IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT SINGING FLAMINGO

Poplar Press, imprint at Wolsak & Wynn, Spring 2018

“Hilarious and humane, uproarious and unpredictable, Claire Tacon’s In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo hums with infectious power. Imagine George Saunders and Meg Wolitzer co-authored a book about a Chuck E. Cheese franchise in North York, only then might you get some idea of what Claire Tacon has accomplished here. It’s a story about regret, siblinghood, parenthood, fertility, nostalgia and disappointment, which is perhaps just a long way of saying: it’s a story about a family.” 

– Michael Christie, author of If I Fall, If I Die

“Written with humour and grace, In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo centres on Henry Robinson, a father struggling to be his best in his relationship with his daughters, a father learning to hold on tighter and to let go in equal measure. Add to that a funhouse and a road trip and a cast of characters you won’t soon forget, and you have a novel that manages to be clever and funny and wrenching and captivating all at once. Tacon’s writing is full of quiet magic, mixing the ordinary with the extraordinary as only great fiction can do. I couldn’t put it down until I’d reached its final page.”

– Amy Stuart, author of Still Mine

When Henry Robinson’s daughter Starr is born with Williams syndrome, he swears to devote his life to making her happy. More than twenty years later, Henry and Starr, along with Henry’s co-worker Darren, set off on an unexpected road trip as Henry strives to hold onto his daughter’s childhood and to hold off the future. In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo is a charming, tender and often funny story of a father struggling to let his daughters grow up and of a family struggling against hard odds, taking care of each other when the world lets them down.