BIRD COTTAGE, perfect holiday read for #WITMonth

BIRD COTTAGE
EVA MEIJER (tr. Antoinette Fawcett)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Amazon link
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: I want to find out how they behave when they’re free.

Len Howard was forty years old when she decided to leave her London life and loves behind, retire to the English countryside and devote the rest of her days to her one true passion: birds.

Moving to a small cottage in Sussex, she wrote two bestselling books, astonishing the world with her observations on the tits, robins, sparrows and other birds that lived nearby, flew freely in and out of her windows, and would even perch on her shoulder as she typed.

This moving novel imagines the story of a remarkable woman’s decision to defy society’s expectations, and the joy she drew from her extraordinary relationship with British garden birds.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A non-fiction novel, a fictionalized (more than usual) biography, it's a read that solves the need I feel to derive some kind of new-to-me knowledge from my entertainment. Len Howard was a real woman, and the facts of her life are as presented here.

I don't think that's necessary to know to appreciate this celebratory telling of one woman's remarkable life. It's interesting, and raises the question: Why not go into a full biography of this powerful, if quiet, personality? She would stand out in any era but in her lifetime (1894 to 1973) she was a unicorn! So, from the start, I was inclined to stand a bit apart from the story. When I'm told it's based on a real person's life, but is fiction, I'll never settle in to a naturally flowing response now. The "which is this thing, fact or fiction?" will arise at every turn.

No fifth star for you, book.

That said, the story told...quiet, meditative, filled with Howard's own sense of wonder and awe at the beautiful world...is an enfolding, enriching experience. I'm not deeply interested in les burdies, unlike so many. Howard's decision to stop creating music to pursue a close and deep connection to them was surprising to me, as it was to those very few she was close to. Her desire to see what unthreatened birds would do differently from the ones she saw being "studied" in harrassing ways, as was the norm at the time, made me think she was trying to find a space free of threats, free of unnatural demands, for herself. What she does in this beautiful idyll is make careful observations, meticulously recorded and thoroughly analyzed. This led to two published books, in 1952 and 1957, now seemigly out of print in English, though not in Dutch...for obvious reasons. Author Meijer's deft hand at work, I suppose, though she did not translate the book.

It is the story of a restricted life, told beautifully, and fully. It reveals that even a woman of restrained temperament...nothing in Len's life before or after her assuming residence at the eponymous Bird Cottage suggests she was a repressed soul, just a quiet one...can feel pinched and coerced into a mold not to her liking. Often the quiet souls, uncomplaining and undramatic in their manners and manner, are mimstakenly supposed to be happy or at least contented. Len Howard was neither. She disliked most human interaction. When, at forty-five, she left the social demands of the world behind to be fully in the natural world, she began to achieve things, to see things, that simply would not be seen in the regimes of study then fashionable. She began, I think, to live her life for herself, as herself.

The strength of my own lurid energies makes me think "that can not be a happy life" but the evidence of her writing suggests it was. I'm appalled, fascinated, and very slightly amazed that someone could choose, at any age younger than I am now, a life without sex. Without companionship. Without others. She wasn't the first, or the last, but "really?" is my one thought.

So there's the missing star explained away; the other four represent my glad-hearted, deeply gruntled feelings as I immerse myself into a calm pool of beautifully clear word-water, telling me a satisfying story of a life lived on the terms its subject most wanted. That she was ucky enough to do this for almost half her years on this planet makes her one of the most fortunate and privileged of people.

This beautifully translated novel of an extraordinary woman's life is an excellent seasonal read. It's one that, during a vacation, will allow the reader to submerge into a truly different way of life. Even though I myownself wouldn't want to live Len Howard's life, I'm glad Author Meijer and Translator Fawcett shared it with me.