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Birding
In a small seaside town, autumn is edging into winter, gulls ride winds over the waves, and two women, pass each other on the promenade, as yet unaware of each other's existence.
In the nineties Lydia was a teen pop star, posed half naked on billboards everywhere with a lollipop between her lips and no idea how to live, letting the world happen to her. Now, three decades later, Lydia is less and less sure that what happened to her was in the least bit okay. The news cycle runs hot with #MeToo stories, and a famous former lover has emerged with a self-serving apology, asking her to forgive him. Suddenly, the past is full of trapdoors she is desperately trying not to fall through.
Joyce, in middle age, has never left home. She still lives with her mother Betty. With their matching dresses, identical hairdos and makeup, they are the local oddballs. Theirs is a life of unerring routine: the shops, biscuits served on bone china plates, dressing up for a gin and tonic on Saturday. Nice things. One misstep from Joyce can ruin Betty's day; so Joyce treads carefully. She has never let herself think about a different kind of life. But recently, along with the hot flushes, something like anger is asserting itself, like a caged thing realising it should probably try and escape.
Amid the grey skies, amusement parks and beauty parlours of a gentrifying run-down seaside resort, these two women might never meet. But as they both try to untangle the damaging details of their past in the hope of a better future, their lives are set on an unlikely collision course.
With mordant wit and lyrical prose, Birding asks if we can ever see ourselves clearly or if we are always the unreliable narrators of our own experiences. It is a story about the difference between responsibility and obligation, unhealthy relationships and abusive ones, third acts and last chances, and two women trying to take flight on clipped wings.
In the nineties Lydia was a teen pop star, posed half naked on billboards everywhere with a lollipop between her lips and no idea how to live, letting the world happen to her. Now, three decades later, Lydia is less and less sure that what happened to her was in the least bit okay. The news cycle runs hot with #MeToo stories, and a famous former lover has emerged with a self-serving apology, asking her to forgive him. Suddenly, the past is full of trapdoors she is desperately trying not to fall through.
Joyce, in middle age, has never left home. She still lives with her mother Betty. With their matching dresses, identical hairdos and makeup, they are the local oddballs. Theirs is a life of unerring routine: the shops, biscuits served on bone china plates, dressing up for a gin and tonic on Saturday. Nice things. One misstep from Joyce can ruin Betty's day; so Joyce treads carefully. She has never let herself think about a different kind of life. But recently, along with the hot flushes, something like anger is asserting itself, like a caged thing realising it should probably try and escape.
Amid the grey skies, amusement parks and beauty parlours of a gentrifying run-down seaside resort, these two women might never meet. But as they both try to untangle the damaging details of their past in the hope of a better future, their lives are set on an unlikely collision course.
With mordant wit and lyrical prose, Birding asks if we can ever see ourselves clearly or if we are always the unreliable narrators of our own experiences. It is a story about the difference between responsibility and obligation, unhealthy relationships and abusive ones, third acts and last chances, and two women trying to take flight on clipped wings.
271 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 2, 2024
66 people are currently reading
2,211 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
April 10, 2024
I think I'd like to read this book again straight away (and I would if I hadn't got tons of other things to read). I was feeling a bit let down by this book until the last quarter and then I realised I'd been reading it all wrong. It's not the first time I've had preconceptions and missed the whole point of a book. It probably won't be the last.
So the book follows two women - Joyce who is headed for an entire lifetime of subjugation under her mother's suffocating presence; and Lydia who is struggling to find her place in the world after a failed career in a band and a less than stellar job as a freelancer.
Joyce wants more out of life than existing in a pokey flat with her mother and Lydia, newly reunited with her best friend, Pan, and Pan's daughter, Lol, is trying to understand why the man who abused her gets to say sorry and walk away.
Two women whose unsatisfying lives intersect for one stunning moment. But what will come next?
As I said I read this book all wrong. I should have luxuriated in the slow build up of pressure instead of wondering when that one moment would arrive. Hence I'd like to read it again and soon. Rose Ruane writes characters very well and she captures the pathos and ennui of the situation and town very clearly.
There are difficult subjects to navigate but nothing feels sensational or overdone. Both women are clearly in need of some love and care and I felt sympathy for Joyce and Lydia but also for all the other characters whose lives weren't all they wanted them to be but were still hopeful.
Highly recommended. A gentle but effective novel.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Little, Brown for the advance review copy.
So the book follows two women - Joyce who is headed for an entire lifetime of subjugation under her mother's suffocating presence; and Lydia who is struggling to find her place in the world after a failed career in a band and a less than stellar job as a freelancer.
Joyce wants more out of life than existing in a pokey flat with her mother and Lydia, newly reunited with her best friend, Pan, and Pan's daughter, Lol, is trying to understand why the man who abused her gets to say sorry and walk away.
Two women whose unsatisfying lives intersect for one stunning moment. But what will come next?
As I said I read this book all wrong. I should have luxuriated in the slow build up of pressure instead of wondering when that one moment would arrive. Hence I'd like to read it again and soon. Rose Ruane writes characters very well and she captures the pathos and ennui of the situation and town very clearly.
There are difficult subjects to navigate but nothing feels sensational or overdone. Both women are clearly in need of some love and care and I felt sympathy for Joyce and Lydia but also for all the other characters whose lives weren't all they wanted them to be but were still hopeful.
Highly recommended. A gentle but effective novel.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Little, Brown for the advance review copy.
April 18, 2024
Sometimes while reading a book, I like to tab phrases or passages that I really love or that resonate. Most of the time this is a couple of tabs per book but my copy of Birding is almost more tab than book!
I read this with a sense of wonder constantly marvelling at the stunning writing. Rose Ruane is basically a word magician. The way she can conjure characters, emotions, scenes fully realised and vivid in your mind is nothing short of incredible.
Two women who have had very different lives find themselves for very different reasons similarly trapped in a crumbling seaside town. Lydia was a 90s pop star now looking back on her experiences through a new lens and Joyce, now in her 40s, has lived with her mother and under her thumb, her whole life.
The relationships in this book are complex and multilayered. The nuances of the situations and different types of abuse experienced by several of the characters are sensitively but honestly laid bare. It’s an often heartbreaking but also hopeful.
Fantastic set of characters all relatable in their own way. Special shout out to Lol who I absolutely loved. Just wanted to give them a giant hug!
Poetically insightful, profound and so wise. So many feelings and situations in this book that I recognised and I found myself almost constantly nodding along muttering ‘yup�
It’s also threaded through with some brilliant moments of humour and empathy.
Birding is a book about what we steal from other people, about the power of noticing the beauty in the everyday and ultimately it’s a story of recognising yourself giving yourself permission to be
Hot contender for my Book of the Year.
Oh and shout out to the brilliant cover design too!
Hugely grateful to Corsair for my proof copy in exchange for an honest review
I read this with a sense of wonder constantly marvelling at the stunning writing. Rose Ruane is basically a word magician. The way she can conjure characters, emotions, scenes fully realised and vivid in your mind is nothing short of incredible.
Two women who have had very different lives find themselves for very different reasons similarly trapped in a crumbling seaside town. Lydia was a 90s pop star now looking back on her experiences through a new lens and Joyce, now in her 40s, has lived with her mother and under her thumb, her whole life.
The relationships in this book are complex and multilayered. The nuances of the situations and different types of abuse experienced by several of the characters are sensitively but honestly laid bare. It’s an often heartbreaking but also hopeful.
Fantastic set of characters all relatable in their own way. Special shout out to Lol who I absolutely loved. Just wanted to give them a giant hug!
Poetically insightful, profound and so wise. So many feelings and situations in this book that I recognised and I found myself almost constantly nodding along muttering ‘yup�
It’s also threaded through with some brilliant moments of humour and empathy.
Birding is a book about what we steal from other people, about the power of noticing the beauty in the everyday and ultimately it’s a story of recognising yourself giving yourself permission to be
Hot contender for my Book of the Year.
Oh and shout out to the brilliant cover design too!
Hugely grateful to Corsair for my proof copy in exchange for an honest review
March 22, 2025
Lydia, in her late forties is contacted by Henry to inform her he will put on a play that recounts a part of their history that ought to have negated their continued contact. Lydia is stunned, haunted and full of regret.
Joyce, of similar age, lives with her super controlling, critical mother Betty in a small house a few blocks back from the sea, after their comedown, the departure of Joyce's father without a word of explanation or contact since she was a child. Joyce has never joined adulthood, her mother keeping her in a kind of stasis, until one Saturday evening when they prepare to go to the club, Betty utters that maybe they might meet a man, both of them, mother and daughter.
Birding navigates a short period of time in 2019 in these two women's lives as they live with who they have become and reflect on significant aspects of the past that shaped them.
Both have a desire to step outside of their patterns and in some small way the shift begins to happen, as their current minor transgressions exhibit a healthier rebellion and acknowledgement of what inside them, needs to find expression.
Joyce, of similar age, lives with her super controlling, critical mother Betty in a small house a few blocks back from the sea, after their comedown, the departure of Joyce's father without a word of explanation or contact since she was a child. Joyce has never joined adulthood, her mother keeping her in a kind of stasis, until one Saturday evening when they prepare to go to the club, Betty utters that maybe they might meet a man, both of them, mother and daughter.
Birding navigates a short period of time in 2019 in these two women's lives as they live with who they have become and reflect on significant aspects of the past that shaped them.
Both have a desire to step outside of their patterns and in some small way the shift begins to happen, as their current minor transgressions exhibit a healthier rebellion and acknowledgement of what inside them, needs to find expression.
September 4, 2024
In the 90s, Lydia was once a pop star. Now she’s not quite sure what she is. But when she finds herself homeless she tracks down her old friend Pan, who lives in a decaying seaside town & temporarily moves in with her.
In that same seaside town lives Joyce. She’s a middle aged spinster, still stuck at home in a one bedroom flat, with her ageing mother Betty. Their relationship is somewhat unique; they wear identical clothes and hairstyles, they even kickstart their Saturday night down the club with matching G&T’s. Some might be forgiven for thinking they were sisters.
Joyce and Lydia don’t know one another. But they both have dreams of a better life. And as the waves relentlessly smash against the once esteemed, now neglected pier and the amusement arcades shriek as loudly as the seagulls, these two women cross paths without even knowing, both lost in their own worlds of whys and what ifs.
My oh my, what an astonishingly well written and evocative book this is. It’s the kind of book that almost needs to be read aloud, such is the magnificence of its words. Rose Ruane takes you right there, to this run down town, with its residents and residences all slowly rotting. I loved Joyce and Betty, I was both hypnotised and repelled by them and their little claustrophobic house. The detailing was so evocative and vivid that I felt like I was right there sitting in their living room eating a viscount biscuit with them. (Just the one of course, any more would be sheer piggery.)
Birding is an incredibly well written and observational book. It will have you wincing and smiling and laughing and nodding at its accurate depiction of life. Very immersive and very authentic. Grab your stick of rock and jump in!
In that same seaside town lives Joyce. She’s a middle aged spinster, still stuck at home in a one bedroom flat, with her ageing mother Betty. Their relationship is somewhat unique; they wear identical clothes and hairstyles, they even kickstart their Saturday night down the club with matching G&T’s. Some might be forgiven for thinking they were sisters.
Joyce and Lydia don’t know one another. But they both have dreams of a better life. And as the waves relentlessly smash against the once esteemed, now neglected pier and the amusement arcades shriek as loudly as the seagulls, these two women cross paths without even knowing, both lost in their own worlds of whys and what ifs.
My oh my, what an astonishingly well written and evocative book this is. It’s the kind of book that almost needs to be read aloud, such is the magnificence of its words. Rose Ruane takes you right there, to this run down town, with its residents and residences all slowly rotting. I loved Joyce and Betty, I was both hypnotised and repelled by them and their little claustrophobic house. The detailing was so evocative and vivid that I felt like I was right there sitting in their living room eating a viscount biscuit with them. (Just the one of course, any more would be sheer piggery.)
Birding is an incredibly well written and observational book. It will have you wincing and smiling and laughing and nodding at its accurate depiction of life. Very immersive and very authentic. Grab your stick of rock and jump in!
April 4, 2024
Birding is so superbly written with humour that is wickedly dark at times but with a raw and honest edge that probes around very bleak topics with the disbelief and almost bonhomie of characters losing their grip on what is going on for them.
Although both Lydia and Joyce live in the same, rundown, depressing seaside town they don't really meet, but both of them have lives that are troubling and this book follows events that bring revelations and life-altering realisations.
At times this is really quite harrowing to read as you bear witness to abuse, manipulation and conflict that is wincingly painful but you see things from various perspectives, and the insight always awards glimmers of home, of change and transformation.
I don't think I've read a book so compellingly accurate about complex and codependent mother -daughter relationships as this one, and the very difficult balance of being in a caring role and trying to also parent through trauma. It is a fantastic book.
Although both Lydia and Joyce live in the same, rundown, depressing seaside town they don't really meet, but both of them have lives that are troubling and this book follows events that bring revelations and life-altering realisations.
At times this is really quite harrowing to read as you bear witness to abuse, manipulation and conflict that is wincingly painful but you see things from various perspectives, and the insight always awards glimmers of home, of change and transformation.
I don't think I've read a book so compellingly accurate about complex and codependent mother -daughter relationships as this one, and the very difficult balance of being in a caring role and trying to also parent through trauma. It is a fantastic book.
May 18, 2024
This is a gorgeous, glamorous and weird book about gorgeous, glamorous and weird girls and their almost second coming of age that's happening to each of them in their middle ages.
I found that each relationship and character in this book was handled with so much love and care, no matter if that was a positive or negative relationship or a "good" or "bad" person. The characters in this book are so complex and real feeling. No character can be written off as all good or all bad, despite what you may go into it thinking and feeling in the earlier pages. It was so easy to love some of these people, and so easy to want to reach through the page to give them a hug at points.
This book really shows the underbelly of the seaside town and the goings on inside somewhere once considered very regal and glamorous. As someone who grew up in seaside towns it definitely rang true and felt extremely authentic.
The queer undertones and commentary on queerbaiting leading into self discovery was so interesting, and I love a middle aged queer realisation more than anything. Knowing you still have so much life to live and you can now live it in the most authentic way is so hopeful
It also touches on the Me Too movement in a really gentle - but direct - way and talks about responsibility, acceptance and letting go. I personally found it so validating and even helpful for my own journey.
I found that each relationship and character in this book was handled with so much love and care, no matter if that was a positive or negative relationship or a "good" or "bad" person. The characters in this book are so complex and real feeling. No character can be written off as all good or all bad, despite what you may go into it thinking and feeling in the earlier pages. It was so easy to love some of these people, and so easy to want to reach through the page to give them a hug at points.
This book really shows the underbelly of the seaside town and the goings on inside somewhere once considered very regal and glamorous. As someone who grew up in seaside towns it definitely rang true and felt extremely authentic.
The queer undertones and commentary on queerbaiting leading into self discovery was so interesting, and I love a middle aged queer realisation more than anything. Knowing you still have so much life to live and you can now live it in the most authentic way is so hopeful
It also touches on the Me Too movement in a really gentle - but direct - way and talks about responsibility, acceptance and letting go. I personally found it so validating and even helpful for my own journey.
March 25, 2025
This one wasn’t really for me. It was a bleak book about abuse on many different fronts using many different fonts and none of it made me feel anything new, nor touched anything old in a necessary way. Not sure how it made the WP2025 longlist.
March 5, 2025
I don't normally go for messed up woman having a crisis tropes, but this was so well-written it really pulled me in.
This book had a lot to say about exploitation, being seen, acceptance and authenticity. I felt these issues were addressed sensitively and with nuance.
This novel really shone through Ruane's prose. Her inventiveness for metaphor, imagery and word choice were constantly entertaining and surprising. The dying seaside town setting was so vivid and evocative.
This was a tad overwritten, but I don't think you can knock the author's enthusiasm for writing a bloody good book. Off to a great start with the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025 Longlist with this book I would probably have never otherwise discovered.
This book had a lot to say about exploitation, being seen, acceptance and authenticity. I felt these issues were addressed sensitively and with nuance.
This novel really shone through Ruane's prose. Her inventiveness for metaphor, imagery and word choice were constantly entertaining and surprising. The dying seaside town setting was so vivid and evocative.
This was a tad overwritten, but I don't think you can knock the author's enthusiasm for writing a bloody good book. Off to a great start with the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025 Longlist with this book I would probably have never otherwise discovered.
June 29, 2024
(2.5) this was really two disparate narratives which are presented as if they are symbiotic and as if there is going to be a “collision of worlds�, but i’m reminded of susannah dickey’s common decency in that they are probably not, and “collision� is an overstatement (dickey navigates this more deftly though i feel). the joyce half of the book was really quite strong, very interesting and far more subtle in how it explored the particularities of both loving and resenting someone who abuses you, as well as the very specific british brand of fascism that dresses itself up in manners and niceties but is really very vicious and worms its way into even the domestic sphere (or should that be: starts in the domestic sphere and worms its way outwards?). a little more could’ve been made of this but i’m not complaining!
it is a shame that the same cannot be said for lydia’s half. it was so filled with annoyingly self-aware millennial therapy speak, written as if the narrator was trying to bash us over the head with didacticism, and empty platitudes dressed up as profundity that i had to grit my teeth through a lot of it. lydia effectively comes to a conclusion of “not all men ❤️ suddenly i’ve realised everyone who isn’t me has a rich inner life and we can all harm and be harmed ❤️ who knows if my version of events (being deeply harmed through sexual abuse) is objectively correct but if i shout at the person who abused me it reverses the power dynamic and i’m actually the terrible person ❤️� and it would have been fine, i guess, if it didn’t drag on tediously over the last 30-50 pages of navel-gazing and wasn’t presented as a universal truism that allows all abused women to let go of their angst, cruising dangerously close to the kind of overly simplistic abuse apologia that disingenuously wraps itself up in the language of women having agency, but ultimately makes women doubt the legitimacy of their experiences of being harmed by people with power over them and shoves them back into a state of silence that allows trauma to flourish. but it did, and it was, and it sent (i feel) quite a dangerous message about the healing power of anger and justice. in this way the last third of the book was so bungled and confused that it was actually enough (along with some of the mixed metaphors that made very little sense and seemed only to exist to make the narration sound more florid) for me to drop it by at least half if not one star.
i can’t be too harsh though, as i really tore through this in about two days. i just wish both halves had been equally compelling
it is a shame that the same cannot be said for lydia’s half. it was so filled with annoyingly self-aware millennial therapy speak, written as if the narrator was trying to bash us over the head with didacticism, and empty platitudes dressed up as profundity that i had to grit my teeth through a lot of it. lydia effectively comes to a conclusion of “not all men ❤️ suddenly i’ve realised everyone who isn’t me has a rich inner life and we can all harm and be harmed ❤️ who knows if my version of events (being deeply harmed through sexual abuse) is objectively correct but if i shout at the person who abused me it reverses the power dynamic and i’m actually the terrible person ❤️� and it would have been fine, i guess, if it didn’t drag on tediously over the last 30-50 pages of navel-gazing and wasn’t presented as a universal truism that allows all abused women to let go of their angst, cruising dangerously close to the kind of overly simplistic abuse apologia that disingenuously wraps itself up in the language of women having agency, but ultimately makes women doubt the legitimacy of their experiences of being harmed by people with power over them and shoves them back into a state of silence that allows trauma to flourish. but it did, and it was, and it sent (i feel) quite a dangerous message about the healing power of anger and justice. in this way the last third of the book was so bungled and confused that it was actually enough (along with some of the mixed metaphors that made very little sense and seemed only to exist to make the narration sound more florid) for me to drop it by at least half if not one star.
i can’t be too harsh though, as i really tore through this in about two days. i just wish both halves had been equally compelling
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 12, 2025
ne desem eksik kalır. çok beğendim. on üç sene evvel yazılmış olsa üzerine tez yazmak isterdim. fakat şimdi de zihnimde bir şeyler karaladım. kadın olmanın her hâlini romanına aktarmış Rose Ruane. özenli ve farklı bir dili var. neredeyse şiirsel - bir o kadar da güncel. pandemi döneminde yazılmış olmasına rağmen günümüz aurasını da kapsayan bir anlatımı var. kitsch bir eser demek yanlış olmaz, tam da yaratıcısı 'the artist' Ruane gibi. trans hâlinde yazmış olabilir diye düşündüm okurken, bilhassa Joyce ve Betty'nin bölümlerini. sanki ikisi de hem bu dünyadan hem de değil gibi. hem cringe, hem de gerçek. dört duvar arasında yaşananlar, küçük bir kasabada olanlar bize çok uzak fakat aynı anda burnumuzun dibinde oluyor gibi. Lydia'nın bölümleri ise dili boyayan lolipop yalamak gibiydi, acımtrak, meyan köklü, eskimiş. tahakkümperver insanlardan kurtulduktan sonra ruhun özgürlüğüne paha biçilmez. The Lolly Lydia is a free soul now. Thank dog! - çok özel bir roman, kalbimde çok hususi bir yer teşkil edecek bundan böyle. 4.5/5
April 26, 2024
It’s the way this book is so TTPD coded omg. It goes in depth into both Lydia’s and Joyce’s loneliness and lack of meaning to their lives. At its core, this is a coming-of-age story of two middle aged women who are simply lost in their lives, trying to find who they are without the influence of others, and I ate it up. I think it was the perfect length and anything longer would’ve just dragged. I did expect something a little crazier for the climax (murder), especially considering how slow the rest of the book was, building up all until the end. You could truly feel the atmosphere of this small town, it was just SO clear in my head how the wind felt, what the buildings looked like, etc. Nothing happened and yet I was fascinated and couldn’t stop myself from reading it. 4.25⭐️
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.
June 1, 2024
Enjoyed Joyce's chapters lots more than the Lydia chapters but still enjoyed it. Some really lovely descriptive writing too
Want to read
March 22, 2025Long-Listed for 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction. 🎉 Have Not heard of this before, but sounds interesting.
March 12, 2025
3.5
A solid read and I will definitely look out for this author in the future.
A solid read and I will definitely look out for this author in the future.
September 10, 2024
"But for the moment she's aware they're both in the not-present-now of the internet, the inert trance of scrolling social media, skimming articles, consuming and consuming. Lydia so often finds she's unable to stop even though the stories and pictures make her feel even emptier, shrinking her and sinking her, until she's drowned in data and images, other people's fake happiness and real misery, assaulted by fact after fact of such negligible provenance that she doesn't even know what constitutes truth any longer, until eventually not even her own heartbeat, the spit in her mouth, the sensation of her pulse convinces her that she exists in any meaningful way".
Is it possible for a book to be too relatable?
There's Lydia, a 90's pop star grappling with the realities of her #MeToo experiences & navigating forgiveness/acceptance/indifference to her long-time abuser. The demand for closure by Henry and the inner turmoil and doubt it creates in Lydia's mind. Lydia's final mantras:
You never could, and you never will, make Henry understand what he did to you, and how he harmed you.
You cannot tell Henry who he is.
You cannot tell Henry who he is not.
You can no more do those things than you can help a bird to comprehend that it is a bird, if it lacks the apparatus to understand.
There's penniless, stuck-in-the-past mother & daughter, Betty and Joyce. Owners of The Palace before father fled, now it's biscuits and programmes, the club on Saturday's and no straying for it would be improper and unladylike. Betty is a generational bully, convincing Joyce she is unlovable, dim and unattractive.
It's Lydia who recalls 'sadly of an experiment she once read about, where a scientist gave baby monkeys a cold metal effigy of a mother and they clung to it for comfort regardless'. We leave Betty in a hospital bed and Joyce still caring for her. Round and round it goes.
Did I love this book? Yes.
Do I have the heart and strength to read it again? No.
Is it possible for a book to be too relatable?
There's Lydia, a 90's pop star grappling with the realities of her #MeToo experiences & navigating forgiveness/acceptance/indifference to her long-time abuser. The demand for closure by Henry and the inner turmoil and doubt it creates in Lydia's mind. Lydia's final mantras:
You never could, and you never will, make Henry understand what he did to you, and how he harmed you.
You cannot tell Henry who he is.
You cannot tell Henry who he is not.
You can no more do those things than you can help a bird to comprehend that it is a bird, if it lacks the apparatus to understand.
There's penniless, stuck-in-the-past mother & daughter, Betty and Joyce. Owners of The Palace before father fled, now it's biscuits and programmes, the club on Saturday's and no straying for it would be improper and unladylike. Betty is a generational bully, convincing Joyce she is unlovable, dim and unattractive.
It's Lydia who recalls 'sadly of an experiment she once read about, where a scientist gave baby monkeys a cold metal effigy of a mother and they clung to it for comfort regardless'. We leave Betty in a hospital bed and Joyce still caring for her. Round and round it goes.
Did I love this book? Yes.
Do I have the heart and strength to read it again? No.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 20, 2024
Ruane is the most beautiful storyteller. I loved this one!!
January 26, 2025
I had to start a notebook of quotes I wanted to remember because there were so many gorgeous ones.
August 8, 2024
A beautifully written book about three very sad women in a British seaside town.
Read
June 8, 2024DNF
Writing style isn’t for me
Writing style isn’t for me
September 28, 2024
I really enjoyed this book, I connected with the main characters and the numerous instances of symbolism, including how "Birding", the title of the book itself alludes to being a "bird", a.k.a. being a woman. The Come on in girl statue, and the Up For It song worked brilliantly as symbols of this theme of womanhood and how it has been perceived over the years. There are some very well handled themes: trauma and the long term effects of sa, as well as abuse power dynamics, (the abuser and victim roles) and how gender comes into play with all of this.
The only bad thing I will say about this book is, I found the ending a bit underwhelming. I really thought that the stories we were introduced to would tie together. I know the idea to leave an open ending may be intentional, and more true to real life but it just felt like it wasn't the end of the book, and I left with more questions than I began reading with.
However it was overall a great read, and more about the journey!!
The only bad thing I will say about this book is, I found the ending a bit underwhelming. I really thought that the stories we were introduced to would tie together. I know the idea to leave an open ending may be intentional, and more true to real life but it just felt like it wasn't the end of the book, and I left with more questions than I began reading with.
However it was overall a great read, and more about the journey!!
May 22, 2024
While there is plenty of garish colour in this book, the backdrop is the fading glamour and overcast skies of a seaside town. Two totally unrelated central characters with very different back stories find their lives more intertwined than you'd imagine, alongside a gallery of characters either comic, roguish or tragic. Do we ever know or accept a true picture of ourselves, or are we more in the role of unreliable narrators? Can we become complicit in unhealthy relationships, or is there always a duty to call out the worst of power imbalances as abuse. Something for everyone to take away from this story as we reflect on our own lives, behaviour and of those around us too, but also a bloody good read. Laughter and tears; nostalgia and the here & now. Pop a belgian bun on a nice piece of china and settle back with a copy!
April 30, 2024
What a strange, tantalizing creature of a book. By my own admittance it took me a little while to get into the rhythm of this work but once I found it I found myself devouring the text. The narrative is centered around two middle aged women, Joyce and Lydia, who have both spent their lives in submission ( and indeed in some ways subjugation) to others. There is something almost horror-esque to the story as it unfolds. The insidious way Joyce is forced to live as a mirror to her mother, the way that Lydia is pushed into examining her own life after a self-serving apology...which later looks almost like part of a publicity stunt and a deep invasion of her privacy...which of course she then goes on to commit herself.
The town itself reads like a character, providing an eerie and indeed at times disturbing backdrop to both past and present versions of these women's lives. The book is filled with subtle under-currents and clever coverage of topics such as toxic masculinity, indeed the toxic feminine (I'm looking at you Betty), what it means to age as a woman and indeed what it mean to try and give your life a meaning when you've not held the reigns before.
The writing itself is poetic and lyrical, occasionally reading like a fever dream (I'm thinking of the bird watcher's hut incident in particular) and I love all the quiet ways these women's lives are intersecting and the don't even know it. The characters are often, quite frankly ghastly but I think that was one of the reason's I couldn't look away. She captures human existence so well, in all its versions.
For me a very solid read, I deeply enjoyed the slow build of the book and how Ruane was able to put some many relationships under the micro-scope to see right to the heart of them. A very interesting and darkly funny read.
The town itself reads like a character, providing an eerie and indeed at times disturbing backdrop to both past and present versions of these women's lives. The book is filled with subtle under-currents and clever coverage of topics such as toxic masculinity, indeed the toxic feminine (I'm looking at you Betty), what it means to age as a woman and indeed what it mean to try and give your life a meaning when you've not held the reigns before.
The writing itself is poetic and lyrical, occasionally reading like a fever dream (I'm thinking of the bird watcher's hut incident in particular) and I love all the quiet ways these women's lives are intersecting and the don't even know it. The characters are often, quite frankly ghastly but I think that was one of the reason's I couldn't look away. She captures human existence so well, in all its versions.
For me a very solid read, I deeply enjoyed the slow build of the book and how Ruane was able to put some many relationships under the micro-scope to see right to the heart of them. A very interesting and darkly funny read.
March 20, 2025
Longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize
An opening chapter describes the unnamed and geographically unplaced seaside resort (as well as fishing and container ship port) where this, the Glasgow based artist and author’s second novel, is set.
And as well as giving us a taste of its melancholic and run-down nature, we get an early injunction that sets up the two protagonists of the novel “Some come here because they're running away. Others have lived in this town so long they can't imagine home meaning any place but this one.� and a taste of the author’s metaphor (and simile) heavy writing style. In just the first two pages we have “This town is a sentence of buildings scribbled alongside the deckled edge of an estuary�, “Rain mutters against windows�, “Steel sea and cement sky meet in a bleak, flat Rothko�, seabirds that “muffle into their plumpness�, buildings whose “pastel facades crumble like stale cake after a party�, the bottom of a slide where “coconut mats are littered like junk mail in an empty house�. Later a love of alliteration is added to the mixture � with say "diminutive, distancing details disappear" followed on the same page by "merging with minutiae in those moments"
A classic example of a paragraph which throws in metaphors, simile and alliterations being
The initial effect I have to say is a little jarring � the novel overwritten in a way which can feel early on like a creative writing exercise, and one which for me threatened to overwhelm the flow of what is largely a character development driven book.
But I would say though that I did begin to enjoy the language and started to take photos of quotes (my equivalent of post it notes), so that I enjoyed for example
And particularly loved as one of the characters considers her mother’s attitude to her weight
Returning to the novel itself and the person who has “lived in this town so long� is Joyce � now aged 46, she has never worked but lives with (and very much under the influence of) her mother Betty, the two having identical and old-fashioned dresses, hair and make-up on their weekly trips to a club, and sharing biscuits and caustic comments on townsfolk and TV/newspaper articles in the unvarying home routine. Betty’s husband/Joyce’s father used to own The Palace (the local dining/entertainment emporium turned now run-down amusement arcade) but lost if and absconded leaving his wife and daughter impecunious (after we gather falling foul of a family of local loan sharks). Ss the novel progresses, Joyce starts a tentative relationship with a middle-aged birdwatcher, himself something of an oddball, and finds it surfaces memories her one and only relationship � one which she enjoyed and though was serious but which she realises she was effectively set up for by her father to temporarily buy-off a creditor.
The person who has “come here because they're running away� is Lydia. In the nineties she was a member of something of a one-hit wonder girl band � “The Lollies� (the hit being “Up For It�) whose brief moment of fame ended in controversy over their overly sexualised album cover and publicity photos. Lydia’s life has been in meltdown for nearly a year since a coffee shop conversation when an on-off lover Henry, spooked by the #metoo movement, tried to get her absolution for some of his past actions in their tumultuous on-off relationship � actions which Lydia never quite articulates but which she his very apology makes her realise were at times a lot more serious than “just� emotional manipulation and more like abuse (even � though unvoiced � assault/rape). That realisation has caused her to re-evaluate her entire life � and she was contemplating drastic action until an unexpected call from Pan(dora) � the other half of the duo who has had a much more successful post band life and now is attempting to renovate a guest house in what she sees as a town on the verge of being the new Brighton � summons her to the town. There she considers her past � realising that much of what the Lollies were asked to do was effectively outside their consent � and filters some of it through Pandora’s difficult relationship with her daughter (and Lydia’s step daughter Lol) who is struggling through body image/gender identity and sexual fluidity issues.
Chapters largely alternate between close/interior third party viewpoints of Joyce and Lydia � with two brief but effective sections, one from an ailing Betty and the other from someone Joyce encounters.
The two inadvertently interact over a picture the latter snaps of the former looking (but far from feeling) carefree � and which goes viral as a Zero FG Girl meme. This leads to some slightly clunky parts where Lydia realises she has also acted to use someone else’s body without consent � more convincing are the parts where Lydia gradually realises that for all Pan moved on much better from their pop career that it was Lydia who was the one pushing away any unease over some of the things they were asked to do during it.
More generally Lydia’s sections can feel slightly tortuous as well as didactic � as she tries to parse has past and face her future, as well as what learnings lend themselves to Lol (alliteration all mine). However there are some complex and important issues explored during them and (unlike it seems many reviewers) I did prefer the sections to Joyce’s as they felt truer to life.
And I did enjoy the end of the novel � which both ties the stories a little together while leaving both unresolved and does nicely bring in a “character� we meet in the first chapter, the “Come On In Girl� who was famously used to advertise the town starting from the 1950s.
Overall I enjoyed the book and think it’s a welcome edition to the longlist.
An opening chapter describes the unnamed and geographically unplaced seaside resort (as well as fishing and container ship port) where this, the Glasgow based artist and author’s second novel, is set.
And as well as giving us a taste of its melancholic and run-down nature, we get an early injunction that sets up the two protagonists of the novel “Some come here because they're running away. Others have lived in this town so long they can't imagine home meaning any place but this one.� and a taste of the author’s metaphor (and simile) heavy writing style. In just the first two pages we have “This town is a sentence of buildings scribbled alongside the deckled edge of an estuary�, “Rain mutters against windows�, “Steel sea and cement sky meet in a bleak, flat Rothko�, seabirds that “muffle into their plumpness�, buildings whose “pastel facades crumble like stale cake after a party�, the bottom of a slide where “coconut mats are littered like junk mail in an empty house�. Later a love of alliteration is added to the mixture � with say "diminutive, distancing details disappear" followed on the same page by "merging with minutiae in those moments"
A classic example of a paragraph which throws in metaphors, simile and alliterations being
Enough: the word she wields like scissors, trying to sever the threads that hold her in these sticky webs of rumination. She imagines it as a full stop to her thoughts: ink black, final and freeing. But it always sprouts a comma's curved tail, and the miserable meditation mithers on.
The initial effect I have to say is a little jarring � the novel overwritten in a way which can feel early on like a creative writing exercise, and one which for me threatened to overwhelm the flow of what is largely a character development driven book.
But I would say though that I did begin to enjoy the language and started to take photos of quotes (my equivalent of post it notes), so that I enjoyed for example
suffocating in hell's own Matryoshka of doubt, recursively dismantling and restacking the nested questions Henry had crammed into her head in that coffee shop months ago.
She never meant not to have a baby but intention and opportunity always arrived asynchronously: each appeared without the other, like the occupants of a wooden weather house.
her connections with other humans dangle lifelessly like a fistful of torn wires, making her feel like an inept thief trying to hot-wire a stolen car.
And particularly loved as one of the characters considers her mother’s attitude to her weight
Those Very Hungry Caterpillar last day lists: you ate this, then you ate that. The unending, repetitive monologues about food and eating, like being fat-shamed by Stewart Lee.
Returning to the novel itself and the person who has “lived in this town so long� is Joyce � now aged 46, she has never worked but lives with (and very much under the influence of) her mother Betty, the two having identical and old-fashioned dresses, hair and make-up on their weekly trips to a club, and sharing biscuits and caustic comments on townsfolk and TV/newspaper articles in the unvarying home routine. Betty’s husband/Joyce’s father used to own The Palace (the local dining/entertainment emporium turned now run-down amusement arcade) but lost if and absconded leaving his wife and daughter impecunious (after we gather falling foul of a family of local loan sharks). Ss the novel progresses, Joyce starts a tentative relationship with a middle-aged birdwatcher, himself something of an oddball, and finds it surfaces memories her one and only relationship � one which she enjoyed and though was serious but which she realises she was effectively set up for by her father to temporarily buy-off a creditor.
The person who has “come here because they're running away� is Lydia. In the nineties she was a member of something of a one-hit wonder girl band � “The Lollies� (the hit being “Up For It�) whose brief moment of fame ended in controversy over their overly sexualised album cover and publicity photos. Lydia’s life has been in meltdown for nearly a year since a coffee shop conversation when an on-off lover Henry, spooked by the #metoo movement, tried to get her absolution for some of his past actions in their tumultuous on-off relationship � actions which Lydia never quite articulates but which she his very apology makes her realise were at times a lot more serious than “just� emotional manipulation and more like abuse (even � though unvoiced � assault/rape). That realisation has caused her to re-evaluate her entire life � and she was contemplating drastic action until an unexpected call from Pan(dora) � the other half of the duo who has had a much more successful post band life and now is attempting to renovate a guest house in what she sees as a town on the verge of being the new Brighton � summons her to the town. There she considers her past � realising that much of what the Lollies were asked to do was effectively outside their consent � and filters some of it through Pandora’s difficult relationship with her daughter (and Lydia’s step daughter Lol) who is struggling through body image/gender identity and sexual fluidity issues.
Chapters largely alternate between close/interior third party viewpoints of Joyce and Lydia � with two brief but effective sections, one from an ailing Betty and the other from someone Joyce encounters.
The two inadvertently interact over a picture the latter snaps of the former looking (but far from feeling) carefree � and which goes viral as a Zero FG Girl meme. This leads to some slightly clunky parts where Lydia realises she has also acted to use someone else’s body without consent � more convincing are the parts where Lydia gradually realises that for all Pan moved on much better from their pop career that it was Lydia who was the one pushing away any unease over some of the things they were asked to do during it.
More generally Lydia’s sections can feel slightly tortuous as well as didactic � as she tries to parse has past and face her future, as well as what learnings lend themselves to Lol (alliteration all mine). However there are some complex and important issues explored during them and (unlike it seems many reviewers) I did prefer the sections to Joyce’s as they felt truer to life.
And I did enjoy the end of the novel � which both ties the stories a little together while leaving both unresolved and does nicely bring in a “character� we meet in the first chapter, the “Come On In Girl� who was famously used to advertise the town starting from the 1950s.
Overall I enjoyed the book and think it’s a welcome edition to the longlist.
May 4, 2024
this one is for the girlies with complicated mother-daughter relationships and men trauma so i feel catered to
an excruciating (positive) look into overbearing mothers, the lifelong ramifications of sexualisation & abuse at a young age alongside feeling generally lost as an adult
while i do wish there was more plot (as in i was waiting for some huge climactic event i don’t feel i got) i have to give rose ruane her flowers for writing one of the most unflinching & accurate accounts of what it’s like to emotionally deal with being assaulted when you can’t even admit to yourself that maybe ambivalence is not consent. it got genuinely difficult to read at points and i think that’s testimony to how accurate it is.
reading about joyce on the flip side was also excruciating because i really genuinely could not stand her mother for the majority of the book until i realised that a lot of her actions are just reactions to her own life when she was younger. i will say i didn’t enjoy the big “twist� with this half of the story and found it to be almost a cop-out.
would be super intrigued about future releases. thank you to netgalley & the publisher for the ARC!
an excruciating (positive) look into overbearing mothers, the lifelong ramifications of sexualisation & abuse at a young age alongside feeling generally lost as an adult
while i do wish there was more plot (as in i was waiting for some huge climactic event i don’t feel i got) i have to give rose ruane her flowers for writing one of the most unflinching & accurate accounts of what it’s like to emotionally deal with being assaulted when you can’t even admit to yourself that maybe ambivalence is not consent. it got genuinely difficult to read at points and i think that’s testimony to how accurate it is.
reading about joyce on the flip side was also excruciating because i really genuinely could not stand her mother for the majority of the book until i realised that a lot of her actions are just reactions to her own life when she was younger. i will say i didn’t enjoy the big “twist� with this half of the story and found it to be almost a cop-out.
would be super intrigued about future releases. thank you to netgalley & the publisher for the ARC!
July 17, 2024
Honestly I think this might be one of the best books I’ve ever read, I absolutely loved the writing.
I am not a person who annotates their books but if I did the entire book would be tabbed. This is one of those books that you are still thinking about months after you have read it. Although the writing is so profound and insightful it is also darkly comical at times. There aren’t many books that can have me laughing out loud but this managed it.
There are so many issues covered in this book, not just about the #metoo movement but subjects such as gender, midlife, loneliness, consent, parenting etc.
if you are a woman of a certain age I would say this is a must read. My review just isn’t doing it justice I know.
I am not a person who annotates their books but if I did the entire book would be tabbed. This is one of those books that you are still thinking about months after you have read it. Although the writing is so profound and insightful it is also darkly comical at times. There aren’t many books that can have me laughing out loud but this managed it.
There are so many issues covered in this book, not just about the #metoo movement but subjects such as gender, midlife, loneliness, consent, parenting etc.
if you are a woman of a certain age I would say this is a must read. My review just isn’t doing it justice I know.
July 28, 2024
The only good thing about this book is the cover, which I think is stunning and the synopsis that really gives you the vibes you want in the book, but the story itself is nothing like that.
I usually don’t give one star to a book where I read every page of it, but in this case I did, which just shows that I really want to get something from the book, but it didn’t deliver. It was very messy creative wise, there were some good ideas about characters, but everything else, such as the plot, the storyline and the writing style, were just off for me.
I usually don’t give one star to a book where I read every page of it, but in this case I did, which just shows that I really want to get something from the book, but it didn’t deliver. It was very messy creative wise, there were some good ideas about characters, but everything else, such as the plot, the storyline and the writing style, were just off for me.
May 27, 2024
I hated the sections about Lydia but enjoyed Joyce’s so in the end, I just read her bits and skipped the rest.
March 14, 2025
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Longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize, Birding is Rose Ruane's second novel after (2019), and although it has an important story to tell, it is rather grim reading. All of us, one way or another, have had some kind of #MeToo experiences of greater and lesser severity, and have dealt with it then or later in various ways. But Rose Ruane's novel features a character exploited and degraded as a one-hit-wonder teen pop star, and now in her forties is a psychological wreck, made worse by renewed contact with her abuser. I don't think books should come with trigger warnings, but I found Lydia's tortured narrative painful to read... not because it's graphic, because it's not, but because of her self-blame and inability to take any pleasure in life because she can't get the man out of her head. I hesitate to recommend this novel to anyone who still has issues that are troubling them because it is harrowing reading and there is suicidal ideation and self-harm.The setting is grim too. Awful weather matches the mood of the novel. Lydia has fled London to stay with her friend and fellow pop star in one of those dreary seaside towns that are past their use-by date. Pandora is an entrepreneur who seems to have emerged from their shared experiences unscathed and is increasingly irritated by Lydia's preoccupation with the past. Renovating a dingy hotel to suit her ambitions for the town as The Next Big Thing, Pan is busy and purposeful and impatient with people who don't want to have a good time � and that includes her daughter Laurence (Lol) who is deeply troubled by identity issues.
As if all that were not enough, then there is the story of Joyce. This is how her situation is described in the blurb:
Joyce, in middle age, has never left home. She still lives with her mother Betty. With their matching dresses, identical hairdos and makeup, they are the local oddballs. Theirs is a life of unerring routine: the shops, biscuits served on bone china plates, dressing up for a gin and tonic on Saturday. Nice things. One misstep from Joyce can ruin Betty's day; so Joyce treads carefully. She has never let herself think about a different kind of life. But recently, along with the hot flushes, something like anger is asserting itself, like a caged thing realising it should probably try and escape.
That description is no preparation for the relentless bullying that Betty inflicts on Joyce. It goes on and on, page after page, chapter after chapter, until the reader feels as browbeaten and trapped as Joyce is. At the end of each dreary chapter about poor Lydia's sorrows, I wanted to put the book aside because I knew that the next alternating chapter would be Betty's tyranny again. I can't imagine how ghastly this would be when rendered in an audiobook.
To read the rest of my review please visit
June 21, 2024
This extraordinary novel follows twin storylines set in a slowly-gentrifying yet run-down seaside town that’s “not on the way to anywhere else�. It is almost winter: the tourists have gone, and only the locals are left for the darkest months of the year, clinging to the beaches and weathered buildings from the resort’s heyday. Lydia and Pandora were teen bandmates in the 90s who fully lived their time in the spotlight while young but decades on, their lives and luck have diverged considerably. Now a freelance writer, 48-year old Lydia is in the midst of a crisis and reaches out to Pan for the first time in years: she moves into an as-yet-unrestored part of Pan’s derelict seaside hotel, where Lydia begins to painstakingly pick over the events of her past, reviewing them in light of new information from her ex, Henry. His “me-too� inspired apology for a past transgression knocked Lydia sideways and shifted the entirety of her memories, altering their focus and “redrafting [her] understanding of almost every facet of her life�: now she is transfixed by the dawning realisation that consent rarely featured in her past: instead she politely accepted whatever it was that others wanted for her, often with damaging results. Pan’s teenage daughter Laurence � Lydia’s goddaughter � also turns up at the hotel, seeking reassurance about her own identity and choices, and the three women fall into a fragile coexistence at the edge of the world.
Elsewhere in the same town, middle-aged Joyce lives with her elderly mother Betty in breathtakingly unusual circumstances: Betty’s abusive complete control of her daughter means the two eat identically, dress in matching outfits, follow set routines which cannot be broken, burying the pain of their lost lifestyle and Joyce’s long-absent father: the very definition of faded glory. Joyce knows what questions to ask about their past to keep the mood calm and avoid Betty’s painful attacks about Joyce’s eating, or looks, or life choices, but her growing craving for freedom cannot be ignored: is there a future in which she could break out of the cage built for her?
Brilliantly descriptive, meditative, thought-provoking and nostalgic, this is a superb book which will transport you to the British coast and leave you pondering past and future choices � not to be missed.
Featured in April 2024 Cambridge Edition magazine � thanks to #netgalley for the ARC
Elsewhere in the same town, middle-aged Joyce lives with her elderly mother Betty in breathtakingly unusual circumstances: Betty’s abusive complete control of her daughter means the two eat identically, dress in matching outfits, follow set routines which cannot be broken, burying the pain of their lost lifestyle and Joyce’s long-absent father: the very definition of faded glory. Joyce knows what questions to ask about their past to keep the mood calm and avoid Betty’s painful attacks about Joyce’s eating, or looks, or life choices, but her growing craving for freedom cannot be ignored: is there a future in which she could break out of the cage built for her?
Brilliantly descriptive, meditative, thought-provoking and nostalgic, this is a superb book which will transport you to the British coast and leave you pondering past and future choices � not to be missed.
Featured in April 2024 Cambridge Edition magazine � thanks to #netgalley for the ARC
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