The Bird Woman
by Kerry Hardie
Harper, HK$112
Ellen McKinnon's quest is 'to know oneness instead of division', but the journey there has her running away - from her husband, from herself and from her clairvoyant 'gift'. Raised in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, she hates the Bible, but concedes that its images and language inhabit her 'hidden life'. It's this inner world that readers are privy to as McKinnon comes to terms with who she is and why she's able to see tragedies such as a friend being killed in a bombing a month before it happens. On impulse, she runs off with a sculptor called Liam, leaving behind the electrician she married young and severing family ties. However, Ellen is no more settled in her new Catholic surroundings, especially when her visions develop into an ability to heal. As word spreads of her unusual facility, the sick seek her help, and her work, unbidden though it may be, begins. But then comes news of the imminent death of her estranged mother and what's almost whole is split again. Irish poet and novelist Kerry Hardie has produced an intense, sometimes claustrophobic narrative that underscores torment. Its quietness uncannily reverberates.
