections are like. They ebb, flow, fade, resurge, implode, expand.

Now for the bad. This book is terribly mediocre. I mean, painfully so.

It's about a bunch of rich people who bump into each other and prompt a flickering newness that is presented like a magic spell that reinvigorates the depressed character. Somewhat anyway. It's not a very powerful spell.

I found myself annoyed by the privilege. Bored by the lack of real character development. Then unsatisfied by the ending.

If this is on your TBR pile. I'd swerve it until you find yourself with absolutely nothing else to read.



Rating: ⭐⭐✨ (2.5)

[Sebastian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointed, slightly. I had really high expectations for this one, 'Harmless like you' was for me one of the most important reads of last year. When I saw that new book of Rowan is on its way I instantly ordered it in pre-order. 'Starling days' has a lot to cherish, the writing is meticulous and slightly withheld as though so much more was happening behind the words that we encounter. The book tackles multiple important issues such as dealing with mental illness, relationships and their complexities, bisexual flings and the search for meaning in own life. What I was lacking was the more thorough character development, despite the heaviness of the topics events were more flowing through me rather than leaving temporary blisters. I wish I was more invested in the characters, their actions and decisions. The ending was great though. There is a spark visible also in this work and I hope it will glow with a stronger light in Rowan's next novel.

[MargeryK · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book at the library and of the four or so novels I picked up, this one was the one I enjoyed the most. I think it was published last year, and so didn't get the publicity it deserves. I'll be recommending this one to friends for sure.

It's a modern novel about a modern marriage. If you're a fan of Sally Rooney, you'll likely enjoy this book.

I'm not going to write much more but I enjoyed the characterisation especially the cultural texture to the characters, she being of half Chinese heritage and he being half Japanese. The respective mothers and step mothers were much of a muchness however.

And the nail clippers scene seemed a little far-fetched in retrospect. The ending didn't leave me sated, hence the four stars not five.

[Runningrara · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book about depression that is actually rather dull.

[Kez · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5 stars

One of those books where not a huge amount happens, but I was still completely hooked from start to finish. Mina might be one of the saddest and most well written characters that I've come across in a while, and the way she explains her depression and suicidal thoughts is both tender and hard hitting. She has a need to rely on other people, who understandably can't always be what she needs them to be, and whilst initially I wanted to hate her husband, Oscar, and her 'friend', Phoebe, it was impossible to hate them. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan writes every character with as much care and sympathy as she does Mina, reminding us that everybody has their own struggles.

In addition to the beautifully written characters, I obviously loved that as a classicist, Mina consistently refers to different Greek myths and applies them to her own life, making it clear that she uses these stories as a way to explain her own thoughts and behaviour.

The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is because sometimes the POV shifts happened abruptly and felt a bit random, but a minor critique in the grand scheme of things.

I loved this book, however for those thinking of reading it just bear in mind that it deals with depression and talks of suicide, so think it's important to give it a trigger warning as well.