BIRD SKINNER

A story of war, love, ageing and the mysterious allure of birds. It is 1973 and Jim Kennoway, a distinguished ornithologist and World War Two veteran, leaves his work in the American Museum of Natural History in New York and retreats to an island in Maine. His desires are simple - to be left alone with his cigarettes, gin and his battered copy of Treasure Island. His solitude is interrupted when a remarkable young woman from the Solomon Islands arrives on her way to study medicine at Yale. She is the daughter of an island scout Jim befriended during the war, when they collected and skinned birds while spying behind enemy lines. Jim curses the intrusion as he finds his thoughts catapulting back to a dark truth from his time in the Solomons, yet she may be able to teach him what it is to be human again. Told in a lush, expressive prose, 309pp, paperback.