Book Review: Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour

Forgive me as I write this review, for I am still catching my breath from the last few pages and drying my eyes.

I chose this book by mistake. I thought it was the story of Penguin the Magpie, a heartbreaking story about a family dealing with loss, change, and starting over detailed in little boxes on Instagram. But, from its first pages, I knew it wasn’t Penguin’s story, but Benzene’s story — and I was enamored. This book is unlike anything I’ve ever read.

Charlie Gilmour lets us into his life and it feels like a gift. His remarkable story about love, loss, grief, and the choice to be who you want to be (save nature) left me feeling hopeful. Absolutely stunning. I read it in less than a week, with one day comprised of 300 pages. The story whizzed by, and I fell in love with a creature I once knew very little about, a magpie.

Despite it being Charlie’s personal story, he leaves room for imagination and I at once had a new pet, too. With vivid, active language Gilmour gives the reader a chance to also feel Benzene’s warm claws clench and release as she become more secure with her developing sense of freedom. It’s as though she came into his life to heal him, and in return, he set her free. Visceral, honest and achingly self-aware, Featherhood demonstrates how we are more than our nature and how nurture actually forms who we become, if we let it.

A little more background, In Featherhood, Gilmour is grappling with understanding his father (not his dad), who left him and his mother before he could even speak. As Gilmour writes, “It’s the traumas I’m searching for. Answers to those same old questions. Why does a person disappear? What makes a man run from his child? Why was Heathcote so afraid of family? What forces guided that nocturnal flight in spring so many years ago?”

As the story comes full circle and the question, “How can you be a writer if you don’t know anything” that so cruelly claimed even his father’s last days, flashes across Gilmour’s mind, he pens his biography and we witness healing take shape. As a future therapist and I found myself cheering for Gilmour, and even Benzene as she finds that she too will be okay without the anchors of her past.

One critique, and perhaps it’s only because I read this so fast and I couldn’t keep all the stories in my mind, I wish there was a little bit of revisiting as the story moves through the decades. I couldn’t recall some of the finer details about his sisters and why they knew their way around the estate — did they live there, too? I just can’t remember.

I loved how each chapter, even when we’d wander through memories and formative experiences, traumas, and heartbreak, Gilmour always brought us back to his magpie. Benzene would hide food, curl up in his arm, laugh, or just say “come on” and a laugh or smile would come and brighten even the darkest chapters. Truly remarkable writing and I only want more because I want to know if Benzene got her family, too. I know it’s silly, but I’m a romantic and she’d be an amazing carrion mother.

Some lines that stand out to me follow:

On Grief:

“How do you let go of someone you never had? What I’ve lost isn’t a person — I’ve hardly spent twenty hours with him in the last twenty years — but the hope of knowing a person.”

“I didn’t think grief would be like this: a never-ending trail, with myself acting as the prosecutor, judge, and hapless defendant all at once. But that’s how it plays out. I go hunting for Heathcote’s absences, and it’s not hard to find. All the terrible things I’ve done in my life, real and imagined, come crowding into my head, from birth to the present day. It’s like having a mob of scolding crows flapping noisily around in there. They strike whenever they feel like it, with no respect for time or place. At night when I'm trying to sleep, I suddenly curl up in agony like I’ve been poisoned; on the top deck of the bus I beat myself around the head; hunched at a table in the cafe at the end of our street I start clawing at my face and rocking back and forth in my chair; while doing the dishes I hurl abuse at myself, forgetting there are other people in the house…”

“Sometimes the awareness that Heathcote was at least partly to blame breaks through. At the supermarket, in the fruit aisle, I spot a packet of red grades and feel a flash of anger at the memory of his tragic belief that red grapes could cure his incurable condition. “You stupid old man,” I shout at the grapes, kicking at the fruit stand. A frail-looking gentleman shuffling down the aisle toward me stops in his tracks and edges nervously away. I add scaring vulnerable retirees to my list of crimes.”

For anyone enduring grief, Featherhood is also a beautiful collection of synchronicity — how the unexplainable makes sense. A curious little carrion enters his life at the perfect time and for two years we watch Charlie and Beneze grow and develop into independent, resilient beings with lessons and love to share, it’s truly incredible.

I was reminded of The Goldfinch and H is for Hawk, so fans of both will love Featherhood.

More quotes:

“Looking around us at the strangers with their sacks of seed, I wonder what is missing from their lives. I sometimes feel that you can guess the weight of a person’s troubles by the size of the bread bag that they bring for the birds.

“The Truth Against The World”

Thank you, Net Galley, for allowing me to read this book. I’ve shared this review also on GoodReads.

I can’t wait to share it with everyone when it releases in 2021. Thank you Charlie Gilmour for sharing your life with me.

Here is the “About This Book” from Simon and Schuster:

H is for Hawk meets The Duke of Deception in this wry, moving story of a young man who, as his estranged father is dying, saves a baby magpie only to find that caring for the mischievous bird has, in fact, saved him.

One spring day, a baby magpie falls out of its nest and into Charlie Gilmour’s hands. Magpies, he soon discovers, are as clever and mischievous as monkeys. They are also notorious thieves, and this one quickly steals his heart. By the time the creature develops shiny black feathers that inspire the name Benzene, Charlie and the bird have forged an unbreakable bond.

While caring for Benzene, Charlie comes across a poem written by his biological father, an eccentric British poet named Heathcote Williams who vanished when Charlie was six months old. As he grapples with Heathcote’s abandonment, Charlie is drawn to the poem, in which Heathcote describes how an impish young jackdaw — like magpies, also a member of the crow family — fell from its nest and captured his affection. Over time, Benzene helps Charlie unravel his fears about repeating the past — and embrace the role of the father himself.

A bird falls, a father dies, a child is born. Featherhood is the unforgettable story of a love affair between a man and a bird. It is also a beautiful and affecting memoir about childhood and parenthood, captivity and freedom, grief, and love.