The Blackbird’s Song

It is June 1900. The Boxer slogan, “Exterminate the Foreigner”, haunts Emily, William and Martha as they flee for their lives, victims already of their own private obsessions, their faith shaken when they need it most, with only one another to count on for survival.

Holdstock’s skillful and intriguing use of flashbacks and shifting focus, and her extraordinary evocation of character and atmosphere, provide the reader with an inspired insight into what differentiates the East from the West.

AUTHOR

Pauline Holdstock

Pauline Holdstock was born in England and moved to Vancouver in 1974. She now lives on Vancouver Island, and is the author of many short stories, essays and anthologies. She was selected as a finalist for the Books In Canada First Novel Award in 1988 for The Blackbird’s Song and in 2002 was awarded first place for fiction by the Federation of BC Writers. Her sixth novel, Beyond Measure, was shortlisted for the 2004 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Reviews

“What stays with the reader is the evocative beauty of Holdstock’s prose, her skill at detailing gesture, mood and perception, her gift for creating characters whose relationships are dramatic rather than static.”
– Books in Canada

“Brilliant … examines questions of faith, meaning and power; her investigation of these issues is profound and beautifully paced, so that despite the intensity of the subject, the momentum of the narratve never falters, the evocation of place and time having an almost cinematic immediacy.”
– The Times