BIRDS ART LIFE DEATH

(4th Estate £8.99) WHEN her father fell ill, the novelist and children’s author Kyo Maclear found herself lost for words.

In search of something to assuage her feeling of disconnectedness, she met a musician who had found peace by watching birds and photographing them.

Intrigued, Kyo began to take urban bird walks with her new friend and, as she watched the secret bird life of the city, she began to reflect on her own life: her parents, her marriage, her children, her work and the mysterious hidden lives that birds — and human beings — lead.

To walk was to experience the loneliness of the human condition, ‘and yet there was something undeniably uplifting in catching glints of life, sharing sightings with strangers’.

Meditative, beautifully written and full of unexpected insights, this lyrical memoir is an inspiring celebration of being a little lost.