Bird Spotting in a Small Town

‘My feet are itching to walk to the shore, to leave the kids again, to sit with the birds and pretend none of this has happened.’

In an isolated town on the North Norfolk coast, Fran's life is unravelling. As she fills her days cleaning the caravan park she owns, she is preoccupied by worry—about the behaviour of her son, the growing absence of her husband, and the strained relationship with her sister. Her one source of solace is slipping out to the beach early in the morning to watch the birds.

Small-town tension simmers when a new teacher starts at the local school and a Romany community settle in the field adjoining Fran's caravan park. From the distance of his caravan, seventy-year-old Tad quietly watches the townspeople—mainly, Fran's family.

When the schoolteacher and Fran's brother-in-law both go missing on the same night, accusations fly. Yet all Fran can seem to care about is the birds.

An eerie and unsettling novel, Bird Spotting in a Small Town perfectly encapsulates the intensity of rural claustrophobia when you don't know who you can trust.