I was struck this time by Morris’s feeling of having been a spy in all-male circles and taking advantage of that privilege while she could. Her concise memoir opens “I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl.” Sitting under the family piano, little James knew it, but it took many years – a journalist’s career, including the scoop of the first summiting of Mount Everest in 1953 marriage and five children and nearly two decades of hormone therapy – before a sex reassignment surgery in Morocco in 1972 physically confirmed it. I have known that to be an essential truth since I was about eight years old.” (Public library)Ī reread of a book that transformed my understanding of gender back in 2006. This is a lovely little full-circle narrative in that the book closes with “the barn owl, unlike all other night-flying owls, is the one that we can see in the dark … its inarguable beauty is layered with mystery, and …all of us have a place in our hearts and minds for mysterious beauty. Barn Owl follows the same pattern, traveling the Scottish islands in search of close encounters (with badgers and ospreys, too) but also stretching back to a childhood memory from 1950s Dundee, when there was an owl-occupied derelict farmstead a quarter-mile from his home. I reviewed Kingfisher and Otter, two other titles from Crumley’s “Encounters in the Wild” series for the publisher Saraband, earlier in the month. Nonfiction: Barn Owl by Jim Crumley (2014)
I’ll start with some short nonfiction and then move on to the fiction. Today, I have mini reviews of another seven novellas I’ve been working on, some of them for the whole month. I found Inside the Bone Box incredibly well written, and wholly absorbing.We’ll be wrapping up Novellas in November and giving final statistics on Tuesday. ‘ Ferner presents an intimate portrait of a husband and wife, and the ways in which their relationship has shifted since the beginning of their marriage. Predicated on questions of identity and the loss thereof Inside the Bone Box is a little book that packs a punch far greater than its size.’ – The Idle Woman, book blogger ‘ can give you a strong picture of a character in just a sentence or two of elegant prose, combining precision with just the right amount of ornamentation. ‘ This slim novel asks some big questions, with compassion, wry humour and elegant, understated prose.’ – Kate Vane, crime novelist ‘ loved Inside the Bone Box, the visual imagery is excellent, and as a radiographer before bookselling I really appreciated the fine details of neurosurgery.’ – Georgia Duffy, owner of Imagined Things bookshop, Harrogate ‘Very accurate.’ – Nick Thomas FRCS (Glas), FRCS (Eng), FRCS (SN), Consultant Neurosurgeon
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