Featherhood

What a book! I was entranced. A personal reckoning which is simultaneously brutal and joyous. It's full of light. I want to tell everyone about it

Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of THE LAST ACT OF LOVE

This stunning memoir flashes with as many colours as its enchanting subject, and draws us into a world of eccentric characters impossible to predict or forget. Savage, mischievous, moving, sublime

Rhik Samadder, author of I NEVER SAID I LOVED YOU

FEATHERHOOD, it would be tempting to say, is where Helen Macdonald's H Is For Hawk meets Gerald Durrell's My Family And Other Animals. But Charlie Gilmour's memoir is so original and ingeniously wrought, it stands on its own as a book to which others will surely be compared... Gilmour's language is as precise as his gaze is forensic. He is something of a magician himself, conjuring whole vivid personalities with a few deft strokes of his pen... He can slay you with his succinct summoning of a small boy's struggles... and he can dazzle you with the gem-like images of nature he creates which, like all writers who draw you into their orbit, thrum with life... Remarkable.'

DAILY MAIL, Book of the Week

It is wise, self-aware, never forced, often funny, beautifully crafted, and, in the end, as moving as Kes, that other great work about a boy who is given the gift of liberation by a bird.

MAIL ON SUNDAY

A soaring debut... A sincere and searing tale of loss, addictive despair, the redemptive power of love, the natural world and a shit-dropping, feather-moulting talking magpie... This will undoubtedly be held up alongside H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald's memoir that saw her tame her grief and a bird of prey in her living room. But Featherhood is an equal, if not better, work of magpie investigation that ranks among the best modern coming-of-age memoirs.

SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE

A profound exploration of grief, fragmented families, nature versus nurture and whether we are doomed to repeat the sins of our fathers. But it is also a gladdening celebration of what it is to nurture and bring forth new life.

SUNDAY EXPRESS S MAGAZINE

A beautiful book, sensitive and compelling - it made me cry

Simon Amstell

I loved Featherhood. About nature and growth, about belonging and not belonging, it is beautiful

Andrew O’Hagan, author of THE ILLUMINATIONS

Utterly absorbing, astonishingly well-written, full of heart, Featherhood is the most arresting book I've read for a very long time

Cressida Connolly, author of AFTER THE PARTY

The extraordinary story of an extraordinary family

Sophie Heawood, author of THE HANGOVER GAMES

Featherhood is an incisive, funny and at times traumatic study of the damage done by destructive father-son relationships and the struggle to smash generational cycles.

EVENING STANDARD

A wonderful, moving book. His account of raising a young magpie offers a lovely insight into this fascinating bird

James Macdonald Lockhart, author of RAPTOR

[An] affecting and beautifully written memoir.

THE BOOKSELLER, Editor's Choice

A good time in a weird way - I have never read anything so filthy

Nell Zink, author of THE WALL CREEPER

Emotional, touching and often odd, Gilmour's memoir about two key relationships - one with his late father and the other with a magpie - lingers long after the final page.

I NEWSPAPER

I'm having a lovely time with Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour. He is such a tender writer, the book is a magical encounter with birds and fathers.

Andrew O'Hagan in GUARDIAN

Touching and true, with flashes of black humour, it's a fascinating story. It's also a brilliant examination of nature vs nurture. Gilmour is certainly a born writer.

THE SPECTATOR, Books of the Year

Written with economy, insight, and rare beauty - a perfect nature memoir for our times

THE SPECTATOR

A tender coming-of-age memoir. It's an intelligent debut that shows that Gilmour, for all his celebrity family connections, is undoubtedly a remarkable writer in his own right.

THE SUNDAY TIMES, Memoir of the Year

Featherhood is an incisive, funny and at times traumatic study of the damage done by destructive father-son relationships.

THE OLDIE

Gilmour's unforgettable memoir is both a beautiful piece of nature writing about caring for a magpie and a brutally honest account of his difficult relationship with his late father, the poet Heathcote Williams.

I NEWSPAPER, Best Books of 2020

A delicately choreographed story of salvation through a bird, with echoes of Barry Hines's classic A Kestrel For A Knave.

MAIL ON SUNDAY, Best Books of the Year

Bird and author explore this explosive terrain in an exhilarating dance of transformation, from wild to tame, captivity to freedom and darkness to light.

THE TABLET, Best Books of the Year

Gilmour... is fearless in sharing himself with readers. As he works through his relationships, the emotional freight is not always subtle, but this comes from a generosity and openness on his part, which, ultimately, is what makes "Featherhood" so lovely and inviting. Gilmour practices no magic here; he distracts the reader with no glitzy baubles. He gives us a man and a bird and tells us, best he can, what they've come to know about the world as it is. He is willing to spill a little blood.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Redemptive, beautifully written and often very funny, this is a moving study of the power of human (and magpie) love to repair even the most wounded heart.

DAILY MAIL