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Birdlands by Anthony McGowan ill. Keith Robinson

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 1 Jun 2026

Publisher: Oneworld Publications
ISBN: 9781836431800

NB – I read this book in the garden in two sittings on consecutive 30+ degree days. Totally engrossed. I put the book down at the end of p173 with the sense that the story had ended. When coming to write my review on Sunday evening a few days later, I read the Acknowledgements page at the back but did not notice that I had missed three key concluding chapters, in which Jordie, the character from the opening chapter, re-enters the story. These last three chapters are indescribably moving and beautiful, but the first draft of this review, possibly seen by a small number of people, was written in ignorance of them. I have apologised to the author, and amended my review accordingly, re-appraising the novel as very definitely Anthony McGowan’s strongest book yet.

See also:
The Beck [ACHUKA Book of the Day 2 Apr 2025]
Dogs Of The Deadlands [ACHUKA Book of the Day 8 Sep 2022]
Lark [ACHUKA Book of the Day 8 Nov 2019]

“McGowan is brilliant at balancing fantasy and realism – and the birds’ characters are sufficiently well-painted as to make their transformative friendship the story’s most absorbing element. The simple prose will make the book accessible to children of nine-plus. But the story has an emotional intelligence that will resonate with much older readers – and after 40 or so novels, it will surely rank as one of McGowan’s best.” Telegraph
“This three bird’s eye view of the human world that cares so little for them has much to offer.” BfK

When Anthony McGowan’s writing career got under way in 2005, children’s and YA fiction publishing was riding a wave of post-Harry-Potter enthusiasm, and dozens of authors were enjoying the benefits.

Books were lavishly promoted with events, parties and dinners.

Some of the names that have since faded from prominence have done so for tragic reasons. Siobhan Dowd died in 2007 just a year after her debut, A Swift Pure Cry. Mal Peet burst onto the scene with Keeper in 2003 and was still enjoying success in 2015 when his life was also cut short. Ill health and ultimately death brought Marcus Sedgwick’s writing career to an untimely end.

Kevin Brooks (Martyn Pig 2002), and a number of other writers who enjoyed similar levels of popularity with both publishers and readers in those days seem to have fallen out of favour, at least with children’s publishers.

It is to Anthony McGowan’s credit that by diversifying beyond the YA field and by simply working very, very hard (read his Wikipedia entry) he has — along with Frank Cottrell Boyce (Millions 2004), Frances Hardynge (Fly By Night 2006), Philip Reeve (Mortal Engines 2001-6), and Sally Gardner (I, Coriander 2005) — managed to maintain a writing career of undiminished momentum.

His latest novel Birdlands proves that it is not only his momentum that is undiminished. The quality of his work is getting better and better. As is the case with nearly all writers, McGowan feels his latest book might be his strongest yet. Last year, ACHUKA chose McGowan’s The Beck as our Fiction Pick of 2025. Birdlands could easily prove to be our Fiction pick for 2026.

The novel has three main characters – a crow, a jackdaw and a pigeon — and the story is told conversationally in dialogue between the three birds. In that sense it bears comparison with Mole’s, Ratty’s, Badger’s, and Toad’s badinage in The Wind in the Willows, although it has to be said the conversations in Birdlands tend to the gnomic and philosophically fatalist rather than the humorously adventurous.

What McGowan does superbly well is get the reader to believe in and associate with each of the three birds as they navigate (on foot, each bird is damaged in a different way but all three are, in the main, flightless) their way past one danger after another, en route to Dump, a kind of bird Heaven: “A place of ease. A place where there is all the food you can eat.” And there are angels.

After the opening chapter, I read the book at pace, totally enthralled, totally beguiled. I have a special liking for pigeons so my heart gulped towards the end.

The book opens with, “Jordie leaned out of the open window of the train door…” This will puzzle a contemporary child reader. It’s more than twenty years since trains had such doors. The logistics in the opening section only make sense if Jordie and his mother are travelling on a heritage line, or the book is set in the past. But there’s nothing to indicate that either is the case.

The chapter ends, “The sadness of the boy met the sadness of the birds, and there was no comfort to be had for any of them.” This is very fine writing. The bleakness and the cadence are almost Biblical. 

The next chapter opens, “Herman the crow, Beaky the jackdaw and Pidge the pigeon gazed at the lost sandwich below them on the tracks.” And we are on our way. The quest, the adventure has begun.

The world of Birdlands remains real, never remotely fantastical. The dangers encountered are those of everyday circumstance and bird existence: cats, dogs, larger bird predators, vagrants.

There is a clue in the Acknowledgements as to the source of the opening chapter. McGowan writes, “The story was partly inspired by true events: I encountered the originals of Beaky, Pidge and Herman at a small train station in Scotland.” Perhaps that train did have a door with a slide-down window. Perhaps it was several years ago.

“Finally,” McGowan adds, “this is a book about living with disability. So I’d like to salute all those people, young and old, who daily face adversity, mental or physical, and look up into the firmament and fly.”

And this is the novel’s most persuasive achievement: the evocation of determination and mutual assistance in the face of relentless adversity.

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