\u201cThe week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other.\u201d With that opening sentence, Stonex plunges us into the mind and world of Bridget \u201cBirdie\u201d Keller, a wife and mother in the rural countryside of Wiltshire, England. But Birdie\u2019s world is not quite so tranquil: 18 years earlier, a man was incarcerated for killing Birdie\u2019s half sister, Providence, and this is the day of his release, a day that Birdie has prepared for. Just as Birdie\u2019s voice settles in comfortably, a second narrator emerges. James Maguire is the man convicted of killing Providence, and his voice and story prove to be just as immersive as Birdie\u2019s. Shaped by Stonex\u2019s skillful hands, a compelling picture emerges spanning the decades from 1947 to 1989. In a small Devon village where everyone knows everyone else\u2019s business, the lives of several kids are ineluctably entwined. Some of their interconnections are due to Birdie\u2019s kind, caring grandmother. Gamma raised Birdie and Providence after their mother abandoned them, and she welcomed James into her home at a critical time. Though the makeshift family initially works well, miscommunication and outright lies quickly set in. Stonex\u2019s success doesn\u2019t lie solely in the creation of two riveting narrators. She weaves evocative imagery throughout the text, from a piece of knitting \u201cmessy as a jellyfish\u201d to a carpet stain shaped like the Isle of Wight and the titular Sunshine Man, a wooden scarecrow doubling as an ad for Yellowfields Seed Oil.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other.\u201d With that opening sentence, Stonex plunges us into the mind and world of Bridget \u201cBirdie\u201d Keller, a wife and mother in the rural countryside of Wiltshire, England. But Birdie\u2019s world is not quite so tranquil: 18 years earlier, a man was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4788"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}