Bird Skinner (Greenway) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Jim's memories of his wife give the novel its erratic heartbeat; thankfully, she escapes the usual fate of a romanticized dead wife and comes across as fully human. Violence has its part in Greenway's thrilling evocation of young love, and so does great tenderness. Their relationship is as fresh as it is heartbreaking. With an attention to detail that's both poetic and precise…Greenway evokes so much more than the weather and mood of her locales. In literature, the natural world frequently exists behind a gauzy scrim. But The Bird Skinner knows we are animals, all of us. The natural world is everywhere—and despite undeniable beauty, it's rarely pretty.
Joanna Hershon - New York Times Book Review


Alice Greenway’s quietly devastating portrait of a man ravaged by loss and guilt would be unbearably sad if it weren’t also so sensitively written and gently understanding of human frailty.... Sensitively written and gently understanding of human frailty.... Greenway’s rapturous prose and warm empathy assert that there is beauty to be found in even the unhappiest lives.
Wendy Smith - Washington Post


Evocative...image-rich... The distinctive environments of disparate islands, interwoven with alternately romantic and horrific flashbacks, create a beautiful, ultimately painful story as haunting as its settings. Gifted at evoking places in the past, Greenway is at her most poignant in moments when outsiders and natives, from hot climates and cold, come face to face, attempting to connect across geographic, cultural, emotional, and psychological divides
Publishers Weekly


A visit from a wartime companion's daughter stirs up unwelcome memories for an embittered ornithologist in this follow-up to Greenway's...White Ghost Girls (2006).... Readers who don't mind the novel's leisurely pace and brooding tone will appreciate Greenway's limpid, poetic prose; her richly nuanced portraits of a nicely varied cast of characters.... Sensitive and finely written.
Kirkus Reviews