Elspeth Barker

What the Parrot Saw

The Stories

By

Little, Brown 480pp £20 order from our bookshop

Thirty years of stories, dating back to 1977, cram this splendid volume. In her introduction Jane Gardam recalls her infant recognition of the joy of listening without looking, as her mother read to her while they sat by her bedroom window, a moment put into relief by the presence of a deathly, blackish and freckled parrot behind the curtain. Now, some eighty years later, she is able to say that the parrot is vanquished, while the joy comes and goes. The extreme oddity of this juxtaposition is characteristic of her writing, the gently familiar and the shocking intertwined.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Moore’s work has been so influential that the former ministers who provided him with much of his information now r… ,
    • 'Although he travels through time and space to find the best produce, his choices, delightfully, are not obvious.'… ,
    • RT : I regularly make purchases based on - it’s excellent.,
    • RT : I wrote about Yoko Ogawa's dreamlike, allegorical novel The Memory Police, newly published in English in a translat… ,
    • 'At this frankly apocalyptic moment for indigenous rights in Brazil, John Hemming’s "People of the Rainforest" is a… ,
    • 'I was dumbfounded by the view of the Berlin Wall from the eastern side. It seemed inconceivable that in under thre… ,
    • RT : Danger for ‘local’ staff, access in exchange for silence (and logos) - all sounds familiar in this fascinating look… ,
    Follow Us