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by Martine Murray
It's dawn, on an empty road in the countryside. Empty, except for the girl in the long, red evening gown, standing next to a bicycle, and looking back at the home she's about to leave. Mannie's ready to start a new life and forget the terrible things that have happened here, but there are questions that need to be answered before she can let go. Questions about her elegant but unstable mother, her brother who's always overshadowed her, and his friend Harry Jacob, who just might be Mannie's boyfriend ...
And her only clue is an unfamiliar address in Melbourne, written on a scrap of paper found in her brother's room. As she makes her journey to the city, the mystery of this vulnerable, quirky girl is revealed piece by piece in her search for a way to become whole again.
With rare sensitivity and a poetic voice that is unmistakably her own, Martine Murray tells a story about growing up and listening to your heart.
"Starred Review. The story's forward momentum is occasionally diverted by an outpouring of images and insights, but eventually Mannie and the readers get back on the road, and any detours just add to the pleasure." - Kirkus Reviews
"The story itself, while well written, is not exciting, and Mannie is not easy to identify with....despite the author's ability as a wordsmith, readers are not likely to stick with this story to the end." - School Library Journal
"If the author was trying to span these two worlds, more care should have been taken to bring them together in some way because the bridge is very weak, and the novel suffers for it." - VOYA
"The novel offers an especially vivid sense of place-the harsh but open rural landscape and densely populated yet lonely, urban Melbourne." - Kirkus Reviews
"The second half of the novel flows very well, and is deeply moving, but before we reach it, there are a number of scenes which start in the novel's present and move suddenly, almost without warning, into flashback mode." - January Magazine
This information about How To Make A Bird was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Martine Murray lives in Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley and Henrietta, There's No One Better.
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