An Austrian housewife sits in her loft intent on a strange project: to draw a bird that knows
it is not alone. The loft is a retreat where she can work on her drawing. It is also a retreat
from her dull and dissatisfied husband a man who sighs unhappily even when she sneezes. Their
grown-up children are living independent lives and the house is very quiet. Her dreams are
filled with domestic drudgery. Then one day a package arrives containing extracts from the
narrator's diary written twenty years before. Back then she had been sent away to a remote
cottage in a bid to 'cure' her from unexplained sudden deafness. More mysterious packages
containing old diary entries arrive. Who is sending them? And what did happened all those years
ago in the forest?'A thrilling novel... What gives this book its tremendous power? First the
voice is charming with a skittish beauty throughout... But there is also disarming honesty
and a lack of vanity which appeals as only truth can' John Self GuardianTRANSLATED BY AMANDA
PRANTERA
