Included among the shortlisted books for the 2019 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, was a book by an author entirely new to me. Joshua Lobb is senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Wollongong and The Flight of Birds is his first novel. It consists of 12 interlinked stories which loosely form a novel, and it's one of a series called Animal Publics which focusses on the interaction between humans and animals.

The first story 'What he heard', introduces an unnamed man walking his dog in the bush. He is not well:

He was staying in a friend's cabin; he'd been there a month. It was after what people called 'his breakdown', or what those closer to him called 'one of his breakdowns'. He just thought of it as 'normality'. It was a feeling he always had, hovering, just out of reach. Every few years it would swoop down, grab him by the shoulders and carry him away. (p.3)

Lobb's setting suggests an intimacy that comes from long acquaintance with the bush:

Broken leaves crunched underfoot. He was careful to sidestep the knuckles of eucalypt roots. He could hear the dog, sniffing, in the semi-darkness. He wasn't sure if the dog was still following the wombat track, or the line of scent, or charting his own way between the thin trees. Their bark was smooth, mostly: lavender-grey with purpling bruises. Every now and then his hand would brush against the rougher, splintery skin of a turpentine. The treetops creaked in the rasping breeze.

Then he heard it. An oozing, matted sound. Plots of noise like snoring, sobbing. The sound was too incoherent to be nearby and yet it felt close, like a heartbeat, thumping. (p.3)

This solitary man conquers his instinct to flee because he recognises this alarming sound as the wail of a child...

After this comes 'Six stories about birds, with seven questions'. A moment's carelessness leads to the escape of a pet budgie called Charlotte, and the stories are told to distract the bereft child. The father is a bit disconcerted to rediscover just how many fairy stories feature birds, both benign and malign.

It is not until the novel progresses that the third story 'Call and Response' seems to connect with the first one. Again the characters are unnamed, but the man shares the emotional fragility of the first man with the dog. In 'Flocking' — a heartbreaking story of the cruelties of school towards misfits, the background of the characters begins to be filled in.

To read the rest of my review pleased visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/09/18/the-flight-of-birds-by-joshua-lobb/ ( )