Feather Man

When I first read Rhyll McMaster's novel Feather Man, it put me in mind of books like An Angel At My Table (and yes, I know that isn't a novel..). Feather Man sneaked under my skin and stayed there. It's a book that I think will grow slowly in people's affection and awareness, and also one that has significant potential for adaptation for Film & TV. It's a book I am re-presenting in the run-up to Frankfurt this year.

Feather Man is about a young girl's search for the perfect relationship and the portrait of a woman coming to terms with the realities of the world - Isabel Archer (Portrait of a Lady) in an Australian setting.

Sooky is starved of affection until she finds Lionel, the grandfatherly man next door. But he is a child predator who sends her headlong on a path where she looks to all the wrong men for the love she craves - Peter, the footy-playing hero, who wants to set her in the gelatine of the conforming 60s, and Redmond, the self-serving lover who dumps her when she challenges his power. It is when she meets Paul, the urbane London art dealer, that her life and her art start to look like they might come together - but will she have the courage to reclaim her identity?

Full of haunting imagery and evocative snatches of song from the 60s, the story is erotic and passionate. Sooky is an original. Difficult, flawed, but very much alive, she sees the world in a completely idiosyncratic and unconventional way - she is a disturbingly real character and her story is one that sticks to the bones.

Rhyll McMaster is one of Australia's best regarded poets and Feather Man is her first novel. See more about her at
www.rhyllmcmaster.com.

She's had fabulous reviews too ...

‘Rhyll McMaster’s debut novel is simultaneously a portrait of an artist, an examination of the emotional alchemy from which art is born and a coming-of-age tale. The juxtaposition of mystery and harsh grit lends the book a compelling friction. Finally, it is the sheer distance from the identity she built around place and past…that enables Sooky to locate herself outside of the cramped house the featherman built for her.’
Helen Oyeyemi, author of The Icarus Girl, New Statesman

‘Feather Man is at once both unflinching and poetic. McMaster’s unique perspective illuminates the hidden corners of the lives she portrays.’
Catherine O’Flynn, author of What Was Lost.

‘I think Feather Man is quite wonderful. Beautifully written. Engrossing and utterly involving and it does something new.’
Maureen Freely, author of Enlightenment.