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POSTED: 25 JUNE 2009

Joyce Hinnefeld, In Hovering Flight

(Allen & Unwin, 288pp paperback, $32.99)

Whether you are a bird-lover or hater, they are creatures which are pretty hard to ignore. I fall into the first category, and although I don’t actually sit in a tree with binoculars, I can happily spend time just watching them and marvelling at their amazing beauty and diversity.

Joyce Hinnefeld’s In Hovering Flight is a celebration of the wonder of birds, delicately woven into a tale of the life of one family, and interspersed with observations of environmental issues.

The story travels between the present and the past, filling in the beginnings of Addie’s and Tom’s relationship, interspersed with their now-adult daughter Scarlet’s return home after Addie’s death years later.

Addie is an artist, her passion drawing birds. She enrols in Tom’s ‘Biology of the Birds’ class at her local college and they sense kindred spirits.

As their life together unfolds, Addie becomes famous for her artwork, and the book that she and Tom publish together becomes an unlikely classic. However, Addie’s drawings begin to take a darker and more disturbing turn, and she becomes even more well known as an environmental activist.

Their daughter Scarlet (named after a local bird, the Scarlet Tanager — luckily they decided on the first part of the name) encounters the usual conflicting feelings of love and profound embarrassment of her parents.

As she returns for this most poignant of homecomings — the death of Addie — she reflects on their relationship and those of the women she has befriended.

A deceptively powerful tale, gently and lovingly told.