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WORK TITLE: A Thousand Paper Birds
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.torudall.com/
CITY: London
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
Literary Agent: Jenny Savill – jsavill@nurnberg.co.uk
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married; children: two.
EDUCATION:Bristol University, B.A. (Hons).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Editor, choreographer, drama teacher, performer, playwright, director, and author. Nowhere, Communications Manager. Surrey University, guest instructor.
WRITINGS
A Thousand Paper Birds has been translated into Dutch, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, and German.
SIDELIGHTS
Prior to launching her writing career, Tor Udall worked in the performing arts industry as a choreographer, performer, writer, and director. She and a partner were able to found their own company, where she completed a sizable amount of work. Udall has also been able to lend her talents elsewhere, as one of her plays was featured by the National Theatre. In addition to producing and staging her own dramatic works, Udall has also taught the subject professionally. She is affiliated with nowhere, serving as their communications manager.
A Thousand Paper Birds marks Udall’s foray into a different type of writing: novels. In an article featured on the Spine website, Udall remarked that her inspiration for the novel came from her admiration for the Kew Gardens, which feature as a major location within the book. Another piece of inspiration came from her work at the time, preparing pamphlets one after the other—an act that ignited Udall’s interest in origami, which also came to feature within the book.
The plot of A Thousand Paper Birds centers on Jonah Wilson and the various other people, both deceased and alive, who have become intertwined in his life in one way or another. Prior to settling into his job teaching music, Jonah aspired to become a professional musician. However, he had to set his dreams aside in order to begin family planning with Audrey, his now deceased spouse. Before her death, Audrey spent her days visiting the Kew Gardens and working as a linguist. It was there that Audrey was able to meet a man by the name of Harry Barclay, who held close ties to the Gardens. On his own visit to the Kew Gardens, Jonah encounters a woman named Chloe and, as the novel unfolds, several secrets and truths about the Gardens and the lives of each of the characters come to light. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the book “a quirky debut novel, heartfelt in its portrayal of human emotions, pleasantly surprising, but slightly overdone.” On the London Observer Online, Ben East remarked: “Heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure, it’s a love letter to a garden and a paean to all kinds of imperfect love.” Kerryn Goldsworthy, writing on the Sydney Morning Herald website, commented: “Her writing is lovely, but whether readers embrace this book will depend on their tolerance for fanciful departures from realism.” A reviewer on the Last Word Book Review website said: “This is a book for all the seasons a book that will not leave you in a hurry and you will not forget it.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2017, review of A Thousand Paper Birds.
ONLINE
Andrew Nurnberg Associates Website, http://andrewnurnberg.com/ (May 7, 2018), author profile.
Jericho Writers, https://jerichowriters.com/ (May 7, 2018), “Tor Udall on Patience and Passion in Writing.”
Last Word Book Review, https://thelastwordbookreview.wordpress.com/ (June 23, 2017), review of A Thousand Paper Birds.
Literary Sofa, https://literarysofa.com/ (September 19, 2017), Tor Udall and Isabel Costello, “Guest Author – Tor Udall on Writing about Grief and Transformation.”
London Observer Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (July 30, 2017), Ben East, “A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall review – magical realism in Kew Gardens,” review of A Thousand Paper Birds.
Nowhere, https://www.now-here.com/ (May 7, 2018), author profile.
Spine, http://spinemagazine.co/ (May 7, 2018), Susanna Baird, “The Writer’s Practice: Tor Udall.”
Sydney Morning Herald Online, https://www.smh.com.au/ (October 13, 2017), Kerryn Goldsworthy, review of A Thousand Paper Birds.
Tor Udall Website, https://www.torudall.com (May 7, 2018), author profile.
After studying theatre and film, Tor co-founded a dance-theatre company and spent most of her twenties directing, writing and performing. At eighteen, she devised and directed a play that won the opportunity to be performed on the Olivier stage at the National Theatre. Tor taught drama for several years and choreographed an opera for The Royal College of Music. A Thousand Paper Birds is her first novel. She lives in London with her husband and two young children.
TOR UDALL ON PATIENCE AND PASSION IN WRITING
Guest author and blogger Tor Udall shares her story of publishing A Thousand Paper Birds with Bloomsbury after her time at the Festival of Writing, plus how patience, perseverance and passion were key to success.
The Festival of Writing had a transformative impact for me. After signing with my agent, what happened next?
More drafts. Another four to be exact, since A Thousand Paper Birds is a many layered thing.
Based in Kew Gardens, with five characters, two love triangles and a mysterious death, it’s told from multiple perspectives and two time-frames. Add in a speculative thread and the folds of origami, and you can imagine why it took a while to pin this girl down.
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I learnt a lot in those two years – not just about my characters and craft, but also about perseverance and passion. There were days when it felt like I was entering a boxing ring, wrestling the pages, and leaving the desk with my jaw bloodied. In one particular draft, I tried so damn hard to please that I took on every suggested edit and ended up with a Frankenstein manuscript, the stitches so coarse you could see the seams. It had no blood in it. No heartbeat. I had to go back and lovingly unpick it, gently resuscitating it back to life and asking it to forgive me – and thankfully it did. It’s a delicate balance – taking in other people’s advice, but also staying true to the world you’ve created and to the book’s anima, or spirit.
In September 2015, the manuscript was ready, and we sent it out on submission. What a terrifying process!
Within 24 hours, an editor in Italy had read it overnight, fallen head over heels and wanted to make a pre-emptive offer. I thought this is it, we’re on a roll. Then nothing happened, for days. Slowly, other offers came in – Portugal, Netherlands, Russia – but nothing from the UK. The rapturous declines were wonderful, but frustrating (it made me laugh to discover that while agents send ‘rejections’, publishers send ‘declines’ … it’s all so much more civilised!).
Finally, we got a bite from one editor (followed by a great meeting), then a few more showed interest, and suddenly editors were taking A Thousand Paper Birds to acquisitions. This is not an easy hurdle – the entire team must love it and in the run-up to Frankfurt Book Fair, a lot of books are vying for attention.
Trying to keep positive, I took myself off to Kew Gardens (the book’s location) to hear the Director’s Talk. As I left the event, my phone rang and the moment happened. Bloomsbury had put in an offer.
I was standing outside the famous Palm House, in the perfect spot. A couple of times I had to ask Jenny to repeat herself – partly out of disbelief, partly because the ducks were quacking, but there I stood by the glasshouse, my dream solidifying in the trees, the lake, the sky, my body.
This elation continued in Frankfurt when Random House in Germany offered me a 2-book deal (without even seeing a synopsis for the second). Signing for a second book felt like the start of a career, a validation.
So guess what happened next? Yup. More drafts. Two more.
It’s pot-luck on who you get as an editor, but thankfully Alexa von Hirschberg is one helluva talented lady. Sensitive, funny, wise, stylish (we even share the same taste in musicians), she was a joy to work with. The copy-edit, too, was a wonderful experience. The copy-editor’s attention to detail was love-filled. It’s the fine work of the scalpel: ‘do you really want ‘in’ twice in a sentence?’ (see, I’ve just done it again), ‘should it be ‘garden’ or ‘Gardens’? Did you realise that you swap between imperial and metric?’ After the large-scale edits, it was a pleasure to focus on the miniscule.
Ten drafts in all. So many different versions, characters cut or changed, whole passages gone, and for a while I worried that I would grieve for all the different ‘Paper Birds’ that had vanished. But when I read through the final edit it was the book it was always supposed to be. Everything had come into focus.
During this period, there was a lot of other stuff happening, too. While I was writing the draft(s) of my life I also had to set myself up as a business, dealing with foreign tax forms, complicated contracts, asking the Foreign Office to certify certificates of residence. An illustrator was working on a map of Kew Gardens to go at the front, copy for the blurb and catalogue were needed, copyright permissions required for quotes and lyrics, author photos taken, the jacket design approved (oh my, it’s so flutteringly gorgeous!). Then there was also a pregnancy that involved me injecting myself in the stomach for 9 months daily, a premature baby and the usual sleeplessness and chaos that comes with a new-born – but that’s a whole other story …!
And now I have a year to write my second book (the first one took seven years, so you can understand why my eye is twitching!).
There’s a host of unknown and wonderful things ahead. And I’m frightened. Of people reading it. Of people not reading it. The author events, the promotion – all challenges for a publishing virgin. But in the end, away from the noise of twitter, book sales, reviews, I know my main job is the work itself: to write the next book better, using everything I’ve learnt. The landscape of language, the puzzles of plot and pace, the intimacies of character – this is where I’m happiest, and how privileged I am to be able to spend my day at the typeface, conjuring up things to believe in. This passion (obsession? endless curiosity?) is both anchor and fuel.
So, yes, since York, life has changed. After years of writing alone, it’s amazing to be part of a collaboration with some of the most talented, brilliant people in the world.
Good luck to all of you ever coming to the Festival of Writing, and remember, too, so much can happen in the one-on-ones, in the coffee queue, at the bar … the quickening of fate can happen in the most unlikely places.
Who knows? The roller coaster may be coming for you, too.
Following a BA (Hons) degree in Film and Theatre at Bristol University, Tor (Victoria) co-founded a dance-theatre company that performed at Sadler’s Wells and the Royal Festival Hall. She also devised and directed a play for the Olivier stage at the National Theatre and choreographed an opera for the Royal College of Music. She has attended Arvon, TLC and Festival of Writing workshops, and is grateful for enchanting afternoons discussing her writing with Ben Okri. On submitting A Thousand Paper Birds to agents, Tor received six offers of representation. She currently works part-time as an editor for a creative consultancy. She lives in London with her husband and two young children.
www.torudall.com
Tor Udall
Communications Manager
Tor Udall is nowhere’s Communications Manager. As part of the brand team, she is responsible for creating and managing content and communications. She writes and edits copy, and works alongside the media team, storyboarding and editing videos. She also looks after the nowhere online community.
Tor spent her early career as a theatre director, choreographer and performer, devising and delivering productions for the National Theatre, The Royal Festival Hall, Sadler’s Wells and The Royal College of Music. She was also director of theatre at a sixth form college and guest teacher at Surrey University. Her first novel ‘A Thousand Paper Birds’ will be published by Bloomsbury in 2017 and translated for various publishing houses in Russia, Germany, Italy, Portugal and the Netherlands.
After studying theatre and film, Tor Udall co-founded a dance-theatre company and spent most of her twenties directing, writing and performing. A Thousand Paper Birds is her first novel and was longlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2018. She lives in London with her husband and young children.
@TorUdall
Writes: General Fiction, Bloomsbury Circus
Author of : A Thousand Paper Birds
After studying theatre and film, Tor co-founded a dance-theatre company and spent most of her twenties directing, writing and performing. As an A' level student, she devised and directed a play that won the opportunity to be performed on the Olivier stage at the National Theatre. Tor taught drama for several years and choreographed an opera for The Royal College of Music. A Thousand Paper Birds is her first novel. She lives in London with her husband and two young children.
THE WRITER'S PRACTICE: TOR UDALL
SUSANNA BAIRD
Kew Gardens, the historic, 299-acre botanical garden in southwest London, sits at the heart of Tor Udall's first novel, A Thousand Paper Birds. The main characters — a widowing musician, a struggling origami artist, a grief-stricken linguist, a curious child, and a quiet gardener — push through time, through dispair, even through the porous borders separating the living from the dead. As their narratives intertwine, the characters crisscross Kew Gardens, from memorial bench to glasshouse, from woodland to pond.
Udall has been writing for 20 years. A Thousand Paper Birds demanded her attention seven years ago, while she was trying to focus on another project. Stir crazy in her small flat, she escaped to neighboring Kew Gardens to write.
"I found myself distracted by the beauty of the garden and the stories of the passers-by and started jotting down notes and observations. I became fascinated with the juxtaposition of the abundant nature around me with the benches I was sitting on that commemorated the dead. Being aware of other people who had once loved these gardens only made me appreciate the present moment more."
Cover Design: Emma Ewbank
Cover Design: Emma Ewbank
Around the same time, Udall's temp job consisted of folding endless leaflets. "I found the only way I could survive that was to become interested in the actual folding. How could I do it mindfully? That steered me towards origami."
A very British green space and a very Japanese art form rose up simultaneously as driving forces for a new project. Udall wanted them both, and she needed to know more. She spent more time in the Gardens, she read books about the Gardens, and she watched A Year in Kew, a BBC series that provided insight about staff activities. "I also went behind the scenes to visit the Herbarium, an extraordinary collection of 7,500,00 specimens," she recalled.
For origami insight, Udall read Peter Engel's Origami from Angelfish to Zen and grew to appreciate the complexities that can be expressed and examined through the art of paper folding. "Origami is more than a party trick," she said. "It's been explored by mathematicians and scientists, people looking for how patterns work. It's also a great way to explore quantum physics." Origami ultimately provided Udall a conceptual framework for the complex themes running through her novel; a way to think about the big picture. "In the book, time and space bend, as if the universe is a giant piece of paper folding and unfolding. Sometimes two corners touch and you see a moment from the past, or something most people don't see."
As Udall researched and wrote, she transformed her workspace into a visual scrapbook of her novel-in-progress, something she does for all her writing projects. "At the beginning …. I collect hundreds of pictures — of Kew Gardens, origami, folding patterns — and pin them up on a huge noticeboard that covers one wall. I also pin up inspirations for characters. For instance, for A Thousand Paper Birds I studied Modigliani portraits. It’s not so much that the characters look exactly like these portraits – but they might capture the right mood or smile, or how they hold their shoulders. By the end of the process all four walls are covered with images, so when I go to work it feels like I am walking into the book."
She surrounds herself with relevant images, but Udall also reserves wall space for plotting, one of the more prosaic aspects of story creation. "I have one part of the noticeboard covered in Post-its. I chart the overall narrative arc, the scenes, where the turning points are." With A Thousand Paper Birds, Udall used different colored Post-its for each character. "I could quickly see if there are times when a character is silent for too long, or is taking up too much space."
When addressing cadence — not only the motion of the narrative outlined on Post-its, but also the beats comprising each individual sentence – Udall pulls from her experience as a dancer and choreographer. "I’m very interested in rhythm as a writer – for the story as a whole (how the threads and stories interweave, how motifs return). But I’m also very attuned to the rhythm of each sentence – it’s very important to me where the comma is, the dash. It’s Fred Astaire in a graceful spin, his arms wheeling, then a pause – oh, how important the pause is – before he stamps, shuffles, stamps again. Writing is a dance."
Rhythmic prose composed, office walls obscured, narrative complexities mastered, character arcs folded together into one finished book, Udall sought a publisher. At York's Festival of Writing, eight agents vied for her favor. When Udall arrived for her meeting with Jenny Savill, of Andrew Nurnberg Associates, the agent presented a display she'd created in homage to Udall's book: pictures of origami, of Kew Gardens, of music referenced in the book. "I just knew she understood what I was doing," Udall recalled.
Savill set to work securing a publisher. One afternoon when Udall was in Kew Gardens, the agent called to say Bloomsbury was making an offer. "I was in the perfect place, right outside the famous Palm House, hearing the news that after 20 years I was finally going to be published. It was quite a moment," Udall said.
Bloomsbury proved a perfect publishing partner, all the way to cover design. Designer Emma Ewbank first created an orange cover centered on the silhouette of a couple on a bench (read about Ewbank's design process.) Udall found the garden a bit too thorny and fairytale scary, though it reflected the book's original title, A Place for Lost Things. When the title changed, so too changed the cover. Pulling in the origami and respecting Udall's wish for a more exotic, erotic, more vibrant feel, they arrived at the final cover, as well as endpapers featuring origami birds, and even a map of the gardens. "I’ve adored maps in books ever since I was a child, so this was a dream come true," Udall said.
The process was lovely, in retrospect, but also the process was long. Two unpublished novels and 20 years spent writing, seven of them on A Thousand Paper Birds. Udall said "it's the little coincidences" that kept her going. Example: Like origami, David Bowie's song Oh! You Pretty Things appears throughout the book. One afternoon, after signing on with Jenny Savill, Udall was sitting at a stoplight, her children in the backseat. "Next to us was a massive New Musical Express (magazine) billboard poster. The front cover of NME was Bowie, surrounded by origami birds." Googling, she discovered Bowie himself had arranged for the origami. The next day, her agent received a copy of the same magazine, which she doesn't subscribe to.
"I love those little signs that encourage you to keep going," she said. "I really believe creativity is a dance with myself and something other. I wouldn’t want to define what that is – but that’s the thing I love – the magic of imagination and coincidence, joining up the dots – it’s such a wonderful mystery and I feel hugely privileged to be a part of it."
Find Udall online at www.torudall.com and on Twitter @TorUdall.
Guest Author – Tor Udall on Writing about Grief and Transformation
POSTED BY ISABEL COSTELLO ⋅ SEPTEMBER 19, 2017 ⋅ 1 COMMENT
Autumn has made an early appearance this year and many of us will be keen to seize any opportunity to revisit the summer, which is exactly what’s happening today on the Literary Sofa. Tor Udall’s season-spanning debut novel A Thousand Paper Birds was one of my Summer Reads 2017 but as there wasn’t time to host all the authors then, I’m delighted to welcome her now. It’s also fitting that her guest post immediately follows mine about the York Festival of Writing – Tor was one of the stars of this year’s Festival, giving the closing keynote interview with Deborah Install, yet another author who found success there. Unfortunately I was already heading home by then but I do know that Tor’s publication story, like so many, is one of long-haul perseverance and as this novel shows, her talent more than justifies all that patience and hard work. You can read my review below her guest post on grief and transformation, something which interests us both a great deal as writers:
Like many, I first learned about grief through the loss of a pet. Our dear old tabby had seen me through childhood and puberty. When it came to putting her down, the vet gave her a dose that wasn’t big enough for her (gargantuan) size, so we were sent home to wait for the injection to do its morbid business. My mum had to dash off so I was left alone with a dying cat on my lap. I stroked her, whispered thanks, and sang. When she finally died, the calm of my vigil disappeared and I howled for hours, beating my chest and screaming to an uncaring God, ‘Why?’
Years later, stroking the hair of my 101-year-old grandmother, it felt familiar. The staying with it. The holding. The not turning my back. That dear old tabby had taught me a lot: how to transition from someone you love being here, to being not.
Working on A Thousand Paper Birds, I wanted to write about grief and gratitude simultaneously. The book is based in Kew Gardens where hundreds of commemorative benches remember those who ‘once loved these gardens’. There are sisters ‘who spent many years painting the bluebells’, an ‘American who often walked these paths’ and one that is simply called ‘Mum’s Bench’. The more I noticed these inscriptions, the more I appreciated the transient pleasures – how the dead, too, once celebrated the gleam of sunlight on water, or spent a dawdling hour, contemplating the shapes in the clouds.
I also stumbled upon an interview with an old origami master. Yoshizawa had spent his existence ‘trying to express, with paper, the joy of life and the last thought before a man dies.’ It reminded me of a day when there had been a sudden downpour. My terminally-ill neighbour had walked out with his umbrella and stood in the middle of the road, just taking it all in. How do you say goodbye to that last rainfall? The first crocus? Your child’s face? A Thousand Paper Birds tries to stretch that final moment. If I could press pause between my penultimate heartbeat and my last, what would my thoughts be?
As a writer, you can suspend that moment. There is a vivid intensity when close to death – a true appreciation of the sun on your skin, the light shining on a garden fence. That heightened state is impossible to maintain, but oh, how glorious it is, that gratitude. But then comes death, and the wailing, beating grief – the knowledge that when, at last, you stop crying, life will be irreparably changed. As I say in Paper Birds, ‘The entire world has been rearranged.’
As we face into the vast, gaping mystery of death, we look for signs: a rainbow above a grave, or a robin, perched on a twig, bringing us a message from some place beyond us. As for ghosts, I’m not a great believer. Rationally, they make no sense. But once I was staying in a huge house built in 1856 to celebrate a friend’s birthday. During the evening I went upstairs to reapply lipstick. A woman ahead of me was walking down the corridor in full Victorian dress, carrying a candlestick. She was just going about her business, turning a corner, putting the house to bed. The only difference was that there was something granular about the quality of her presence. It didn’t feel like a haunting, but two timeframes crossing. Perhaps, for her too, I appeared as a ghost, smacking my freshly-painted lips together. As if all moments that have ever occurred are still happening and time is a giant piece of paper, folding and unfolding. In that second, two centuries placed on different corners touched, connected, then separated again. An origami dance.
This blurring of boundaries interests me: the blurring of the boundary between life and death, and the blurring effect of grief on the person left behind – the way you no longer know where you begin or end. Skinless in this unfamiliar world, we feel assailed by the bizarre fact that the world continues, that the sun persists in rising. It takes time to return to the rhythm of living again. As we slowly and painfully heal, the question is how far do we let another person into our lives? How far will we let someone else seep in?
The theme of transformation unites the book – from the evolution of the paper in Chloe’s hands to the characters’ progress from life to death, from grief to life. We are constantly shape-shifting. Shedding. And this is where Kew Gardens comes in: the cycles and the seasons, the constant rebirth and letting go, the yielding. From an early age, I learnt from the book, The Secret Garden, that nature has the power to transform. If you enter a garden and truly let it in, you can leave changed.
I believe that one of literature’s task is to remind us, in the everyday busyness of our lives, that this, right here, is a miracle – to not take the beauty in each other for granted; to wonder, slack-jawed, at the starlit sky; to love, as ferociously as we can; and to cherish this wild, fragile planet. A Thousand Paper Birds may explore grief, but in essence it is a love letter to life.
Thank you to Tor, first guest author of the new season, for this beautiful piece. I’m determined to physically return to Kew Gardens before winter sets in – we had a season ticket almost 20 years ago when our first son was born and reading the novel brought back many happy memories.
IN BRIEF: My View of A Thousand Paper Birds
I never review books without commenting on the writing, and in this case, there’s no better place to start. The restrained lyricism of A Thousand Paper Birds is a perfect match for the themes and setting of this novel and contributes so much to its subtlety and poignancy; delighting in the beauty of the prose was a big part of the enjoyment for me. The descriptions of nature and the seasons are exquisitely evocative and an effective vehicle for the emotional transformations underway. A similar quality is evident in the sensual depictions of sex (I notice, since I write it myself), something I wasn’t particularly expecting and which was handled with admirable honesty and physicality. The characters are engaging, the intriguing links between them intricately woven. This novel is rich in charm, and heart-warming, but the underlying maturity in its examination of grief prevents it from coming across as simply ‘feel good’ or sentimental – it is rooted in something deeper which will affect readers in many different ways.
*POSTSCRIPT*
Next week I’ll be bringing you the Autumn 2017 Sofa Spotlight – a truly eclectic and unpredictable handful of books to look out for!
Udall, Tor: A THOUSAND PAPER BIRDS
Kirkus Reviews. (Aug. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Udall, Tor A THOUSAND PAPER BIRDS Bloomsbury (Adult Fiction) $28.00 10, 3 ISBN: 978-1-4088-7863-7
Five characters--two of whom are ghosts--are linked, in part, by the time they spend at Kew Gardens in London.Udall's debut novel introduces a music teacher, Jonah Wilson, who gave up a recording career so he and his late wife, Audrey, could try to start a family. Readers learn through the remembrances of Jonah and another man named Harry Barclay that Audrey, a linguist, had a series of miscarriages before she died and had been visiting Harry, who cares for plants at Kew. Harry looks after Milly, a little girl who loves the gardens as much as he does, but something is amiss--Harry warns her away from some Kew visitors, and others can't see Harry or Milly. Jonah meets Chloe Adams in the gardens, where she's preparing for an exhibit of her elaborate paper art and origami. Udall folds all of this into a story about grief, pain, and longing but also love, friendship, and desire. Details about Audrey's lost pregnancies and Jonah's life as a widower are vivid, and botanical and historical information about Kew Gardens add interest. The supernatural aspects of the story distract from rather than enhance it, though. Some of the prose is a bit overwrought, as in this passage about Jonah on a sleepless night: "He lumbers from room to room, switching on lights, wearing only a T-shirt. His lower half is naked, as vulnerable as a child's." The big reveals about what happened to Audrey, who Harry and Milly are, and what will become of Jonah and Chloe come quickly one after the other, lending a slightly rushed feel to the end of the book, although there is room for readers to come to their own conclusions. A quirky debut novel, heartfelt in its portrayal of human emotions, pleasantly surprising, but slightly overdone.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Udall, Tor: A THOUSAND PAPER BIRDS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500365028/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f3381073. Accessed 12 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500365028
A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall review – magical realism in Kew Gardens
A debut novel that’s both heartbreaking and uplifting in its exploration of loss
Ben East
Sun 30 Jul 2017 12.00 BST Last modified on Wed 21 Mar 2018 23.50 GMT
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‘Masterful’: Tor Udall
‘Masterful’: Tor Udall.
Jonah stands in his empty flat. The silence stretches painfully – his wife has died suddenly in strange circumstances and he’s “unmoored in a place that should feel like home”. Jonah retreats Kew Gardens where he seeks solace in retracing the walks he took with his wife. There he finds a cast of characters – some vividly real such as artist Chloe, who makes the origami birds of the title, some achingly not so – who, over the course of a year, help and hinder his chances of processing his grief.
Tor Udall’s debut novel is a masterful exploration of love, loss and the healing power of the natural world. Like Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, it uses fable, mystery and a poetic sensibility to get at the nub of loss, and although its magical realist conceit leaves a few unanswered questions, Jonah and Chloe are so convincing it barely matters. Heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure, it’s a love letter to a garden and a paean to all kinds of imperfect love.
• A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall is published by Bloomsbury (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.44 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
A Thousand Paper Birds review: Tor Udall and the power of drama in the gardens
By Kerryn Goldsworthy—13 October 2017 12:39pm
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A Thousand Paper Birds
Tor Udall
A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall reflects the author's love of London's Kew Gardens.
A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall reflects the author's love of London's Kew Gardens.
Photo: Supplied
Bloomsbury, $27.99
Jonah has lost his wife Audrey in a car crash and spends a great deal of time in London's Kew Gardens, which she loved, working through his grief. There he meets a young artist called Chloe, another unhappy person, who has mastered the art of origami and makes beautiful paper birds. Other characters woven into this plot are an elderly man called Harry and a little girl called Milly, neither of whom is what they seem. Gradually we learn that the fates of these characters all became intertwined at a particular moment in the gardens. Tor Udall's love for this place comes through clearly and it's a rich and effective setting for the drama of her story. She manages the slow reveal very well, and her writing is lovely, but whether readers embrace this book will depend on their tolerance for fanciful departures from realism.
A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall
JUN 23
Posted by thelastword1962
Cover.jpg
A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall
Just once in a while a book will land on my door mat for review and I know this is going to be something rather special. The wonderful A Thousand Paper Birds out now by Bloomsbury is the debut novel by Tor Udall. This is a novel that is to be cherished like a very rare plant specimen to hold and to cherish time and time again. Just look at the cover design it is a thing of real beauty. Then you start reading the book itself. Your heart is stolen.
Author
A Thousand Paper Birds is a novel that is incredibly moving and poignant. It explores love and grief as well as the beauty that nature can only bring. There is a very special place that is close to my heart and never did I believe that one day a novel would be written with Kew Gardens at its very heart. This is not just a book it is the purest of love songs.
Loss is incredibly painful and so very personal and for Jonah he cannot let go and pain is beyond anything imaginable his wife, his love and best friend Audrey died suddenly leaving just memories. For Jonah and Audrey together they shared a love and friendship and also a love of Kew Gardens, now Jonah is alone with the memories of their visits. He is trying to come to terms with the loss of his wife and trying to understand the world around him and of his own life which now feels empty. There is a void in his life or maybe he thinks that his own life now seems pointless without Audrey.
As Jonah retraces their steps they took together through the gardens the reader is introduced to a number of Characters, all play a part in Jonah’s life and the life of Kew Gardens from the intrepid and always busy head gardener, there is Chloe the artist that is just a bit different and there in the back of Chloe’s memories is on an incident within the gardens that will not go away and there is Milly the child who loves to smile and loves life and the gardens who finds beauty around every corner. What happened to Audrey is so tragic and sudden, one minute there, and then she was never to come home never again to be held by Jonah.
Through the pages of Audrey’s diary, we get to know her so much better which just adds to the poignancy of the story. So has Jonah ever read the pages of her diary or would it be just too painful? The raw emotion pouring out of this beautiful book just left my heart aching. At times I had to put the book down just to think about what I was reading and to compose myself.
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There is so much to love within the pages of this story that at times it leaves you breathless in the Udall’s writing. This is poetic writing at its best. Tor Udall has managed to bring the majestic beauty of Kew Gardens and weave the most beautiful of stories through it. Through a window given to you by the writer you enter people’s lives and see how they are linked together. It is at times so very raw yet at the same time compelling. You never want to reach the last page as with the very best books you never want them to end. So the window closes but does it really? The gardens are real and now this very special place for me will now be just that more precious. This is a book for all the seasons a book that will not leave you in a hurry and you will not forget it. A Thousand Paper Birds is without doubt my book of 2017. Delighted to HIGHLY RECOMMEND.
336 Pages.
Thank you to Philippa Cotton for the advanced review copy of A Thousand Paper Birds.
A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall is published by Bloomsbury and is available through Waterstones, Amazon and all good bookshops.