Featherhood: 'The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years' Neil Gaiman

This was an enjoyable book to read if you like birds and nature.Also rather moving with a parental relationship and the birth of a child.

Charlie Gilmour’s late father was the anarchist poet, actor, and conjuror, Heathcote Williams. Out of ennui, derangement, or pure whim, Williams deserted both Charlie and his mother Polly, leaving them in virtual penury. That state was solved through Polly’s happy marriage to Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, but the terrible emotional damage Heathcote inflicted on Charlie was not so readily addressed. This book stands as an exploration and attempted exorcism of his raging, life-long sense of abandonment. It’s finely written, though often painful to read. Rather than David Gilmour, it has more in common with the work of his sometime colleague in Pink Floyd, Roger Waters. Both he and Charlie bear sharp scars from a vanished dad and, perhaps wisely, Gilmour wrote his memoir while seeking out professional help.Framing it is his adoption of an urban magpie chick, dubbed Benzine. Her growth and eventual flight serve as a solid metaphor for Charlie’s status and his coming to terms with memory, as well as with Heathcote’s final illness, and his own assumption of parenthood through the birth of his first child. Benzine inspires some dazzling descriptive prose. In addition, Gilmour adroitly positions the bird as a symbol for the book itself, glossy, self-assured, but also possessed of a very sharp beak and claws. If several hefty pecks and scratches are delivered to the feckless Heathcote, though, much other damage is self-inflicted: relentlessly detailing the mechanics of cremation to your father on his death bed is surely enough to induce a cold sweat of guilt and contrition in any son for years.It’s impossible to account for Polly and Charlie’s desertion, or to underplay the havoc, hurt, and subsequent rage that it hatched. Yet, since Heathcote is no longer able to speak for himself, something should be said in his defence. This book strips him of dignity and grants him precious little grace, and Charlie expresses astonishment at the huge congregation which gathered for his funeral in Oxford. He shouldn’t. The crowd was there to mourn a very different person from the inept and grubby wastrel depicted here: a unique, spell-binding intelligence, one furious at political cant and possessed of an exceptional sense of hospitality and humour. Charlie’s tragedy is that he never enjoyed this side of his father’s personality in the full entrancing warmth and colour of its embrace. One wishes him well with his therapy. Despite the gilded comfort of his adoptive family and the obvious joy delivered by a baby daughter, the suspicion lingers that his pain and vengeful deprivation cannot be dispelled by the writing of any book, not even one as sleek and fully-fledged in its redemptive arc as this. Some birds remain in captivity, even when their cage is long gone.

Rarely do I and Elton John agree on matters of literary criticism but Rocketman is right in hailing Featherhood as the book of the season.What kind of book is it? One main strand is ornithology: Featherhood is a scholarly addition to corvid lore. Gilmour is a bird watcher from close up. You’ll never really understand a magpie, we gather, unless it defecates in your hair and, by way of love, stuffs live maggots down your ear. Binoculars are for sissies.Featherhood is a recovery memoir. Charlie Gilmour---on the day after he swung in mad protest against student fees on the Cenotaph flag---was the most hated young man in Britain: soon to be a jailbird. The book doesn’t shirk that degradation. He’s different now.The book is a voyage round Charlie’s father Heathcote Williams---a wayward literary genius and a magician who played cruel tricks on his son. Heathcote was here, there and, when most needed, a puff of smoke.As he records Charlie was rescued by his mother and ‘dad’ (adoptive father). But one aspect of the book’s story is the long slow bruise Heathcote inflicted. Not all of it, we can think, may have come to the surface yet.Charlie adopted his bird, Benzene as a lonely fledgeling in a junk yard, and named the bird after the brilliant oil stain around it. Adoption is main theme of Featherhood as is sonhood and fatherhood.Lady Benzene, when the time comes, makes her nest out of filched fragments and embellishes it with stolen treasure. This is how Gilmour has constructed his story. Bits and pieces of a fractured life are woven, and weave themselves, into shape and significance. Featherhood is a brilliant, moving, debut.

Words soar off the page and into the sky like a magpie, a bird I will never see in the same way again. I’ve spent a lot of time reading Jim Harrison, who manages to effortlessly weave wildlife into his stories, now I feel I’ve found another great writer who can do the same. Touching, honest, deep and meaningful. Very excited to read the next book by Charlie Gilmour!

The writing was beautiful and the story seemed to invoke a sense of the magical and unreal. It reminded me of classic fairytales: the charismatic dark handsome poet who could speak with animals and charm all around him, his beautiful young wife and their little cottage deep in the woods. The abandoned wife and baby and their eventual rescue by a rich prince.The descent into madness and quest for belonging and finding oneself. A special book indeed.

From the moment I read the Observer review, I knew I would enjoy it.For me, anyone who loves animals and respects their right to live is OK in my eyes.I first remember Charlie as a very young man getting himself into a bit of trouble but even further back, 40 years in fact, I met his stepfather David on holiday in Lindos. We were watching an England match in Yannis’s bar. I had no idea at the time who he was but remember a very pleasant man who has now given Charlie a stable upbringing resulting in this charming bookWell done to both of you

Book club choice which everyone else liked but I felt the author was very self-centered. I recognise it is a memoir but the author seemed to have little thought for others in his life, despite having a pretty caring and privileged family background.