FLAMINGO: Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022, an exquisite novel of kindness and hope

I’m a big fan of the author’s writing so I was eagerly awaiting Flamingo. What a lovely few weeks my first read was (I tried to make the book last!). Rachel Elliott again creates a world of characters you feel you know and care about. There is kindness, humour and the humanity of mistakes in them. How we are connected to and need others, the importance of attachment, flows through this book. It unfolds, revealing secrets and truths of the characters, in a way that had me gripped. The writing is superb and often stopped me in my tracks to reread a passage. It was a lovely place to be for a while.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I liked her characters and the way she developed them.

A wonderfully written book. Couldn’t put it down loved all the characters. Thought provoking funny sad but so very real

I loved this book- the writing is beautiful, it’s emotive and the attention to connections, humanity and nature is wonderful. Thank you

An easy-to-read story which examines what makes a family – 3 StarsTold over two central time periods, this is certainly a novel that grabs one’s attention from the start. In the 1980’s Daniel (then five-years-old) and his mother lived next door to Sherry and her family, and the two families soon formed a very close bond. As the story unfolds though, it becomes clear that the nature of the relationship between the families changes dramatically. Thirty years on, and now homeless, Daniel is drawn back to Sherry and Leslie’s home to seek the comfort and security he felt as a child.The writing style makes this easy-to-read although the themes in this novel aren’t always as comfortable to deal with. It’s a book that examines what makes a family unit, and explores many topics including: Love, self-identity, and acceptance. I’m not sure that I’d agree with other reviewers that this book is entirely about kindness; certainly, there are plenty of positives to this tale, but there was, I felt, always something rather sinister about Sherry and Leslie. Maybe the ending is intended as a happy one, but I was left wondering if history was about to repeat itself.Overall: An interesting tale of two families, the consequences and the outcome of their ties.