Bird Brain

Description

A very, very funny novel about country sports, murder, intrigue - and talking pheasants. It begins for Basil 'Banger' Peyton-Crumbe the day he dies in a pheasant-shooting incident. A tragic accident, thinks the local constable, but Banger's gundogs and Buck, the police dog, exhibiting a level of intelligence vastly superior to that of their owners, suspect murder. And for Basil, proud slayer of over 41,000 birds with the cheap old 12-bore he's had since childhood, things go from bad to very bad.

Guy Kennaway's books include One People, a novel, and Sunbathing Naked, a memoir. He lives in Somerset.

Only a Briton could have written Bird Brain. Eccentric and anthropomorphic, you'll either love or hate this book. I loved it. It's high-spirited, subversive and full of wry social observation and excellent jokes. Think Paul Torday meets Chicken Run * Daily Mail * A bloody brilliant book * Spectator * I loved it... It's a book I've been waiting for all my adult life, for it feels to me like nothing so much as a rather adult version of that other great pheasant story, Roald Dahl's Danny, the Champion of the World -- Rachel Cooke * Observer * A wonderfully astute satire with full confidence in its own eccentricity... Ripe, rich, fun, this is a beautifully turned story, good to the very last drop * Sunday Times * Tom Sharpe meets Watership Down in the hugely enjoyable story of Basil "Banger" Peyton-Crumbe, a man who, having exulted in the slaughter of game birds all his life, is killed in a shooting accident and reincarnated as a pheasant.... It would not be quite accurate to say the book anthropomorphizes animals because they all retain, quite brilliantly, their animal natures, but at the same time Banger, even as a dim bird begins to gain insight into his shortcomings as a human being.Funny, astute and completely absorbing * Guardian *