A lovely book which held my attention from first page to last.

In the West, we neurotically divide academic studies into either "science" or "arts"..... a dichotomy that would be beyond the comprehension of traditional Chinese thinkers.

Sanjida O'Connell is a Ph. D. in zoology, but this book demonstrates that she is also an artist; that for her this separation of disciplines is meaningless.

Strangely, this woman author has made the central protagonist and narrator male. Unsurprisingly, he is a zoologist.

Niall Edwards has decided to travel to a fishing village on the North-Eastern coast of Ulster to study magpies, rents a little cottage, and settles down to become a local and do his field work. The book contains a wealth of information, not just about magpies, but also about life-forms of every conceivable sort, including lyrical descriptions of all kinds of herbs, wild flowers, and sea creatures, all brought to life with extraordinary vividness. We learn of the polyandery of the female dunnock, the curious symbiosis between the bee-orchid and the bumble bee and the promiscuity of various species, (both male and female) including that most dangerous of animals, homo sapiens.

Niall is apparently a good-looking lad. Tired of eating baked beans with Mother's Pride bread, he heads out of town to a nearby restaurant which serves only vegetarian food. The head chef, Eddie, seems slightly menacing, wearing a tee-shirt, jeans and a wide belt dangling an array of sharp knives like weaponry for medieaval warfare. Eddie is also a girl. Like Niall, she is tall and skinny, black-haired and blue-eyed. At first sight Niall wants to eat her. Fortunately, field work has taught him that patience is often rewarded.

Niall is up at dawn each morning, armed with sandwiches, binoculars, a dictaphone. Hunting for magpies, observing them, recording observations, habitats, food sources and behaviours.

Not content, even after Eddie the chef moves in to become his live-in lover, and resident chef.... Niall has to obey his hormones like a tom-cat. He becomes fascinated by a mysterious horsewoman who passes him on the beach, mounted on the most beautiful and powerful horse imaginable. Niall enjoys the occasional romp with this dark and exotic creature, (the woman, not the horse) one Nadia Ismael

Although the behaviour of the central character is rather typically that of a young FHM reader (FHM is a gentleman's journal aimed at males with an attention-span not exceeding 3 minutes), the descriptions both of sex, food and plants are delicate, feminine and sensual.

So, Niall apparently has it made, except that slowly he begins to lose his grip on reality. He has recurring hallucinations, and the nightmares that cause him to wake in a panic are re-enacted in his mind's eye even when he is awake.

Several other characters are introduced, one a big man who sculpts timber with a chain-saw, another who is a swordsmith, and the old gentlemen who sit in the pub and watch all that happens in the village. Various friends advise him that he needs to take care of Eddie, to value what he has. Well, no one really understands the value of anything until he loses it.

There is an awful lot of discussion about angels.... Eddie has made them her life-study. The bedroom is festooned with images of them. Her knowledge of them is encyclopaedic. There is some discussion about the fact that angels are said to no longer have the option of free will. In that respect they resemble that most industrious of creatures, the ant. She is a little like an archangel herself... a bringer of comfort and warmth, but toting those knives she could be quite different.....

Essentially, the book documents young man under-going a mental break-down, a love-story, and a treatise on all kinds of natural history.

Buy it and read it to the end. I found the ending very satisfying, all neat and wrapped up by an angel.