Catbird
by Julia Marie Davis
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Oct 01 2024 | Archive Date Oct 10 2024
Talking about this book? Use #Catbird #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!
Description
Inspired by true events, Catbird is a poignant fable about a woman, her husband, and a Catbird, set against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Reflecting on global conflicts and human resilience, the book offers a universal message of hope and solidarity in tumultuous times worldwide.
Told in a series of micro-episodes, set against the backdrop of seasonal drama in the bird world, the novella combines the immediacy of an op-ed with the narrative feel of a memoir. Through Catbird, Davis channels the fears and fragility of the world order, mirroring the anxiety caused by a continual barrage of contemporary conflicts we are living through: witnessing, mourning, opposing. A simple and straightforward story on the surface, Catbird expresses untold angst and an exasperating sense of helplessness. This feeling is inflamed by the distance between the will of the people, evolving national policies, and the bewilderment we feel—to the barbaric violence and the violations of human rights unfolding not just in Ukraine but elsewhere around the world.
Advance Praise
“Julia Davis’s Catbird is a lyric meditation on a wounded world, one where some of us are safe while horror and war ravage innocent women and children in a distant land. But are we safe? The narrator knows too keenly, and feels too sharply, to believe that we are. Davis writes viscerally and from the heart.” —Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer
“Julia Davis’s Catbird is an urgent, meaningful meditation on war, power, and fragility of the world. It’s 2022 and the invasion of Ukraine has begun. From her place of relative safety, Eve reads of the bombings, the fleeing families and abandoned crops as she ponders the corrupt desire for absolute power and fears she is witnessing the beginnings of World War III. Woven throughout this witnessing are images of the birds she watches in the trees around her house, making tangible the fragility we share in this time when the possibility of invasion threatens us all.”—Karen Osborn, author of Centerville, Patchwork (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Between Earth and Sky, and The River Road
“As a woman of color cheering for those who wish to survive any and all wars against us I hope you read this book with the fear yet compassion it shares."—Nikki Giovanni, New York Times best-selling and Emmy-award nominated author of Bicycles: Love Poems (2009), The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection (2004), and Make Me Rain: Poems & Prose (2020)
Available Editions
EDITION | Paperback |
ISBN | 9781957483238 |
PRICE | $16.00 (USD) |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Catbird is not exactly what I expected when I picked it up. Reading this, in short, was impactful. This is not a book that I think is for everyone especially people are easily focused on the anxiety that comes with, as the author writes, the survivors guilt of democracy. For that reason I bounced between 4 and 5 stars, however, the weight of the words pushed me to 5 stars. Reading about Ukraine and reliving feelings I once had made this book devestating in the way I think that it was intended to.
I would reccomend that everyone read this book. While it is specific to Ukraine, the feelings and the details of war are not exclusive to it. It was short but intensley impactful read.
This is a short book that I read in one sitting. It reads a bit like a fever dream with descriptions at times lovely but often disturbing. It's hard to believe the war in Ukraine has gone on for more than two years now - frequently in the news here yet a world apart. As someone who already tips toward anxiety perhaps the angst was a bit much for me, but I hope that others who have tuned out world news might read it with some deeper urgency and understanding.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.
Readers who liked this book also liked:
Helaine Becker; Kevin Sylvester
Children's Fiction, Comics, Graphic Novels, Manga