What readers say about Place of Many Birds"To be able to create a story with a minimum of words that is compelling, gives the reader a complete sense of people, place and time, I think is sheer genius."“Very original and unique.”“A meditation on Australia that made me want to visit for myself.”“A melancholic read capturing another era well.” From the suburban streets of Melbourne to the wide plains of the Wimmera, these short stories from Australia recreate the rhythms of small town life from the 1890s and into the 1960s. Through the tangle of family relationships and the shock of a sudden death, the characters travel across the landscape of the mind as well as Australia’s wide and distant horizons. Multi-layered and original, these short stories capture perfectly the disparity between a desire for freedom and the need to belong.Editorial ReviewsReviewReview Rating:5 stars! Reviewer Carine Engelbrecht for Readers' FavoritePlace of Many Birds by Jan Merry consists of five self-contained stories, but there are various clues and hints of possible connections. Two stories, Killing Time and Spirit of Activity, feature a cyclist, who could be the same person and might even be an older version of one of the characters in the title story. Place of Many Birds takes us on a journey with Earle, his English-born mother and his older brother. Ostensibly, they are traveling from the little town of Cariboo to the city of Melbourne, but the story sidetracks down Memory Lane, covering the many stories his mother tells of the Yorkshire of her youth, as well as other dusty little towns that lie behind them. This multi-layered tale is perhaps the best developed story of the collection. In The Breakaway, a group of 19th-century agricultural students plan an outdoor excursion with unforeseen consequences. Before Winter Comes tells of the impact of a neighborly gift to a single-parent family.Each story shares a very real sense of place and an authentic, well drawn viewpoint character with a keen sense of observation as the voice to carry the unfolding. These are tales that make you feel right at home within their imaginary landscape. They recall events of a bygone era, but in such vivid detail that they manage to bring those memories back to life. They share the flavor and texture of living in Australia during the first half of the 20th century. In a way, the experience of reading A Place of Many Birds by Jan Merry is not unlike paging through a leather-bound scrapbook album full of sepia tinted portraits and other keepsakes capturing yesterday's joys, sorrows and missed opportunities.
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