'Stunning. Moving, elegant, important' Bonnie Garmus, international bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry and Peck & Peck
'I read it twice I loved it so much' Jo Browning Wroe, author of A Terrible Kindness
During the warmest spring anyone can remember, in a Scottish coastal town, one boy discovers the magic of birds . . .
It is the warmest spring anyone can remember. Rory, eleven years old, lives with his father Angus in Invergrian, near the ocean in Scotland. He finds the world both terrifying and utterly enchanting, but he keeps this to himself: he hasn't spoken a word for five years, not since his mother left.
Anna lives a quiet existence nearby, spending her time hand-rearing nestlings from the wild. She has never felt more at peace than in Invergrian, with her birds and her woods and her work.
But when Rory stumbles upon Anna's house of birds, both find their lives changed. Rory can't believe his luck - he's long suspected birds to be magic, and Anna seems happy to teach him how to help them, not questioning his silence. Anna too finds her solitary life stirred by this enigmatic boy and a growing connection with his father.
But as the spring burns on, amid the quiet work of saving the nestlings, alarm bells start ringing. Water becomes scarce. The elderly in the town become fearful. Exhausted birds start falling out of the sky. When a shocking discovery on the shore sends Anna down a path of obsession, can Rory and Angus prevent her world from falling apart at the seams?
Tender and exquisitely crafted, THESE GLASS BODIES is an absorbing, unsettling debut novel of love, community and our fragile relationship with the natural world.