The vendu Bird's Child by Price, Sandra Leigh NEUF

A novel of magic, birds, lost letters and love.

Sydney, 1929: three people find themselves washed up on the steps of Miss Du Mauriers bohemian boarding house in a once grand terrace in Newtown. Ari is a young Jewish man, a pogrom orphan, who lives under the stern rule of his rabbi uncle, but dreams his father is Houdini. Upon his hand he bears a forbidden mark - a tattoo - and has a secret ambition to be a magician. Finding an injured parrot one day on the street, Ari is unsure of how to care for it, until he meets young runaway Lily, a glimmering girl after his own abracadabra heart. Together they form a magical act, but their lives take a strange twist when wild card Billy, a charming and dangerous drifter twisted by the war, can no longer harbour secret desires of his own.

The Birds Child is a feat of sleight-of-hand. Birds speak, keys appear from nowhere, boxes spill secrets and the dead talk. this is a magical, stunningly original, irresistible novel - both an achingly beautiful love story and a slowly unfurling mystery of belonging.

A wonderful, strange, glittering book, full of astounding imagination, glorious really . Edward Carey, author of Heap House

A shimmering dream of haunted pasts. A silver girl. Abandoned boys. All the magic of the stage. The Birds Child is a delight. Essie Fox, author of The Somnambulist

The Birds Child is entirely original, its familiar Sydney settings set asparkle and rendered dreamlike by Sandra Leigh Prices lyrical and lovely writing. This is a magical fable that penetrates to deep emotional truths. Geraldine Brooks

This debut novel brings 1920s Sydney to life through a fairytale lens, highlighting the citys romance, its magic and its mystery ... It is the Australian setting that sets this quirky historical romance apart from others of its genre. Prices dream-like portrayal of a bygone Sydney - with its vaudeville shows and opium dens, lyrebirds and swagmen - establishes a unique mood that transforms the local into the exotic, making The Birds Child a memorable tale. Australian Book Review

Gritty yet enchanting ... often deliciously sumptuous and erotically charged ... unusual, imaginative Newtown Review of Books

S kilfully written and richly imagined Sydney Morning Herald