One Bird's Choice
A Year in the Life of an Overeducated, Underemployed Twenty-Something Who Moves Back Home
by Iain Reid
- Winner, CBC Bookie Award- Non Fiction
Meet Iain Reid: an overeducated, underemployed twenty-something, living in the big city in a bug-filled basement apartment and struggling to make ends meet. When Iain lands a job at a radio station near his childhood home, he decides to take it. But the work is only part time, so he is forced to move back in with his lovable but eccentric parents on their hobby farm. What starts out as a temporary arrangement turns into a year-long extended stay, in which Iain finds himself fighting with the farm fowl, taking fashion advice from the elderly, fattening up on a gluttonous fare of home-cooked food, and ultimately easing (perhaps a little too comfortably) into the semi-retired, rural lifestyle.Capturing the angst and humour of his quasi adulthood, One Bird's Choice announces the funny, original, and fresh new voice of Iain Reid.
close this panelIain Reid is the author of the critically acclaimed comic memoir One Bird's Choice, which won the CBC Bookie Award for Best Nonfiction Book. His writing has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and online in publications such as the Globe and Mail, Reader's Digest, and The Classical. He writes regularly about books and writing for the National Post. His work has also appeared on CBC Radio and NPR. He lives in Kingston, Ontario.
close this panelReid's writing is...engaging and humorous.
Reid has aptly captured the angst, humour and quirkiness of his year at home...
Reid is a genial narrator, and you don't tire of his voice.
The real heroes of the book are Iain Reid's parents, delightfully quirky and ever loving...
One Bird's Choice...is both about the Boomerang Generation and an example of how that generation got its name.
A true sense of place is the greatest gift an author can give us as travellers. We talk of Hemingway's Spain or Austen's England . . . I'm not sure the narrator realizes all that he has captured in his pages . . . He's captured a time and place that defines a giant piece of this province, its traditions, and its history.
Cross James Herriot's tales of bucolic British life with Mike Myers' comedic portrayal of his Scottish Canadian family in the film So I Married an Axe Murderer and you end up with Iain Reid's hilarious memoir One Bird's Choice.
Reid isn't trying to teach anybody how to eat, pray or love: he simply observes himself, his family and all their laughable idiosyncrasies. . .
...kids and parents will find it particularly enjoyable.
...gentle but hilarious humour that had me chortling without a break.
. . . hilarious, absurd, and sweet.
