The Life List of Adrian Mandrick

A drug-addicted anesthesiologist attempts to avoid his problems by chasing rare birds in White’s somber debut. The title character, struggling with the self-perceived stigma of being only the third-best birder in North America, regularly abandons his patients and family to take off by car or plane in search of birds that have inevitably departed by the time he arrives. On one trip, he and a birder friend drive for more than an hour before realizing that they have left Adrian’s wife, Stella, at a rest stop; on another, he cheats on Stella. When Adrian gets an email from a birder who claims to have seen a bird thought to be extinct deep in the swamps of Florida, he heads into the heart of darkness, and runs smack into his past. While White makes Adrian a complex and oddly appealing character, the other characters in the book, including his wife and kids, are shadowy figures. Too many of the incidents strain credulity, which might be easier to forgive in a more comic novel, but here they test the reader’s patience in a story bent on exploring the roots of Adrian’s psychological problems. Readers will wish for more birds and less brooding. (Apr.)