{"product_id":"life-with-birds-by-bronwyn-rennex-9780645247978","title":"Life with Birds","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA luminous account of largely unrecognised experiences in the aftermath of war.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is not a war story about heroism or healing trauma, but an attempt to fill the gaps in a family story in the wake of the Vietnam War and re-animate a father never really known.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLife with Birds\u003c\/em\u003e invests in the small scale, the domestic, and the ordinary as an overlooked part of Australian military history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBronwyn Rennex has used whatever materials she could find in order to attempt to retrieve her father—family stories, love letters, legal documents, birds—and the gaps between these documents form perhaps the most important part of this story, a failure that describes a loss. Rather than describing her mother's grief at her father's death, Rennex uses love letters and her mother's written claim for a war widow's pension to map the shape of her mother's love and loss.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTold in fragments and mixing speculation, imagination, and guesswork, the narrative is personal, angry, political, and also funny, balancing a desire for some form of testimony with a commitment to questioning how we talk about war.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a poignant and compelling account of largely unrecognised experiences in the aftermath of war.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46338523562220,"sku":"9780645247978","price":34.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/19925353482417.jpg?v=1743733490","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/life-with-birds-by-bronwyn-rennex-9780645247978","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}