Prairie Ostrich

A glorious novella. Sweet, brilliant, withdrawn Egg observes her family unravelling, and gives voice to the ways we are powerless to save ourselves. And still she fights against it, picking her way through the fragments of a broken family to try to find a safe place for herself.

Since eight-year old Egg Murakami’s brother died her mother has taken to drinking whiskey and her father moved into the barn with the ostriches. Egg is trying to make sense of life, helped by her sister, who is in love with her best friend and tells Egg familiar stories but changes the endings to happy ones. They run an ostrich farm and are the only Japanese in this rural Alberta town, appropriately named Bittercreek, suggesting heartbreak ahead. This is Egg’s story and her details are revealed slowly in this enchanting book.

Kobayashi has written an excellent story about eight-year old Egg Murakami. Her family is not quite dysfunctional but not a perfect family unit since her brother's death. Mama Murakami drinks to excess and Papa has moved into the barn on their family ostrich farm. And big sister Kathy is in love with her best friend. The story deals with Egg's day-to-day exploration of what life is suppose to be like and what it really is.

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(Fiction, Canadian, Literary)

From an Amazon reviewer:

“Bookish, [Japanese-Canadian] eight-year-old Egg Murakami lives on her family’s ostrich farm in rural, southern Alberta. It is the end of the summer, 1974. Since her brother’s death, her Mama curls inside a whiskey bottle and her Papa shuts himself in the barn. Big sister Kathy — in love with her best friend, Stacey — reinvents the bedtime stories she reads to Egg so that they end in a happily ever after.

Confronted by bullies and the perplexing quirks of the adults around her, Egg watches, a quiet witness to her unraveling family as she tries to find her place in a bewildering world.”

Don’t read this if you require happy endings.

4 stars