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Man with a Seagull on His Head
When office drone Ray Eccles is struck on the head by a dying seagull on a hot summer beach, he awakens compelled to obsessively paint the unknown woman he saw at the moment of impact. Discovered by an eccentric and powerful couple, Ray's paintings suddenly light the art world on fire. Meanwhile, the unknown woman, observing from afar, begins to wonder if this stranger is the only person who has ever really seen her.
Beautiful, elegant, quietly profound, Harriet Paige's Man with a Seagull on His Head captures the small, shared moments that connect disparate lives and create artistry out of the everyday.
Beautiful, elegant, quietly profound, Harriet Paige's Man with a Seagull on His Head captures the small, shared moments that connect disparate lives and create artistry out of the everyday.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
35 people are currently reading
1542 people want to read
About the author
Harriet Paige
1 book10 followersHarriet Paige was born in 1979 and grew up in Devon, in the south west of England. She studied English and American Literature at the University of Warwick and returned in 2004 to do an MA in Writing. After completing the program she continued to develop her writing alongside working as an interiors journalist and bringing up her three children. Man With a Seagull on His Head is her debut novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews
June 14, 2023
“Man With a Seagull on His Head” is literary perfection. Author Harriet Page communicates, through prose, undefined human feeling. I found this story to be incredibly melancholy. Perhaps it’s because from the title, I thought it would be a fun little read. It’s not. All the characters are sad. This is a difficult novel to rate because the literary element is clean 5 stars. The story is sad, sad, sad.
December 6, 2018
Man with a Seagull on His Head by Harriet Paige
This is a great book.
A great big book in a small beautifully designed taut 200 pages. And I have no idea what to say to convey why it is great or even how.
I had so many associations while reading: from our human longing to be seen, to our inability to see and how distorted anything becomes by being seen through the projections and expectations of the seers, to how more often than not we get stuck in a box and are unable to move on, to the longing to fly and experience the numinous that we so cruelly only glimpse, to the magic of a clunk on the head . . . They're all—these associations—like myriad buttons pushed in such a random poking that expressing it makes me feel ajumble, and even if I could be articulate, it would not convey the brilliance offered by this book.
I could compare its ability to move through time to John Williams's equally powerful Stoner. I could praise the crystalline writing and evocation of a seaside London suburb by comparing it to Maggie O'Farrell's work, but that wouldn't be accurate.
Harriet Paige is Harriet Paige, and her 39-year-old visage in an author's photo must hide many ancient souls who have poured through her to birth this book.
I could speculate about the perfection of the writing—whether she actually writes so perfectly and daringly or whether a brilliant invisible editor helped her squeeze every bit of excess out to expose pure gold.
But it's most accurate to simply say: This is a great book.
This is a great book.
A great big book in a small beautifully designed taut 200 pages. And I have no idea what to say to convey why it is great or even how.
I had so many associations while reading: from our human longing to be seen, to our inability to see and how distorted anything becomes by being seen through the projections and expectations of the seers, to how more often than not we get stuck in a box and are unable to move on, to the longing to fly and experience the numinous that we so cruelly only glimpse, to the magic of a clunk on the head . . . They're all—these associations—like myriad buttons pushed in such a random poking that expressing it makes me feel ajumble, and even if I could be articulate, it would not convey the brilliance offered by this book.
I could compare its ability to move through time to John Williams's equally powerful Stoner. I could praise the crystalline writing and evocation of a seaside London suburb by comparing it to Maggie O'Farrell's work, but that wouldn't be accurate.
Harriet Paige is Harriet Paige, and her 39-year-old visage in an author's photo must hide many ancient souls who have poured through her to birth this book.
I could speculate about the perfection of the writing—whether she actually writes so perfectly and daringly or whether a brilliant invisible editor helped her squeeze every bit of excess out to expose pure gold.
But it's most accurate to simply say: This is a great book.
June 24, 2019
"Man with a Seagull on His Head" is literary fiction about loneliness, connection, obsession, seeing and wanting to be seen. Ray Eccles, a lonely photocopy machine operator, is walking along a beach at Southend-on-Sea in 1976. It's his 40th birthday, and he feels that he is "past the age when something interesting was likely to happen to him." A falling seagull hits his head just at the moment when he is gazing at Jennifer Mulholland walking by. The traumatic injury leaves him with an obsession to paint portraits of the woman constantly, covering all the walls of his house. When he runs out of paint he uses food or body fluids to create his paintings. Ray is discovered by a George and Grace Zoob, a couple who collect Outsider Art.
The book alternates among the lives of Ray, his unknown muse Jennifer, and the Zoobs. It's an unusual book that has absurd moments, as well as beautifully written observations about the yearning to connect to others. Harriet Paige's debut novel is a little gem.
The book alternates among the lives of Ray, his unknown muse Jennifer, and the Zoobs. It's an unusual book that has absurd moments, as well as beautifully written observations about the yearning to connect to others. Harriet Paige's debut novel is a little gem.
April 18, 2018
He’s an artist. An outsider artist. Do you know what that means? …. They’re artists who don’t see themselves as artists. Untrained and urged to create by something other than a desire to exhibit or achieve recognition. Often they’re loonies, but [Ray] isn’t. He was just an ordinary guy, worked in an office, and then for some reason became obsessed with this woman he saw on the beach.
Bluemoose Books is an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, which describes itself as a “‘family’ of readers and writers, passionate about the written word and stories, [who] delight in finding great new talent.”
This book is Harriet Page’s debut novel and was shortlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize in 2017, but I have to confess it was a disappointment for me.
The book is based around Ray Eccles – who up to 1976 and the death of his mother is working as the photocopier for Southend District Council. In the first chapter Ray is described as a character a little like Eleanor Oliphant – and in fact I was reminded of the IT colleague that Eleanor befriends – also called Ray of course. However, Ray is struck on the head by a seagull while looking at a woman and thereafter obsessively paints her portrait on any surface available (initially the walls of his bungalow) with any material to hand (including foodstuffs and bodily fluids), becoming 12 years later (when the story resumes – the missing part filled in by a lengthy newspaper article – a shortcut in exposition to which the author reverts) a well known conceptual artist due to his discovery by two promotors of Outsider Art.
Other characters over time include: the married couple of art promoters; their daughter; the lady who Ray painted, and her stereotyped Italian in-laws; the local reporter who first found out about the seagull and the national journalist who writes the lengthy article and later tracks down the woman; a stereotyped predatory portrait painter; a pigeon that Ray befriends when another knock on the head removes his obsession.
The two key themes of the book appear to be:
Modern art – at times the book reads like a parody/satire of the absurdity of modern art (I enjoyed a line referring to Ray’s painting using the contents of tin cans, saying that you cannot make a career out of soup – which I took to be a Warhol joke) but then ends with what seems like a serious attempt to engage with what Ray was capturing in his pictures;
Loneliness/unfulfilled potential – but the rather rotating cast of characters, few of whom the author really allows the reader to engage with (we know almost nothing of Ray’s mind until after his second knock for example) dampened this aspect for me.
November 30, 2018
I loved this novel. Beautifully poetic and absurd. A man is struck on the head by a dying seagull at the same time he meets the gaze of a woman. From that moment on he's possessed by the need to paint her over and over again. Many passages in this novel reminded me of the writings of Virginia Woolf. A story about love, art, and the mysterious ways in which we are connected and disconnected.
September 17, 2017
“She’d sat in front of him for three weeks and he hadn’t seen her. How odd to discover one didn’t exist.”
Man With A Seagull On His Head, by Harriet Paige, opens in the summer of 1976 when council worker Ray Eccles walks to his local beach where he suffers a blow to the head from a falling seagull. The moment is witnessed by Jennifer Mulholland, a shop assistant at a nearby department store who happens to be by the shore. No words are exchanged but this brief encounter, the unexpected vision of an unknown woman as he is felled, is seared onto Ray’s subconscious. The previously ordinary middle aged man living alone, who had never thought to create art, returns home to spend every waking moment trying to paint the woman on every surface available and with whatever substances come to hand.
Ten years later Ray Eccles is acclaimed by the art world. Now living in London he has been adopted by Grace and George Zoob, collectors with a penchant for the experimental. Ray is still painting his woman and nobody, including him, knows who she is. An interview in a national newspaper alerts Jennifer to her unasked for role as Ray’s muse.
Alternative chapters allow the reader to catch up with the direction Jennifer’s life has taken. Still living in her small Essex town she no longer lives in a bedsit but has become part of a wider family. She observes the decisions people around her have made and how these have changed the trajectories of their lives. Few have ended up where they expected.
“she realised that she had no true friends in the world and that there was no one at all who understood anything about who she was.”
Themes of loneliness and the small deaths of personal dreams pervade. There is an undercurrent of quiet desperation. Grace Zoob struggles with her need to be acknowledged in a world that has no need for her individual existence. Eventually she takes out her frustrations on Ray.
The depiction of the art world is amusing but it is the deftly drawn characters and their private concerns that add impressive depth to this engaging story. It is piercing in its insights, poignant yet somehow uplifting. Life may at times appear to have no purpose yet still people find ways to live.
“sometimes you just had to put one foot in front of the other and tell yourself that you’d have a nice cup of tea when you got home.”
Quirky in places but always accessible this is existentialism wrapped into an entertaining tale. A book that I will now be eagerly recommending – a vividly drawn, satisfying read.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Bluemoose.
Man With A Seagull On His Head, by Harriet Paige, opens in the summer of 1976 when council worker Ray Eccles walks to his local beach where he suffers a blow to the head from a falling seagull. The moment is witnessed by Jennifer Mulholland, a shop assistant at a nearby department store who happens to be by the shore. No words are exchanged but this brief encounter, the unexpected vision of an unknown woman as he is felled, is seared onto Ray’s subconscious. The previously ordinary middle aged man living alone, who had never thought to create art, returns home to spend every waking moment trying to paint the woman on every surface available and with whatever substances come to hand.
Ten years later Ray Eccles is acclaimed by the art world. Now living in London he has been adopted by Grace and George Zoob, collectors with a penchant for the experimental. Ray is still painting his woman and nobody, including him, knows who she is. An interview in a national newspaper alerts Jennifer to her unasked for role as Ray’s muse.
Alternative chapters allow the reader to catch up with the direction Jennifer’s life has taken. Still living in her small Essex town she no longer lives in a bedsit but has become part of a wider family. She observes the decisions people around her have made and how these have changed the trajectories of their lives. Few have ended up where they expected.
“she realised that she had no true friends in the world and that there was no one at all who understood anything about who she was.”
Themes of loneliness and the small deaths of personal dreams pervade. There is an undercurrent of quiet desperation. Grace Zoob struggles with her need to be acknowledged in a world that has no need for her individual existence. Eventually she takes out her frustrations on Ray.
The depiction of the art world is amusing but it is the deftly drawn characters and their private concerns that add impressive depth to this engaging story. It is piercing in its insights, poignant yet somehow uplifting. Life may at times appear to have no purpose yet still people find ways to live.
“sometimes you just had to put one foot in front of the other and tell yourself that you’d have a nice cup of tea when you got home.”
Quirky in places but always accessible this is existentialism wrapped into an entertaining tale. A book that I will now be eagerly recommending – a vividly drawn, satisfying read.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Bluemoose.
November 29, 2017
My favorite book of the year - art and love and loss in elegiac prose.
November 5, 2018
Man With A Seagull On His Head begins in the summer of 1976 Ray Eccles who may or may not have just lost his job at Southend on Sea council as a photocopier, he is not sure. As he walks to his local beach he is struck on the head by a falling, dead seagull. The moment is witnessed by Jennifer Mulholland, a shop assistant at a nearby department store who happens to be by the shore. The two do not speak or even meet and Jennifer leaves the scene soon after. A seemingly uneventful moment in the life of Jennifer other than something to talk to her colleagues at work the next day about has a profound effect on the life of Ray.
The unexpected vision of an unknown woman as he is felled, is burned onto Ray’s subconscious and he is unable to shake the vision of this blond haired woman standing on the edge of the sea. This middle aged man living alone, who had never thought to create art, returns home to spend every waking moment trying to paint the woman and with no paints in the house uses food and bodily fluids to paint his vision across every surface of his bungalow.
The local news story of "Man struck by falling Seagull paints his bungalow walls with soup" soon attracts the interest of art dealer George Zoob.
Ten years later Ray Eccles is acclaimed by the art world, which he finds confusing. Now living in London he has been adopted by George and his wife Grace, collectors with a penchant for the experimental both in terms of art and in relationships. Ray is still painting Jennifer and just Jennifer and nobody, including him, knows who she is.
Alternative chapters allow the reader to catch up with the direction Jennifer’s life has taken. Still living in Essex she no longer lives in a bedsit but has become part of a wider family. She runs her own clothing shop and seems to do a roaring trade in alternations for her extended Italian in laws. Her life is not what she had expected it would be and she muses on being Ray Eccles muse, a fact she is alerted to by a expose in a national newspaper about a exhibition of Ray's work. Her face on posters, mugs and postcards and nobody knows who she is.
Themes of loneliness and the death of personal dreams a repeated throughout the novel. There is an undercurrent of quiet desperation. Grace Zoob struggles with her need to be acknowledged in a world that has no need for her individual existence while her husband sinks further into depression. Eventually she takes out her frustrations on Ray whom she encourages him to paint her picture and as always all he can paint is the same scene with Jennifer , a woman he has never met let alone spoken to. When Ray leaves, disappears really from the Zoob's lives they do not look for him, as if he was never there. Moving on to the next thing.
My overall feelings were of sadness both for Jennifer and most of all for Ray. They both struggled with an existentialist doubt. Ray as an artist for reasons that he doesn't understand and at the conclusion of the novel, a time of his life he can barely recall when every aspect of his life is picked over and examined. Jennifer as the face of Eccle's artwork but that nobody truly knows her and she is very much alone.
There were touches of humour, maybe not humour but touches I found amusing. Ray obviously has a affinity with birds, that I also found quite moving and when the bungalow is shown as a work of art in itself the sound of seagulls is played in an unconscious nod to the source of this art.
A good novel that looks at the idea of fate and how it can shape someones whole life. If the seagull had fallen and there was no Jennifer would Ray have been compelled to paint the landscape ? If Jennifer hadn't witnessed the seagull fall would anyone have known about it and the bungalow art ?
If the seagull event had been filmed or even witnessed by a crowd could this be considered as performance art? At the very least it could have been shown on You've Been Framed type of TV show.
Nobody, however seemed concerned for the seagull who lost it's life in the cause of art.
The unexpected vision of an unknown woman as he is felled, is burned onto Ray’s subconscious and he is unable to shake the vision of this blond haired woman standing on the edge of the sea. This middle aged man living alone, who had never thought to create art, returns home to spend every waking moment trying to paint the woman and with no paints in the house uses food and bodily fluids to paint his vision across every surface of his bungalow.
The local news story of "Man struck by falling Seagull paints his bungalow walls with soup" soon attracts the interest of art dealer George Zoob.
Ten years later Ray Eccles is acclaimed by the art world, which he finds confusing. Now living in London he has been adopted by George and his wife Grace, collectors with a penchant for the experimental both in terms of art and in relationships. Ray is still painting Jennifer and just Jennifer and nobody, including him, knows who she is.
Alternative chapters allow the reader to catch up with the direction Jennifer’s life has taken. Still living in Essex she no longer lives in a bedsit but has become part of a wider family. She runs her own clothing shop and seems to do a roaring trade in alternations for her extended Italian in laws. Her life is not what she had expected it would be and she muses on being Ray Eccles muse, a fact she is alerted to by a expose in a national newspaper about a exhibition of Ray's work. Her face on posters, mugs and postcards and nobody knows who she is.
Themes of loneliness and the death of personal dreams a repeated throughout the novel. There is an undercurrent of quiet desperation. Grace Zoob struggles with her need to be acknowledged in a world that has no need for her individual existence while her husband sinks further into depression. Eventually she takes out her frustrations on Ray whom she encourages him to paint her picture and as always all he can paint is the same scene with Jennifer , a woman he has never met let alone spoken to. When Ray leaves, disappears really from the Zoob's lives they do not look for him, as if he was never there. Moving on to the next thing.
My overall feelings were of sadness both for Jennifer and most of all for Ray. They both struggled with an existentialist doubt. Ray as an artist for reasons that he doesn't understand and at the conclusion of the novel, a time of his life he can barely recall when every aspect of his life is picked over and examined. Jennifer as the face of Eccle's artwork but that nobody truly knows her and she is very much alone.
There were touches of humour, maybe not humour but touches I found amusing. Ray obviously has a affinity with birds, that I also found quite moving and when the bungalow is shown as a work of art in itself the sound of seagulls is played in an unconscious nod to the source of this art.
A good novel that looks at the idea of fate and how it can shape someones whole life. If the seagull had fallen and there was no Jennifer would Ray have been compelled to paint the landscape ? If Jennifer hadn't witnessed the seagull fall would anyone have known about it and the bungalow art ?
If the seagull event had been filmed or even witnessed by a crowd could this be considered as performance art? At the very least it could have been shown on You've Been Framed type of TV show.
Nobody, however seemed concerned for the seagull who lost it's life in the cause of art.
April 5, 2020
An experience with a seagull sets into motion the obsessive creations of the accidental artist, Ray Eccles. It's a tender, original and eccentric meditation on life and art. At times, I was reminded of Virginia Woolf's style because as it dies in much of her writing ordinary life becomes centre stage in this wonderful short novel as well.
March 29, 2018
The best thing about this book is its title and, from that point onwards, it rapidly deteriorates until - as the readers - we are left puzzled and befuddled.
While I am rarely inclined to judge a book by its cover, I am prone to judging them by their titles and this one fails to live up to the expectations. I am still not sure why and how events happened as they did or what the significance of the event was.
Unfortunately, I am unable to see it as a great discussion on art and loneliness as it is heralded by some other readers. Such issues are touched upon rapidly to the degree of trivialisation, which is the worst kind of negligence in my opinion.
It ain't no "Girl with a Pearl Earring", or "Blindness", or "Dorian Gray", and please do yourself a favour and skip to the next book on your list before it's too late.
While I am rarely inclined to judge a book by its cover, I am prone to judging them by their titles and this one fails to live up to the expectations. I am still not sure why and how events happened as they did or what the significance of the event was.
Unfortunately, I am unable to see it as a great discussion on art and loneliness as it is heralded by some other readers. Such issues are touched upon rapidly to the degree of trivialisation, which is the worst kind of negligence in my opinion.
It ain't no "Girl with a Pearl Earring", or "Blindness", or "Dorian Gray", and please do yourself a favour and skip to the next book on your list before it's too late.
March 29, 2019
I don't know how my local library stumbled upon this little gem of a novel, but kudos to them. I picked this up based on title alone and brought it home because I thought its unusual premise and slim 200 pages might break me out of my reading slump. Kudos to me.
I really enjoyed this unusual look at our shared desired to be seen, to make a mark, to be lifted out of the ordinary. What a clever choice to set that examination within the art world - it felt just right. My complaint that I didn't ever really come to know the characters deeply is also my compliment to the author, because, I believe that was her deliberate choice. How many of us are ever really known?
A great way to spend a few hours.
I really enjoyed this unusual look at our shared desired to be seen, to make a mark, to be lifted out of the ordinary. What a clever choice to set that examination within the art world - it felt just right. My complaint that I didn't ever really come to know the characters deeply is also my compliment to the author, because, I believe that was her deliberate choice. How many of us are ever really known?
A great way to spend a few hours.
April 2, 2019
I think it was an interesting premise that just fell a little short for me. I think by the author avoiding predictable outcomes, it left a little to be desired. Not a very satisfying conclusion. But a well written book ...
September 14, 2017
How on earth has this novel been nominated for Not The Booker Prize?
The title is a bit of a giveaway - there is no such thing as "a seagull" for a start. But it is the silliness of it that makes the title gimmicky. I think that applies to the whole novel. It is silly. Worse, it is trivial. Throughout the novel, Paige manages to tell the reader lots but shows very little. What we are shown is quite amusing - Grace Zoob sitting for her portrait for hours while Ray Eccles, a star of 'outsider' art, paints the picture he has repeatedly painted: a woman on a beach; Grace visiting Ruby who makes "memory boxes" in her Hackney high rise flat; or Ray Eccles using whatever material he finds to paint with.
However, it is the stereotypical characters that I found most irritating. For example, La Mamma the Italian widow (I've tried to figure out why she's even in the novel); the cute and innocent little girl; or the art dealer who knows little to nothing about art.
The novel raises some questions about art, what it is and how it is created. That's all though, raised in an off hand, incidental kind of way. There are some sensitive ideas about characters who are lonely or mad. Or both.
In the end, I found the novel sketchy, lacking focus and unsatisfying. A bit like this review, really.
The title is a bit of a giveaway - there is no such thing as "a seagull" for a start. But it is the silliness of it that makes the title gimmicky. I think that applies to the whole novel. It is silly. Worse, it is trivial. Throughout the novel, Paige manages to tell the reader lots but shows very little. What we are shown is quite amusing - Grace Zoob sitting for her portrait for hours while Ray Eccles, a star of 'outsider' art, paints the picture he has repeatedly painted: a woman on a beach; Grace visiting Ruby who makes "memory boxes" in her Hackney high rise flat; or Ray Eccles using whatever material he finds to paint with.
However, it is the stereotypical characters that I found most irritating. For example, La Mamma the Italian widow (I've tried to figure out why she's even in the novel); the cute and innocent little girl; or the art dealer who knows little to nothing about art.
The novel raises some questions about art, what it is and how it is created. That's all though, raised in an off hand, incidental kind of way. There are some sensitive ideas about characters who are lonely or mad. Or both.
In the end, I found the novel sketchy, lacking focus and unsatisfying. A bit like this review, really.
March 20, 2018
Up until his fortieth birthday, Ray Eccles was a rather sad and uninteresting man whose life, as he understood it, was simply something to be got through. Then on a walk to the beach he saw a woman, the titular seagull landed on his head and everything changed.
Ten years on and Ray has been obsessionally painting the same scene ever since. He has been taken up and lauded by the art world at the instigation of the Zoobs - collectors and promoters of what they define as 'outsider art'; art by untrained people with a compulsion to create, often drawn from the fringes of society, mental institutions, slums and prisons. The woman, Jennifer is completely unaware of her role as Ray's muse and the story alternates between both characters, bringing their stories up-to-date.
In part this is a satire on the art world, but more than that it's a study of grief, loneliness and isolation. All the characters are beautifully drawn: down-to-earth Jennifer, her Italian in-laws, lost and withdrawn Ray, the ludicrously self-obsessed self-important self-deluded Zoobs and Mira their daughter.
A peculiar, but enjoyable read. And I'm glad that Harriet Paige resisted the temptation to name her main character Cliff.
Ten years on and Ray has been obsessionally painting the same scene ever since. He has been taken up and lauded by the art world at the instigation of the Zoobs - collectors and promoters of what they define as 'outsider art'; art by untrained people with a compulsion to create, often drawn from the fringes of society, mental institutions, slums and prisons. The woman, Jennifer is completely unaware of her role as Ray's muse and the story alternates between both characters, bringing their stories up-to-date.
In part this is a satire on the art world, but more than that it's a study of grief, loneliness and isolation. All the characters are beautifully drawn: down-to-earth Jennifer, her Italian in-laws, lost and withdrawn Ray, the ludicrously self-obsessed self-important self-deluded Zoobs and Mira their daughter.
A peculiar, but enjoyable read. And I'm glad that Harriet Paige resisted the temptation to name her main character Cliff.
September 23, 2017
I don't understand the hype for this novel. For a start it's unbalanced with a promising, brief opening and then tediously extended, slow, detailed passages about the lives of the cliched art collector Zoobs and the equally cliched Italian family. I relate to none of the characters. It's about a sad man who paints walls and floors and anything with the same portrait of the woman he saw when the seagull landed on his head. He paints with food if he can't get hold of paint. OK, it's quirky in a calculated sort of way but it moves and interests me not one bit.
November 28, 2018
Its fully possible that i just didn't get this book. Maybe it's just not my style of book. I just really truly couldn't get into it.
July 24, 2019
Quirky and poignant - my kind of book! And set in the south east corner of Essex that I know so well, this was a wonderfully touching little read that made a very hot afternoon fly by.
Centred around Ray Eccles who lives a quiet life in a quiet cul-de-sac in Southend On Sea, he's a succesful artist but you'd never know it to see him. Happy to stay out of the limelight and keep to himself - but that all changes when he has a rather unfortunate incident on Shoebury East Beach with a seagull. Witnessed by one woman, he returns home from hospital with her face on his mind and starts his obsession with her that takes over his whole artistic outlook and sees him paint the same scene for 10 years.
The woman who saw the incident with the seagull has her own quiet life - working in a clothes shop, living a normal life but when the work of Ray Eccles becomes a huge success, she knows that the face he is painting is her. She doesn't know how to feel about it and the struggle she faces is brilliantly portrayed.
The whole cast of charaters in this book are such a wonderful mix of the good and bad sides of humanity. The art studio owners who look upon Ray as their pet project when they take his work to London and have him move in with them, the local reporter from the Evening Echo trying to make her name with a breaking story, and especially Ray himself who never escapes his 'oddball' personna and seems happiest when he's doing his own thing and not living by the rules of normal life.
I loved the touching and human side of the story and the familiarity of the places visited really brought this to life for me - any book that features Keddies is fine by me! It had a great mix of humour and tragedy, and the absurd side of the art world where anything seems to go if it has the right PR behind it, no matter the effect on the artist who was just trying to make sense of what happened to him and dealing with his grief and loneliness.
A stunning little book and one I'm very glad to have read!
Centred around Ray Eccles who lives a quiet life in a quiet cul-de-sac in Southend On Sea, he's a succesful artist but you'd never know it to see him. Happy to stay out of the limelight and keep to himself - but that all changes when he has a rather unfortunate incident on Shoebury East Beach with a seagull. Witnessed by one woman, he returns home from hospital with her face on his mind and starts his obsession with her that takes over his whole artistic outlook and sees him paint the same scene for 10 years.
The woman who saw the incident with the seagull has her own quiet life - working in a clothes shop, living a normal life but when the work of Ray Eccles becomes a huge success, she knows that the face he is painting is her. She doesn't know how to feel about it and the struggle she faces is brilliantly portrayed.
The whole cast of charaters in this book are such a wonderful mix of the good and bad sides of humanity. The art studio owners who look upon Ray as their pet project when they take his work to London and have him move in with them, the local reporter from the Evening Echo trying to make her name with a breaking story, and especially Ray himself who never escapes his 'oddball' personna and seems happiest when he's doing his own thing and not living by the rules of normal life.
I loved the touching and human side of the story and the familiarity of the places visited really brought this to life for me - any book that features Keddies is fine by me! It had a great mix of humour and tragedy, and the absurd side of the art world where anything seems to go if it has the right PR behind it, no matter the effect on the artist who was just trying to make sense of what happened to him and dealing with his grief and loneliness.
A stunning little book and one I'm very glad to have read!
November 18, 2018
An unassuming office worker is strolling along the beach one day when a dying seagull hits him on the head at the same moment he sees an ordinary woman. He goes into a sort of fugue state where all he can do is paint pictures of this woman over and over, on every available surface in his house, using whatever material is at hand, including food and his own blood and semen. Somehow he comes to the attention of a rich couple who collect Outsider Art and becomes an overnight art world sensation. Then a lot of other weird stuff happens....
I'm really not sure what to say about this one. I'm giving it three stars for being inventive and incorporating absurdist elements in a not totally unsuccessful way, although I can't say I actually liked it. On the contrary, much of the book is rather squalid and unappealing, but...I enjoy weird books. I would have liked it better if I'd felt the author was writing tongue-in-cheek (and perhaps she was, but it felt too serious to me).
It makes me think of when my husband and I go to art museums and I always have a blast in the contemporary wing, pointing out the most incomprehensible works and asking, "Why is this art?" Sometimes I have fun spouting off BS as if I'm serious, but every once in a while I end up with a little a-ha moment and all of a sudden I feel like I "get" it. I feel like this is a good approach reading this book, and also one of the themes of the book. Would I recommend this one? Probably not, but if you enjoy weird fiction with a liberal dash of the absurd, it might be just what you're looking for.
I'm really not sure what to say about this one. I'm giving it three stars for being inventive and incorporating absurdist elements in a not totally unsuccessful way, although I can't say I actually liked it. On the contrary, much of the book is rather squalid and unappealing, but...I enjoy weird books. I would have liked it better if I'd felt the author was writing tongue-in-cheek (and perhaps she was, but it felt too serious to me).
It makes me think of when my husband and I go to art museums and I always have a blast in the contemporary wing, pointing out the most incomprehensible works and asking, "Why is this art?" Sometimes I have fun spouting off BS as if I'm serious, but every once in a while I end up with a little a-ha moment and all of a sudden I feel like I "get" it. I feel like this is a good approach reading this book, and also one of the themes of the book. Would I recommend this one? Probably not, but if you enjoy weird fiction with a liberal dash of the absurd, it might be just what you're looking for.
January 22, 2019
i thought the beginning of this and the ending were perfection.
the prose in this little book was exquisite in places and i had to stop myself from grabbing a pen and paper several times to write down quotes from the pages. the story meanders and the lives of the two main characters are woven loosely together like a tapestry on the wall, or perhaps the very painting of the woman on the beach.
the middle of the book lagged a bit and it was difficult to envision where it all was going to end up, but after i closed the book and really thought about how all the parts came together, i couldn't see how it could have gone any differently.
despite my five-star rating, i won't give this story a blanket referral to everyone who likes to read. it is so special to me personally: the message of love and its existence within the framework of modern art is so much deeper than i first realized. this book is for people who really like to dig in and ponder life and the various twists and turns of human existence.
write more, ms. paige.
the prose in this little book was exquisite in places and i had to stop myself from grabbing a pen and paper several times to write down quotes from the pages. the story meanders and the lives of the two main characters are woven loosely together like a tapestry on the wall, or perhaps the very painting of the woman on the beach.
the middle of the book lagged a bit and it was difficult to envision where it all was going to end up, but after i closed the book and really thought about how all the parts came together, i couldn't see how it could have gone any differently.
despite my five-star rating, i won't give this story a blanket referral to everyone who likes to read. it is so special to me personally: the message of love and its existence within the framework of modern art is so much deeper than i first realized. this book is for people who really like to dig in and ponder life and the various twists and turns of human existence.
write more, ms. paige.
January 1, 2019
4.5 stars. "Man with a Seagull on His Head' is a literary pleasure. So many wonderful sentences dancing across the pages bring the story to life in an astonishing way. I'm at a lost to explain what it is about this unusual novel that is so compelling. It reveals sadness, loneliness, but also an inexplicable mysterious connectedness... the poignancy of existence.
"She paused for a moment in the middle, amazed to see the whole city suddenly laid clear, the river opening up down the centre like a huge zip."
The elegant prose and quirky, endearing characters draw the reader in, and leave a lasting impression.
"...sometimes you just had to put one foot in front of the other and tell yourself you'd have a nice cup of tea when you got home."
"She paused for a moment in the middle, amazed to see the whole city suddenly laid clear, the river opening up down the centre like a huge zip."
The elegant prose and quirky, endearing characters draw the reader in, and leave a lasting impression.
"...sometimes you just had to put one foot in front of the other and tell yourself you'd have a nice cup of tea when you got home."
May 5, 2018
Initial thoughts: Has the author never p-p-picked up a Penguin or pulled a cracker? A man with a seagull(sic) on his head is called Cliff; Ray is a man with the sun in his eyes.
Second thoughts: I think the author is trying to be funny about modern art and failing. She might have done better with fewer peripheral characters. The book is a bit messy, as is painting with food and bodily fluids, but it doesn't stink as badly as the paintings would.
Third thoughts: Perhaps the book is not about Ray, the ordinary man who gets bonked on the head, paints the last person he sees all over his aunt's bungalow in a smelly way (which understandably offends his formerly friendly neighbours), gets 'discovered', gets bonked on the head again and stops. Perhaps the book is really about the peripheral characters who once thought they were something special and turn out to be cliched and ordinary after all.
Final thoughts: I dislike the weak, soppy ending.
Second thoughts: I think the author is trying to be funny about modern art and failing. She might have done better with fewer peripheral characters. The book is a bit messy, as is painting with food and bodily fluids, but it doesn't stink as badly as the paintings would.
Third thoughts: Perhaps the book is not about Ray, the ordinary man who gets bonked on the head, paints the last person he sees all over his aunt's bungalow in a smelly way (which understandably offends his formerly friendly neighbours), gets 'discovered', gets bonked on the head again and stops. Perhaps the book is really about the peripheral characters who once thought they were something special and turn out to be cliched and ordinary after all.
Final thoughts: I dislike the weak, soppy ending.
December 30, 2023
A quirky little book about an office worker who got hit in the head by a seagull and then became a famous painter and left me feeling sad and more aware of my loneliness. I like (just because I like a book doesn’t mean it gets a high rating 😀)
February 18, 2024
Various characters are strangely connected after a seagull lands on a man's head.
Harriet Paige's writing is elegant and engaging.
Harriet Paige's writing is elegant and engaging.
November 25, 2021
A deeply sad book, but more in the sense of the melancholy of the every day, the struggle to find connection, and how even when something unusual and maybe good happens it slips away when you try and grasp it.
April 28, 2022
Loved this. Small and gently powerful. Meanders through ordinariness and the extraordinary. Was worried it might mock art but it doesn't.
June 22, 2025
This is the second book this year that I have randomly picked up that is a story based in my home town.
I’m unsure of Harriet’s connection with Shoeburyness and Southend but I’m just that alone her attention to detail is impeccable.
I know these streets l like the back of my hand and this book felt like home.
It is home.
It’s a sad sad story of broken souls gripped with loneliness and the endless cycle of life.
It’s written beautifully, as beautiful as anything i have read it years.
I’m unsure of Harriet’s connection with Shoeburyness and Southend but I’m just that alone her attention to detail is impeccable.
I know these streets l like the back of my hand and this book felt like home.
It is home.
It’s a sad sad story of broken souls gripped with loneliness and the endless cycle of life.
It’s written beautifully, as beautiful as anything i have read it years.
November 22, 2019
This was a quirky little book. Usually, I love quirky. This was well-written and unique, but left me feeling a little sad.
February 11, 2021
A nice meditation on epiphany and artistic obsession. The narrative is often dislocated from Ray Eccles, leaving the protagonist a mystery throughout.
September 17, 2018
"You live in your head". Someone said that to me back in the 70's and this book reminded me of that statement, more than once. The character Ray Eccles is very likely autistic, and therefore no one in this story would have been able to communicate with him. Jennifer is such a sad lonely soul. And I didn't like Grace or George, they were just opportunists.
I struggled to finish reading this story. I read to learn or to be entertained and I just feel very sad. Sad for Ray and Jennifer. Sad Mira never found Ray (that she knew of) Sad that all those wants, needs and emotions just floated off into nothingness. One thing, however, is if I ever see a hand beside me and I have the strong urge to touch that unknown hand, I will do so. I was so hoping that at some point in the story there would be a connection. A connection of humanity. Touch the hand and either the hand will pull away and that is that. Or you might get a warm smile. I will always hope for the warm smile.
The writing was beautiful, however.
Thank you Biblioasis for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I struggled to finish reading this story. I read to learn or to be entertained and I just feel very sad. Sad for Ray and Jennifer. Sad Mira never found Ray (that she knew of) Sad that all those wants, needs and emotions just floated off into nothingness. One thing, however, is if I ever see a hand beside me and I have the strong urge to touch that unknown hand, I will do so. I was so hoping that at some point in the story there would be a connection. A connection of humanity. Touch the hand and either the hand will pull away and that is that. Or you might get a warm smile. I will always hope for the warm smile.
The writing was beautiful, however.
Thank you Biblioasis for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
May 29, 2017
When Ray Eccles is struck on the head by a dying bird in 1970s Essex, the transformation in his world is unforeseeable. Harriet Paige’s debut novel is more about emotions and the impact of life changes rather than what causes them; when protagonist Jennifer Mulholland is presented with her husband’s ashes, she feels “nothing but shame and regret.” But Paige’s colloquial prose unfurls so that however highfalutin certain plot aspects might be, characters’ perspectives are distinct and very little gets lost in translation.
Certain plot points are slow, but by the time of the novel’s denouement, Paige has proficiently examined the ways in which love and identity can be either realised or destroyed by art.
Certain plot points are slow, but by the time of the novel’s denouement, Paige has proficiently examined the ways in which love and identity can be either realised or destroyed by art.
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