Thank you to NetGalley and Scribe UK for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Spoiler: Dreamy and disorienting.

This book was so intense in the best way. Both main characters, Dinah and Yasuko, were fighting their own emotions. They've both been through loss, and were struggling with grief and the weight of expectations. This created a kind of quiet madness for both of them. The author portrayed these very heavy emotions with such grace and such care.

The descriptions and vivid pictures really immersed me in the culture and essence of Japan. And yet, I found myself completely captivated my the two protagonists and the bond they formed.

Dinah was struggling after losing her twin brother. Having such a close relationship to him, losing him felt like she lost her own self. She considered him to be the special one in their dynamic, and after he was gone, she felt out of place.

Yasuko had the "power" to talk to animals, such a strong power that it caused her to isolate herself, and, in the end, to lose the people she cared about. I wish the booked explored a bit more of these powers, but I can understand the author's decision to remain vague.

What I really appreciated about the book is that it did not provide solutions for the women's struggles. But rather, I think the whole point of the story was to show a moment in time, to show their struggles with both the outside and inside world, as well as the impact they can have on others. So beautifully written, it showed the impact that a single person could have on your entire life.

I really enjoyed this read. Itl looks at the relationship between two very different women. One woman is an older mother hailing from Japan and the other woman is younger and hails from New Zealand. The women are both employed in a university. They teach English as a foreign language to Japanese students. Both women meet and form a friendship, based in some way upon their shared sense of loss. It is an emotional novel, thought provoking and heartfelt. I enjoyed it a lot.

I didn’t knew what this book was about when I got the Arc, Unfortunately the book didn't meet my expectations. I enjoyed the lyrical part and is beautifully written and captured grief, mental illness in such a beautiful sense. It wasn’t just my cuppa of tea

This my first time reading Anna Smaill’s work and it won’t be the last. A captivating read. I loved it!!

Unfortunately the book didn't meet my expectations. There are some lyrical passages but I was looking for some consistent literary fiction, that's why I am disappointed in the end.
By the way, it's a smooth reading.

Set in Japan, the book follows two English teachers in Japan. Dinah is from New Zealand and has come to Tokyo to get away from the memories of her brilliant concert pianist brother pianist brother. Yasuko is Japanese and, apparently had a super power as a child - the ability to hear animals speak and know what people are thinking.

Beautifully written.

In many ways this is Murakami -lite

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

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.

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.

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.

Anna Smaill’s debut (and only previous) novel “The Chimes” was a surprise Booker longlist choice in 2015 – I have not read it but understand it to have been an enigmatic and original dystopian tale set in an imagined London where words and memory have been suppressed in favour of state controlled music – Smail herself a long time violinist and her other previous publication being the poetry collection “ A Violinist in Spring”.

This, her second novel, switches between two first party narrators – both English teachers at a Tokyo university, both suffering from a sense of loss partly related to a male relative with who they had an unusual bond, and both with a sense that the world is not quite what it should be, and that they experience it different to others.

Dinah is a rather introverted, unconfident English speaking teacher from New Zealand. Her rather maverick twin brother Michael was a brilliant concert pianist (continuing the author’s classical musical theme) and the two had an intense and very close relationship largely moderated by Michael (whose favourite game was for them to spend days acting as though they were the only two humans left alive). When Michael moves away from home, his life seems to come awry – he first experiences a piano with a small unlocatable buzz which could only be solved by pulling it apart, and then experiences the same feeling about his own life – and he takes refuge in food and then it seems suicide. Coming to Tokyo to try to come to terms with her guilt over his death, Dinah cannot engage with a seemingly meaningless world, sleeping for instance in a small concrete park below her flat.

Yasuko, by contrast, is externally a brash and confident (almost arrogant) Japanese speaking teacher – one with a penchant for designer clothes and luxury foods. However, when she was thirteen, she found she had a “super-power” - the ability not just to hear animals speak but to hear what people were thinking; but while still a schoolgirl she is told that her mother is going to die that day and her father’s unwillingness to take her seriously them, when her warning comes true, causes a permanent breach between them and later, when as a single mother bringing up her son Jun she feels her father trying to take him away from her, she flees her childhood house with Jun and moves to Tokyo. There she desperately seeks the return of her powers – having manic periods when she incorrectly believes them restored, followed by long periods where for all her external bravura and even callousness she experiences the world as flat and one-dimensional.

At the book’s opening, Yasuko’s powers do seem to fully return but this drives the now young adult Jun, who has always struggled with his mother’s manias, to leave home and break contact. Yasuko is convinced that Dinah has been sent to help her, and befriends/adopts her at the same time that Dinah is increasingly visited by the tangible ghostly presence of Michael.

From there the book becomes an exploration of interior lives, of possible mental illness (refracted through dream, legend and fantasy), and of the City of Tokyo itself.

From what I had heard of her debut novel it retains the enigmatic nature I expected and appreciated, but was simply less original than I had hoped due to its Tokyo setting, which while justified by the author’s time living there more than 20 years ago, seemed to be to be too familiar and sub-Murakami, particularly when combined with talking cats (and even at one stage oddly shaped ear lobes, with Jazz thankfully absent).

I think this is a book that will appeal for many but did not do enough to stand out for me.

Two women meet in Tokyo, both suffering with different types of grief and loss, both needing each other in their own ways, both making each other worse somehow. Bird Life is a poetic, lyrical, and ambitious exploration of grief, loss, and guilt.

A slow paced novel, the story drips languidly through the pages as Smaill spins a story exploring the experience of mental ill-health on both those afflicted and those on the periphery. Plot wise, not an awful lot happens - Dinah and Yasuko orbit around each other, one grieving the death of her brother, the other grieving the childhood of her son. World’s don’t so much collide as lightly bump against each other as the two women gently and inadvertently help each other process their individual losses.

Along the way we learn more of Yasuko’s family, of the strange power she believes she has, and of the strain this has inflicted on every aspect of her 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

his novel looks at the relationship between two women, one an older mother of Japanese origin and the other a younger girl from New Zealand. The two work together in a university teaching English as a foreign language to Japanese students. Both women have suffered losses in their lives, one losing her twin brother tragically young and the other suffering from empty nest syndrome as her son leaves home
As I started to read this book, I was quite confused about the novel,. Is it going to be a magical reality book where the main characters have some kind of special superpower.I took some time to realise that actually the superpower that they were discussing was mental illness. as a reader,you are never quite sure where occurrences being been described are real or imaginary. I think probably this is the strength of the book. The reader is never 100% sure if one of the characters has a special power
I had read the one of the authors previous novels, the chimes, which was on the book, a long list a few years back that book left me quite confused and I didn’t really like it
As much as I enjoyed this book
This novel is mainly a character lead novel. There relationships between the two women are the main focus of the story. I did believe that both the characters and they felt like real people I enjoyed the novels setting in Japan, which added extra interest of the story. The differences in the two women’s upbringings were notable.

The authors writing style is clear and easily read,the novel was an enjoyable read.
I read an early copy of the novel on NetGalley UK. The novel is published in the UK on the 9th of November 2023 by Scribe UK not a publisher had come across before.

This review will appear on NetGalley, UK, good reads and on my book blog, bionicsarahsbooks.wordpress.com and after publication on Amazon, UK

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.

This was a difficult read for me. I was attracted by the cover and the fact that the author had a previous Booker-Prize long listed novel, albeit one I haven't read. The story of two women who meet through their teaching jobs at a university in Tokyo, one a stunning Japanese woman with mental health issues, the other a young New Zealander grief-stricken by the death of her twin brother. These two women develop a relationship, but both characters and their friendship felt hard to connect with and truly understand. Perhaps that is intentional, as it can be very difficult to understand another person. Without giving anything away, the course the plot takes in the end feels unbelievable, and distracts from the core story of the two women. The writing itself lends a disconcerting feel to the book but doesn't in my opinion rise to the level of a literary standout.

I feel like this is the sort of book where if you read it at the right time, it was. have great impact on the reader. Unfortunately, it was not the right time for me.

Bird Life is a stunning read. Disorienting and dreamlike in quality, it invites us into the minds of two women: Dinah, who has travelled from New Zealand to teach English in Japan, and the enigmatic Yasuko.

Both women are grappling with loss, grief, and the weight of internal and external expectations. This creates a kind of quiet madness for both, which the reader experiences from the perspectives of both women, and their interactions with the world and people around them.

Smaill's masterful prose paints vivid portraits of Japan and Tokyo, effortlessly immersing the reader in its essence and culture. Yet, it is the intricate exploration of Dinah and Yasuko that captivated me the most. Their journeys are deftly woven into the fabric of the narrative, and the book emanates an otherworldly quality reminiscent of Murakami.

Although I wished for a deeper exploration of Yasuko's ‘powers’, I totally understand the author's deliberate choice to remain vague. It is through our immersion in the illogical realms inhabited by Dinah and Yasuko that we, as readers, truly comprehend and empathise with their very different experiences of the world around them and their emotions.

Bird Life offers a very poignant exploration mental health struggles and the impact it inflicts upon those we love, as well as the profound internal experience it presents. Anna Smaill fearlessly delves into the depths of the human condition, painting a painful, yet beautiful, portrait of love, loss, and the resilience of the human spirit.

This is unquestionably a novel for fans of literary fiction, a tapestry woven with poetic prowess and power. But, it doesn’t seek to provide us with all, or any, of the answers nor does it try to neatly resolve the problems faced by Dinah and Yasuko. Instead, it presents a snapshot of an important moment in their lives, inviting us to reflect on how the world and our relationships can affect both our experiences and those around us.

This book is a beautiful portrayal of different cultures and how they can come together. I loved reading this and thought this was such a rich book full of important points, such as the empathy people can poses. I do think this is a bit of a deeper read that people need to be in the right headspace to fully enjoy the entire book. Overall I thought this was incredibly well written with really interesting characters and settings.

This book covers beliefs, values, customs, practices, and institutions of culture that gave me a great insight. The author has provided readers with a deeper understanding of the ways in which people from different cultural backgrounds live, think, and interact with each other. I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for the richness and diversity of human culture. This is a book that can promote understanding, empathy, and a sense of interconnectedness among people from different backgrounds.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.