Mateship with Birds has certain similarities.The book is almost under-written. And as to the odd title, it is not about mateship at all it's about sex and it might just be the sweetest book about sex you will ever read.Carrie Tiffany's prize-winning debut novel, Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living (2003), was set in the Victorian countryside in 1933 and told of an unlikely relationship. The text behind the picture is neither exuberant, droll nor dashing but it is equally seductive. Exuberant, droll, dashing, the cover of Mateship with Birds is a seduction.

Helen Elliott in 'The Sydney Morning Herald': 'Always, always judge a book by its cover. On one small farm in a vast, ancient landscape, a collection of misfits question the nature of what a family can be.

It is a hymn to the rhythm of country life - to vicious birds, virginal cows, adored dogs and ill-used sheep. Mateship with Birds is a novel about young lust and mature love. But when Harry decides to teach Michael about the opposite sex, perilous boundaries are crossed. Betty is pleased that her son, Michael, wants to spend time with the gentle farmer next door. Ardent, hard-working Betty has escaped to the country with her two fatherless children. As Harry watches the birds, his next door neighbour has her own set of binoculars trained on him. Harry observes the kookaburras through a year of feast, famine, birth, death, war, romance and song. On the outskirts of an Australian country town in the 1950s, a lonely farmer trains his binoculars on a family of kookaburras that roost in a tree near his house.

Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany