The title of this book consists of two words: ‘bird’ and ‘cottage’. What images do these two words provoke? Naturally, I painted in my mind a rosy picture of idyllic life in the peaceful English countryside before I even started reading. It turned out that my expectations were much too high. It didn’t make me ‘want to throw away your Oyster pass and move to a remote cottage’ as the review on its cover says. Still, I found it to be an interesting attempt in many ways, so it was worth the time for reading and writing a blog post on it. In this post, I would like to introduce its brief story first and then tell you what I thought of them overall.
Bird Cottage takes a form of fiction based on the life of a real-life woman, Gwendolen(Len) Howard, a professional violinist and later a self-taught bird-behaviour researcher, who lived in the 20th-century UK. Growing up in Wales, Len leads a cultured life in her childhood, with a father, who is a poet, a somewhat neglectful mother and four siblings. Her interest in birds starts at an early age, as her father often takes home fallen birds to take care of them until they recover. The reader knows that they are relatively well-off, as they regularly hold soirees where each member of the family performs artistry of their own interests or they go on a picnic on a family-owned boat. Apart from the bit on birds, her childhood involves a bitter heartbreak, teenage self-consciousness, and a desire to be let free of the stifling family life in Wales.
She resolves to move to London to pursue a career in music. She makes a successful violinist in an orchestra, and initially she enjoys the freedom and diversity of Lindon life. However, as she reaches the age when her fellow musicians start thinking about getting married and settling in, Len finds herself somehow discontented and lonely, obstinately denying the idea of becoming a conventional woman herself; In the times she lived in, even London couldn’t offer complete freedom from whatever Len was trying to get free of. Not understood by anyone, she becomes increasingly misanthropic.
It is only in the last half of the novel that she decides to buy a cottage (as in the title) in Sussex where she starts to study birds more seriously in wild conditions. From then on, all her life is dedicated to birds. For her, birds must come first, even in wartime. She forms a close bond with the birds that visit her house. It seems as if birds understood her more than humans did. She writes a few papers on her study in journals, which at that time is not taken seriously by contemporary (male) researchers, but her publications enjoy great popularity among other bird lovers. Well, that’s pretty much it. Although the story involves a bit of romance every now and then, that is not at the centre of it. She spends the rest of her life with birds.
I think that’s enough for a summary. Reading it myself, I realise it seems to be such a boring story, which I think is half true and half not.
Why?
The first thing that is unique about this novel is that it is narrated in the first person. So, although Len seems only an eccentric old maid from the outside, this gives the reader some insight into her mind. Furthermore, the story being narrated in the present tense, she tells it as she sees, feels and thinks in the present moment, which means that there is not much room for her own interpretation and reflection on what’s happening around her.
Now, I had a little problem with this writing style. The reading experience overall was like that of reading an unrefined personal diary rather than a well-constructed story. As most diaries do not assume the presence of the reader, her ‘story’ isn’t really reader-friendly. I am usually gravitated towards books that make you feel as if the characters understand you. Instead, this book requires you to understand Len, an eccentric character, whose thoughts are pretty much occupied by the self, and simply incapable of having compassion for others if not for birds. Nor does the author have the power to place the protagonist in a bigger picture of her relationship with surrounding characters (there are quite many) because she made the protagonist entirely responsible for that job, which she keeps failing to perform, by letting her narrate the story. As a reader, I felt locked in Les’s head because it was only through her viewpoint that I was allowed to see things in the story. I know that is the whole point of it, but it wasn’t the most pleasurable experience.
The story unfolds with Len’s real publications on bird observations put in between each chapter, featuring one particular bird named Star, whose life draws a loose parallel with Len’s. These snippets bring a breath of fresh air and helps the reader view Len from a different angle.
There is one inevitable flaw in the novel. As a story, it gives the reader an impression of being slightly all over the place. Birds, music, women’s liberation, romance, difficult family relationship and so on. There seem to be a lot of themes in it. Since the focus keeps shifting, they are quite difficult to follow. After all, the book is a reimagining of a real woman’s life, and real life is not as consistent as in a book, so this downside cannot be avoided I guess.