A bird of prey that screeches as it makes its kill.
This is The Kestrel.
A book that changed my life when I was seventeen.
I've read a lot of books that paved the way for how I later came to think, slowly shifting things in my head so that ideas would have room to form. I've also read a lot of books that seemed to express my innermost cries. I've read a lot of books that asked me questions I didn't know the answer to and kept up well into the night contemplating them. The Kestrel is the only book I can remember that ripped into my head, pulled out things I thought I knew, and rearranged them behind my eyes.
This was at least partially because the first time I read it I was seventeen and ready for the inevitable changes in the mind that come with maturity but The Kestrel is also a very powerful anti-war story; brutal but also innocent in the way only a story about the young and inexperienced can be. I must have re-read the trilogy at least three times and every time I notice another master stroke in Lloyd Alexander's storytelling. It's a beautiful book. One that I believe deserved more acclaim that it received for its depth and honest depiction of the human instincts for survival.
I was not familiar with the Krestel, it looks a little like an Osprey I think, but I am no bird expert #a2zchallenge ☮Peace ☮ ღ ONE ℒℴνℯ ღ ☼ Light ☼ visiting from http://4covert2overt.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteThank you for the visit
DeleteI read a lot of books as a child, so it's hard to say which formed the way I think. I never read The Kestral, though. I was too busy reading Stephen King and romance novels when I was young!
ReplyDeleteOne day I will get around to reading a Stephen King novel.
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