'One of the best books I have ever read. Incredibly moving' Elton John
'I cant recommend it too highly' Helen Macdonald
'Ranks among the best modern coming-of-age memoirs' Sunday Times
'Where Helen Macdonald's H Is For Hawk meets Gerald Durrell's My Family And Other Animals ... Remarkable' Daily Mail
'Beautiful, wise, compassionate and powerful' Isabella Tree
This is a story about birds and fathers.
About the young magpie that fell from its nest in a Bermondsey junkyard into Charlie Gilmour's life - and swiftly changed it. Demanding worms around the clock, riffling through his wallet, sharing his baths and roosting in his hair...
About the jackdaw kept at a Cornish stately home by Heathcote Williams, anarchist, poet, magician, stealer of Christmas, and Charlie's biological father who vanished from his life in the dead of night.
It is a story about repetition across generations and birds that run in the blood; about a terror of repeating the sins of the father and a desire to build a nest of one's own.
It is a story about change - from wild to tame; from sanity to madness; from life to death to birth; from freedom to captivity and back again, via an insane asylum, a prison and a magpie's nest.
And ultimately, it is the story of a love affair between a man and a magpie.
'An incisive, funny and at times traumatic study of the damage done by destructive father-son relationships and the struggle to smash generational cycles' Evening Standard
'A personal reckoning which is simultaneously brutal and joyous. I was entranced' Cathy Rentzenbrink
'A beautiful book - it made me cry' Simon Amstell
Charlie Gilmour was born in 1989 and raised in London and Sussex. He read history at Cambridge University, with a brief interlude in 2011 at Her Majesty's Prison Wandsworth. He lives in South London with his wife, Janina, and their daughter, Olga.
Title: Featherhood: 'The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years' Neil Gaiman
Author: Gilmour, Charlie
ISBN: 9781474609470
Binding:
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
Publication Date: 2020-08-27
Number of Pages: 288
Weight: 0.4001 kg
Featherhood is one of the best books I've ever read. I urge you to seek it out, buy it, and be enchanted. It's incredibly moving and I loved every single page * Elton John *
The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years. It announces Charlie Gilmour as a major new writing talent * Neil Gaiman *
Wonderful - I can't recommend it too highly * Helen Macdonald, author of H IS FOR HAWK *
Beautiful, wise, compassionate and powerful, Featherhood is one of those rare, enchanted books that sings to the soul of what it is to be
* Isabella Tree, author of WILDING *
What a book! I was entranced. A personal reckoning which is simultaneously brutal and joyous. It's full of light. I want to tell everyone about it * Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of THE LAST ACT OF LOVE *
This stunning memoir flashes with as many colours as its enchanting subject, and draws us into a world of eccentric characters impossible to predict or forget. Savage, mischievous, moving, sublime * Rhik Samadder, author of I NEVER SAID I LOVED YOU *
FEATHERHOOD, it would be tempting to say, is where Helen Macdonald's H Is For Hawk meets Gerald Durrell's My Family And Other Animals. But Charlie Gilmour's memoir is so original and ingeniously wrought, it stands on its own as a book to which others will surely be compared... Gilmour's language is as precise as his gaze is forensic. He is something of a magician himself, conjuring whole vivid personalities with a few deft strokes of his pen... He can slay you with his succinct summoning of a small boy's struggles... and he can dazzle you with the gem-like images of nature he creates which, like all writers who draw you into their orbit, thrum with life... Remarkable.' -- Ginny Dougary * DAILY MAIL, Book of the Week *
It is wise, self-aware, never forced, often funny, beautifully crafted, and, in the end, as moving as Kes, that other great work about a boy who is given the gift of liberation by a bird. -- Craig Brown * MAIL ON SUNDAY *
A soaring debut... A sincere and searing tale of loss, addictive despair, the redemptive power of love, the natural world and a shit-dropping, feather-moulting talking magpie... This will undoubtedly be held up alongside H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald's memoir that saw her tame her grief and a bird of prey in her living room. But Featherhood is an equal, if not better, work of magpie investigation that ranks among the best modern coming-of-age memoirs. -- Helen Davies * SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE *
A profound exploration of grief, fragmented families, nature versus nurture and whether we are doomed to repeat the sins of our fathers. But it is also a gladdening celebration of what it is to nurture and bring forth new life. -- Caroline Sanderson * SUNDAY EXPRESS S MAGAZINE *
A beautiful book, sensitive and compelling - it made me cry * Simon Amstell *
I loved Featherhood. About nature and growth, about belonging and not belonging, it is beautiful * Andrew O'Hagan, author of THE ILLUMINATIONS *
Utterly absorbing, astonishingly well-written, full of heart, Featherhood is the most arresting book I've read for a very long time * Cressida Connolly, author of AFTER THE PARTY *
The extraordinary story of an extraordinary family * Sophie Heawood, author of THE HANGOVER GAMES *
Featherhood is an incisive, funny and at times traumatic study of the damage done by destructive father-son relationships and the struggle to smash generational cycles. -- David Marsland * EVENING STANDARD *
A wonderful, moving book. His account of raising a young magpie offers a lovely insight into this fascinating bird * James Macdonald Lockhart, author of RAPTOR *
[An]
affecting and beautifully written memoir. * THE BOOKSELLER, Editor's Choice *
A good time in a weird way - I have never read anything so filthy * Nell Zink, author of THE WALL CREEPER *
Emotional, touching and often odd, Gilmour's memoir about two key relationships - one with his late father and the other with a magpie - lingers long after the final page. -- Sarah Hughes * I NEWSPAPER *
I'm having a lovely time with
Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour. He is such a tender writer, the book is a magical encounter with birds and fathers. * Andrew O'Hagan in GUARDIAN *
Touching and true, with flashes of black humour, it's a fascinating story. It's also a brilliant examination of nature vs nurture. Gilmour is certainly a born writer. -- Cressida Connelly * THE SPECTATOR, Books of the Year *
Written with economy, insight, and rare beauty - a perfect nature memoir for our times -- Andrew Lycett * THE SPECTATOR *
A tender coming-of-age memoir. It's an intelligent debut that shows that Gilmour, for all his celebrity family connections, is undoubtedly a remarkable writer in his own right. -- Lucy Knight * THE SUNDAY TIMES, Memoir of the Year *
Featherhood is an incisive, funny and at times traumatic study of the damage done by destructive father-son relationships. * THE OLDIE *
Gilmour's unforgettable memoir is both a beautiful piece of nature writing about caring for a magpie and a brutally honest account of his difficult relationship with his late father, the poet Heathcote Williams. -- Sarah Hughes * I NEWSPAPER, Best Books of 2020 *
A delicately choreographed story of salvation through a bird, with echoes of Barry Hines's classic A Kestrel For A Knave. -- Craig Brown * MAIL ON SUNDAY, Best Books of the Year *
Bird and author explore this explosive terrain in an exhilarating dance of transformation, from wild to tame, captivity to freedom and darkness to light. -- Ariane Bankes * THE TABLET, Best Books of the Year *
Gilmour... is fearless in sharing himself with readers. As he works through his relationships, the emotional freight is not always subtle, but this comes from a generosity and openness on his part, which, ultimately, is what makes Featherhood so lovely and inviting. Gilmour practices no magic here; he distracts the reader with no glitzy baubles. He gives us a man and a bird and tells us, best he can, what they've come to know about the world as it is. He is willing to spill a little blood. -- C J Hauser * THE NEW YORK TIMES *
Redemptive, beautifully written and often very funny, this is a moving study of the power of human (and magpie) love to repair even the most wounded heart. -- Jane Shilling * DAILY MAIL *
