Saturday 30 December 2017

Book Review: THE DAYS WHEN BIRDS COME BACK by Deborah Reed

Author: Deborah Reed
Publisher:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Read:
December 2017
Expected publication: 9 January 2018
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look. (Emily Dickinson)

Book Description:

June is undoubtedly in transition. Reeling from her divorce, trying to stay sober, and faced with a completely stalled career, she’s recently returned to the beautiful Oregon coast where she grew up. She must decide what to do with her late and much-loved grandparents’ charming cedar-shingled home, a place haunted by memories of her childhood.

June hires Jameson to renovate the old house to sell. He too is unmoored as he struggles to redefine his marriage in the aftermath of tragic loss. Over the course of the summer, their conversations about the house quickly turn to the personal—of secrets hidden in walls and of stories from the past half-told. June and Jamison repel and attract, sensing kinship and shying away from hurt. But what can the future hold as long as the past’s grip remains so firm?

Brimming with empathy, The Days When Birds Come Back, like the house itself, is a graceful testament to endurance, rebuilding, and the possibilities of coming home.

My musings:
  

The Days When Birds Come Back is a line from a melancholic poem by Emily Dickinson, written in seclusion and dealing with people’s emotions and the changing seasons. It is a fitting title for this bittersweet tale of two people scarred by loss, whose chance meeting prompts them to reflect on the past and initiate the first steps towards healing. Both Jameson and June are beautifully drawn, each carrying a deep sorrow in their hearts that has shaped their lives and made them isolate themselves in their little bubbles of grief, guilt and regret. Thrown together in the picturesque setting of June’s childhood home, a little cottage in rural Oregon, they forge a fragile connection that allows them to slowly confide in each other and find solace in each other as they try to come to terms with the past.

Reed’s writing is beautiful and wistful, creating true-to-life characters and an atmospheric setting that is almost a character in itself, as it plays such an important part in the story. I loved being taken on a journey of discovery of the events that have made June and Jameson the people they have become, and to witness their slow emergence from the quagmire of grief as the seasons change. This is a slow, character driven and reflective story. Anyone who is not a stranger to loss and grief will find elements of June and Jameson’s story resonating with their own lives. An exquisite and beautifully crafted novel that touched me deeply.

Thank you to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

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