Starling days - Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD

The moving new novel from Desmond Elliot-shortlisted author of Harmless Like You.

'An exquisite rendering of love, sadness, and misunderstanding . . . I want to share this book with everyone I know.' The Paris Review

'A poetic, hypnotic exploration of mental health' Stylist

'Buchanan is a novelist of talent and grace' Scotland on Sunday

Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the officers she's not about to jump but they don't believe her. Her husband, Oscar is called to pick her up.

Oscar hopes that leaving New York for a few months will give Mina the space to heal. They travel to London, to an apartment wall-papered with indigo-eyed birds, to Oscars oldest friends, to a canal and blooming flower market. Mina, a classicist, searches for solutions to her failing mental health using mythological women. But she finds a beam of light in a living woman. Friendship and attraction blossom until Oscar and Mina's complicated love is tested.