Bird Life Audiobook

In Ueno Park Tokyo as workers and tourists gather for lunch the pollen blows and two women meet changing the course of one anothers lives

Dinah has come to Japan from New Zealand to teach English and grieve the death of her brother Michael a troubled genius who was able to channel his problems into music as a classical pianistuntil he wasnt In the seemingly empty eerie apartment block where Dinah has been housed she sees Michael everywhere even as she feels his absence sharply

Yasuko is polished precise and keenly observantof her students and colleagues at the language school and of the natural world When she was thirteen animals began to speak to her to tell her things she did not always want to hear She has suppressed these powers for many years but sometimes she allows them to resurface to the dismay of her adult son Jun One day she returns home and Jun has gone

As these two women deal with their individual trauma they form an unlikely friendship in which each will help the other to see a different possible world as Smaill teases out the tension between our internal and external lives and asks what we lose by having to choose between them