About this item
The moving new novel by the author of Harmless Like You, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and NPR Great Read On their first date, Mina told Oscar that she was bisexual, vegetarian, and on meds. He married her anyhow. A challenge to be met. She had low days, sure, but manageable. But now, maybe not so much . . . Mina is standing on the George Washington Bridge late at night, staring over the edge, when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the policeman she's not about to jump, but he doesn't believe her. Oscar is called to pick her up. With the idea of leaving New York for London - a place for Mina "to learn the floorplan of this sadness" - Oscar arranges a move. In London, Mina, a classicist, tries grappling with her mental health issues by making lists. Of WOMEN WHO SURVIVED - Penelope, Psyche, Leda. Iphigenia, but only in one of the tellings. Of things that make her HAPPY - enamel coffee cups. But what else? She at last finds a beam of light in Phoebe, and friendship and attraction blossom until Oscar and Mina's complicated love is tested. A gorgeously wrought novel, variously about love, mythology, mental illness, Japanese beer, and the times we need to seek out milder psychological climates, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's Starling Days - written in exquisite prose rich with lightly ironic empathy - is a complex and compelling work of fiction by a singularly gifted young writer.
About the Author
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a Japanese-British-Chinese-American writer. Her debut novel, Harmless Like You was published in 2016 by Sceptre and won the Author's Club First Novel Award and a Betty Trask award. It was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Books Are My Bag Breakthrough Author Award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan was the recipient of a Margins fellowship for the Asian American Writers Workshop, has a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is currently working on a PhD at the University of East Anglia. Her writing has appeared in the short story anthology How Much the Heart Can Hold (Sceptre) , the Guardian, New York Times, Granta, The Paris Review and The Atlantic among other places. She has lived in London, New York, Tokyo, Madison and Norwich.
