The Conjuror's Bird reviewed

My book club recently met to discuss Martin Davies' The Conjuror's Bird, a historical fiction version of discovery in different centuries. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I had no quotes to share or new vocabulary to tuck away.

Poignant & beguiling

I found it in my local library here in Auckland, though I'd have been happy to have paid for such a good tale. Since then, I've started another of Davies' novels, again from the library.

I found the overriding themes of The Conjuror's Bird to be of identity and social constraints, though the first line might put some people off: " Thursday evening I was working late, removing the skull of a dead owl"

Are we what we do? Are we who we're married to, or not married to? Are we our gender? Are we who we are expected to be? What binds us and keep us from accomplishing, from doing, from exploring, from pursuing our passion?

I thoroughly recommend this as an easy read with value and thought provoking content.

The Independent reviewed it thus:

Natural history resonates with the romance of the lost: the quasi-fantastical dodo, or the Congo peacock, a single feather of which was discovered many years before the bird. Yet the Lost Bird of Ulieta, a dun-coloured tweeter, was in some ways most mysterious of all. Recorded in 1774 by Captain Cook's expedition to the South Seas, it was known from a single stuffed specimen brought back by the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, who accompanied Cook.

But a few years later it disappeared from Banks's collection and has never been seen again. The specimen would be of immense value if traced, especially now there is the real prospect of recreating an extinct species through DNA.

Martin Davies has discovered another real-life mystery in Banks's biography. Shortly before Banks's encounter with the Lost Bird, he broke off an engagement and began an affair with an unknown woman, who appeared briefly, dressed in male clothing, awaiting Banks in Madeira. He never arrived, having cancelled his second expedition with Cook. The woman is known to history only as "Miss B".

In this novel, Davies has created two gripping, intercut narratives. The story of Fitz, a modern biologist turned taxidermist sleuthing on the trail of the bird, is entwined with that of Banks's love affair, and how the specimen came to leave his collection. The prose of the 18th-century narrative is unstodgily rendered, and Davies writes with a lyricism that captures the joy of the natural world.

The modern story is more of a chase. Fitz's ex-wife turns up with the offer of untold wealth if he can locate the bird: a billionaire collector is creating a DNA ark of lost creatures. A stray clue sets Fitz and his new girlfriend on the trail, which becomes a race against sinister characters.

Fitz ends up tracing a Lincolnshire family connected with Banks's shadowy mistress. Eventually, a tatty stuffed creature is discovered in a dusty glass case. Is it the lost specimen? And which will win out: venality or science?