He has a timid little whippet to herd them, fully aware that many farmers would laugh at him for it. He’s firm but affectionate with them, imagining them to be a ‘troupe’ of stars on tour and he their manager.
It opens with a list of Harry’s cows’ names. Everyone quietly gets on with their lives which are mostly mundane with the occasional event rippling through, much like many of our own. He lives next door to Betty and her two children, Michael and Little Hazel.
Set in a small Australian settlement in the 50s, Mateship with Birds is a tender portrayal of Harry, a dairy farmer who’s lived alone since his wife left him many years ago, fed up with their uneventful life. Well, to me, anyway, but you have been warned. There is one aberrant incident but it hardly comes as a surprise and is treated with such gentle black humour as to be inoffensive. I was too busy to check it out but now that I’ve read the book I’m mystified. I only mention it as the reviewer I commissioned to write about it when it came out in hardback emailed me to say that it was all too much for her. Not to beat about the bush – there’s a lot of sex in Carrie Tiffany’s novel and most of it not ornithological.
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