How to Make a Bird (Martine Murray, Bolinda, $44.95 cd, ISBN 1740948351, February) ****

Readers familiar with Martine Murray’s writing will know this story of Mannie, a slightly eccentric 17-year-old, who sets off on a bicycle from her home in country Victoria, bound for Paris. As the story unravels, the reason behind Mannie’s secret early-morning flight from home and the strangeness of her behaviour are revealed. Murray’s writing style tends to the dramatic and the vivid and will not be to everyone’s taste, but I think it is these qualities that are part of what make this translation from text to audio so successful. The imagery-laden text gives narrator Mikaela Martin lots of material to work with, in order to really bring the story to life. An early scene of a pair of abandoned wooden eagle wings is given real impact by the combination of Murray’s words and Martin’s voice. While the unabridged audio version of the novel weighs in at just over seven hours, making it a pretty serious time commitment, I can imagine this book being a beautiful listen for a long car trip or similar—provided the driver didn’t become so distracted by the powerful aural visuals that they forgot to watch the road!

Eliza Metcalfe

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2005, Thorpe-Bowker