Crow Talk by Eileen Garvin

 

The main characters:

FRANKIE O'NEILL--a graduate student grieving the death of her father and struggling to finish her master's thesis; she's come to her family's small summer cottage on June Lake to try and pull her life together. 

"Bird song, wind in the trees, the rhythmic lifting and clanking of the dock in the waves, the water lapping the shore. Sounds as familiar as her own breath. It was a comfort to hear them, as she'd hoped. But the feeling wouldn't last....Because she was not a girl at home in the woods and falling in love with birds for the first time. She was twenty-six, homeless, and staring down a host of uncomfortable new firsts in her life. She was unemployed and unemployable. Bereft of friends and allies, she was out of options, out of ideas, and out of places to go."

ANNE RYAN--Irish musician, young wife and mother; she's dealing with her own grief and struggling to connect with her five-year-old son, Aiden, who no longer speaks to her or her husband, Tim. She, Aiden and Tim have come to June Lake hoping to reconnect. 

"Nobody tells the truth about having children, Anne knew. ...Nobody ever admitted that being a mother is an epic of failure. There were just so many opportunities to fail: when your baby won't eat, or sleep, or stop crying, or won't look at you, or won't speak to you. Or stares at his hands and won't respond when you say his name. Or screams unconsolably for some unknown reason. Or when you take your attention off him for one minute and he vanishes into thin air."

My thoughts:  I loved this book. The quietness. The beautiful prose. The tentative friendship between Frankie and Anne's young son, Aiden. The baby crow Frankie saves and returns to its family. Hers and Anne's separate journeys through loss and grief, and the friendship and healing they find along the way. I loved the remote setting, and all the talk and descriptions of crows. It's such a transporting and captivating novel. A perfect read for the end of summer. 

My rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  

Happy Reading!

 

I also really enjoyed reading Garvin's The Music of Bees.