Awards

• Winner of Michael Gifkins Prize 2024 (New Zealand)

Overview

Reggie was still missing after five days, and Gladys Harris was saying things about him that quivered in my mind, which now, four years later, I see as being that opening sentence leading me to this burden of what happened to Reggie Kingsley. In the harbour city of New Plymouth in the 1960s there’s a fizz of seedy sexuality beneath a veneer of respectability. Godfrey’s world is the Balmoral Hotel his parents own, where visiting sailors drink and local fringe-dwellers congregate. When Reggie, the openly gay barman, goes missing Godfrey senses something sinister. There’s a prevailing attitude of inevitability. Godfrey doesn’t get it, but he’s hungry to understand. Guided by his daytime-television and pulp-fiction detective heroes and a very active imagination, he attempts to solve the mystery—in the process stumbling into his own sexual adventures and discovering a new-found power in a perplexing adult world. The Birds Began to Sing delves into a world of shadows, nods and unspoken understandings with a warmth and humour that make this novel a delight.

Full Product Details

9781923058439

Table of Contents

Reviews

‘A novel filled with humanity, warmth and humour.’ * Lloyd Jones *

‘A novel filled with humanity, warmth and humour.’ * Lloyd Jones * ‘Heartbreaking, hilarious and boldly written. A bona fide page-turner about the importance of living your own truth.’ * Nigel Featherstone * ‘A pitch-perfect evocation of a bygone era…has a gentle humour, but it conveys powerful truths.’ * NZ Listener * ‘Buchanan has managed to make the town and its characters very realistic of the 60s. There are lots of unspoken understandings, warmth and humour spread throughout the story, but it’s also sprinkled with an underlying sadness of lost innocence.’ * NZ Booklovers *

Author Information

Jeffrey Buchanan has written five novels concerned primarily with LGBTQI+ issues, Sucking Feijoas being his first. He worked in international development for thirty years and lives with his husband on a remote stretch of beach in North Canterbury in New Zealand’s South Island.

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