The Backyard Bird Chronicles

February 19, 2024
The lovely latest from novelist Tan (Where the Past Begins) brings together selections from “nine personal journals filled with sketches and handwritten notes of naive observations” about birds spotted in her northern California backyard between 2017 and 2022. A few of the entries are somber in tone, including one recounting how Tan had to take down her feeders during a 2017 salmonellosis outbreak among Pine Siskins, whose large flocks make them vulnerable to viral illness. However, most of the notes are more lighthearted, as when Tan narrates the squabbles between dark-eyed juncos, lesser goldfinches, and fox sparrows over a pile of sunflower seeds as if it were a wrestling match. Tan sprinkles in some trivia, as when she explains that songbirds dispense seeds uneaten from feeders because they’re looking for the ones with the most oil, but she largely sticks to laid-back observations about sparrows playing, hummingbirds eating out of her hand, and a hermit thrush unsuccessfully attempting to slip into a cage feeder. Tan’s drawings, a highlight of the volume, trace the development of her artistry, with respectable if amateurish early colored pencil sketches giving way to impressively detailed and realistic depictions of the oak titmouse, chestnut backed chickadee, and great horned owl. Bird lovers may not learn much, but Tan’s enthusiasm and jaunty descriptions of her avian subjects enchant. This hits the mark. Illus. Agent: Sandra Dijkstra, Sandra Dijkstra Literary.

August 1, 2024

Novelist Tan returns to nonfiction (after Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir) with an epistolary nature journal recounting her new ventures in amateur ornithology. Following David Allen Sibley's contemplative foreword (narrated with measured engagement by Evan Sibley), Tan describes how, after the tumult of 2016, she began to take a deeper interest in the birds visiting her California backyard. She filled page after page with musings on the birds' social relationships, personality quirks, her building sense of mindful presence, and the bane of birders everywhere--hungry squirrels. The journal entries vacillate between pensive introspection and hilariously unvarnished retellings of the messier bits of birding--aerial diarrhea, for instance. Tan's narrative style remains steady throughout, restrained both in volume and emotion. Tan's reserve as she narrates the audiobook allows the wit and humor of her everyday writings to reflect the largely quiet nature of her entries. While the book could have easily relied on allegories of nature and birds, it resists that temptation. Tan instead reminds readers that there is worth and beauty in simplicity. VERDICT A quiet ode to the simple joy of paying attention that will inspire readers to pick up a pair of binoculars.--Shanel Slater

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