Birds Art Life Death: A Field Guide to the Small and Significant by Kyo Maclear

This is an intricate and delicate memoir that is in fact more than just a memoir this is poetic and allows the reader the peace and freedom of nature’s cure. Birds. Art. Life. Death. by Kyo Maclear is not just a book about birds it is about how nature helped during a difficult period in Kyo’s life.

Kyo Maclear was born in London and the family emigrated to Canada when she was four-years-old. When her father suffered two strokes she tells of suffering from “anticipatory grief” she felt that she needed something out of her life of waiting for the telephone calls from the hospital something different. That something different is actually all around us every day. That is wild birds. For Maclear she had heard of a musician who gained the love of photographing wild birds in and around Toronto.

After contacting “the musician” in the hope of a bird walk what happened next is a book called Birds. Art. Life. Death. A book that covers not just the initial bird walk with “the musician” but a book covering every month of the year they watching and discovering birds. This is a book that is the purest form of nature’s cure a meditation as the reader is invited along with Maclear as she talks about not just the peace she finds in watching and discovering urban birds but openly discusses her parents, her past, the books she enjoyed through her life and almost anything and everything that she wanted to bring out into the open. I loved the way she uses words to describe certain birds they discover through the year. It is unique and at times made me smile. Being a keen birder through my life I have found times when I have done something similar.

Do not expect a rip roaring memoir but a book that moves along at a constant slow pace as it should do but it is so beautifully presented and Maclear’s prose is something to be cherished. The book is interspersed with drawings and small images of birds. So many topics are covered in 256 pages looking back I found it incredible to think that Kyo Maclear managed to achieve this.

If you are struggling with the current world news and need some of nature’s cure. I would happily recommend you pick up a copy and join Kyo and “the musician” and discover the peace that you will find in discovering some of the wild urban birds.

Thank you to Fourth Estate for the advanced review copy.

Birds. Art. Life. Death. by Kyo Maclear is published by Fourth Estate and is available through Waterstones, Amazon and all good bookshops.