The Birdman's Wife

In London in 1828, Elizabeth Coxen meets John Gould through her brother, Charles, who is employed by Gould as a taxidermist. The emotional connection between Elizabeth and John is immediate and thus begins a loving, although often challenging, partnership that will see Elizabeth taking on the responsibilities of wife and mother as well as illustrator of John’s books on the natural world.
 
We share at an intimate level the usual cares of a woman juggling her art with the demands of domestic life as well as the deep heartaches suffered in her loss of her babies. When John plans a voyage to Australia to document that continent’s unique fauna, Elizabeth faces her hardest decision in leaving some of her infant children behind in England at a time when life expectancy was fragile and communication took many months.
 
Whether in the hub-bub of London, on the high seas, on the rough streets of Hobart or the windswept Liverpool Plains, the evocative descriptions of 19th Century life and travel can’t be faulted. Many famous individuals of the time also pass through these pages, including Charles Darwin, Edward Lear and Lady Jane Franklin, and their characters are as carefully delineated as Elizabeth’s illustrations.
 
It is not easy reviewing a novel that is as awe-inspiring in the quality of its narrative as watching a bird-of-paradise strut its dazzling plumage. If you are an ornithologist, twitcher or wildlife artist you will adore this book without question. For anyone else with only a mild interest in birds - and less in the skills of taxidermy or the slaughter of beautiful creatures in the name of science - there may be problems with some of the content and its lengthy detail, but there can be no disputing it is a superb imagining of the life of a woman overshadowed by male achievement and must score five stars.
 
(Thanks to NetGalley and Affirm Press for the ARC.)

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