I was contacted by the publisher of this book (it is self-published, in fact) and asked to review it. The book sounded interesting and I was happy to accept. It is a first for me to be reviewing a work of fiction; and it requires a different approach from the works I customarily review.
William Fagus has used the interesting technique of personifying the various birds and animals throughout the book, and it works very well. Lest anyone imagine that a Disney type world is involved, it is not, for the grim realities faced by wildlife in the Anthropocene are tackled head on.
The book begins when our hero, the Purple-bellied Parrot, suffers the misfortune of the destruction of his rainforest home, and the tree in which he was born is felled. Subsequent captivity in abysmal conditions ensues. As so often happens with parrots in captivity, he is restrained and bored and plucks out all his feathers, thereby rendering himself unappealing to the slobbish human who owns him, who promptly releases him into a cold and unfamiliar climate.
Already, at the very beginning of the book then, the reader is confronted with the plight of captive birds in the often illegal pet trade, where they are kept in appalling conditions, and many die.
The Purple-bellied Parrot is adopted by a gregarious group of sparrows, and learns to live alongside them on Easy Street, feasting on the fast food discards of humans, and growing commensurately obese and unhealthy in the process.
All the while, the Purple-bellied Parrot dreams of returning to the land of his birth, to green trees and colourful flowers, hot sun, and fruit and nuts ready for the taking. He knows that it will be a long and difficult journey to get there, with many hazards along the way, but this obsession remains uppermost in his mind.
He is drilled into shape by a feisty wren who acts as his fitness trainer, and by the time he is ready to migrate with friendly House Martins he is in peak condition.
A whole series of adventures accompany his journey south, with "sundry characters both nefarious and uproarious." Fagus misses no opportunity to link the plight of wildlife to the mismanagement, misdemeanours and abject abuse of the biosphere by humans.
It is particularly poignant when Shug, an albatross critical to the parrot's successful journey to Brazil, a character based on the bird that spent several seasons alone in Scotland, has a ring of human origin around his neck . The comparison to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic poem, is stark; humans are the omen of doom around the neck of the albatross, not the other way around. The perils of long line fishing and the obscene, cruel deaths of so many seabirds caused by this practice is also tackled.
The oceans are full of plastic and when the Purple-bellied Parrot wishes to land on an "island" it turns out to be a mass of human detritus. A turtle who rescues our hero from certain drowning has a plastic ring cutting into a flipper.
The excesses of humanity, the disregard for the environment, and the implications for all life on the planet are laid out for all to see.
When land is finally in sight, when green forests and gentle breezes beckon, when a return to Brazil is at hand, the parrot lands on an ocean going tanker, and is captured by a sailor, and chained to a perch. With help from Shug, the door to the cabin where he is imprisoned is opened, but the only way that escape is possible, is for the parrot to chew off his own foot.
From start to finish, the extent of human destruction and insensitivity is revealed, and the reader has no difficulty making connection to his or her own experiences.
Happily, the Purple-bellied Parrot, by now known as Luiz, makes it back home and starts a family. A gentle ending to a sad account of human indifference and greed.
This book will make you think!
