The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird cover art

The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird

By: Diane Connell
Narrated by: Hannah Monson
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

 If you were charmed by The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, laughed with Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and cried over A Man Called Ove, you will love Ricky Bird.

No one loved making forts more than Ricky. A fort was a place of safety and possibility. It shut out the world and enclosed her and Ollie within any story she wanted to tell ...

Ricky Bird loves making up stories for her brother Ollie almost as much as she loves him. The imaginary worlds she creates are wild and whimsical places full of unlimited possibilities.

Real life is another story. Ricky’s father has abandoned them and the family has moved to a bleak new neighbourhood. Worse still, her mother’s new boyfriend, Dan, has come with the furniture.

But Ricky Bird is a force to be reckoned with. As the mastermind of so many outlandish adventures, her imagination is her best weapon. As her father used to say, if you can spin a good yarn you can get on in life.

The trouble is that in the best stories characters sometimes take on a life of their own and no one, not even Ricky, is able to imagine the consequences.

Beautifully written, heartbreakingly funny and deeply moving, this book has already been compared to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Lost and Found, Shuggie Bain, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and A Monster Calls. But Ricky’s story is all her own – and it will stay with you long after the last page.

‘Fierce and wonderful and utterly singular, Ricky embodies the sheer joy and transformative power of storytelling.’ Kate Mildenhall, author of The Mother Fault and Skylarking

‘A wise, tender but unflinching portrait of an ordinary family and the unordinary girl at its heart. Ricky – fragile, tough, endearing and funny – is a fabulous creation. She'll walk around in my world all year, and more.’ Kristina Olsson, award-winning author of Shell and Boy, Lost Coming of Age Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Heartfelt

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Braver cover art
The Dandelion Clock Boxset cover art
The Path Keeper cover art
A Funeral for an Owl cover art
The Gone and the Forgotten cover art
Her Daughter’s Secret cover art
The Child in My House cover art
Incomparable World cover art
The Purgatory Poisoning cover art
The Sapphire Cove cover art
What July Knew cover art
The Separation cover art
The Lies We Hide: An Absolutely Gripping and Darkly Compelling Novel cover art
Something Quite Beautiful cover art
The Garden of Lost Memories cover art
We Were Sisters: An Absolutely Gripping Psychological Thriller cover art

Critic reviews

‘A wise, tender but unflinching portrait of an ordinary family and the unordinary girl at its heart. Ricky – fragile, tough, endearing and funny – is a fabulous creation. She'll walk around in my world all year, and more.’ (Kristina Olsson, award-winning author of Shell and Boy, Lost)
‘Fierce and wonderful and utterly singular, Ricky embodies the sheer joy and transformative power of storytelling’ (Kate Mildenhall)
‘Connell has created a rich, complex, multi-layered character in Ricky Bird’
‘[Ricky’s] vivid narration buoys a novel through dark and desperate undercurrents … The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird has been compared to Curious Incident and Shuggie Bain, and it’s true that Diane Connell lends a unique voice to a child struggling to make sense of an adult world.’
‘Heart-warming, life-affirming, happy and sad … I absolutely loved Ricky Bird and her witty, insouciant, funny, critical, quick and loving personality.’ (Cass Moriarty, author of The Promise Seed)
‘Compared to best-selling titles like Elinor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Diane Connell’s The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird had a lot to live up to from the beginning. But it holds its own in a brand new lane. While Ricky Bird has a similarly unreliable narrator and is just as cleverly written, this book has the potential to take readers on an even more explosive rollercoaster of emotions …’
‘Gritty and raw, tender and heartbreaking, this is a beautifully written tale of an ordinary family and the fierce girl at its heart who will stay with you long after the last page is turned and the last tear has dried.’
‘A heart-churning, sob-inducing novel with equal shades of dark and light in the vein of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine; you will race through the pages, just itching to jump in and befriend (and protect) the most singular Ricky Bird.’
'The most gorgeously heartbreaking book ... Sensitively written and beautifully expressed, it reduced me to tears but also made me smile. Ricky Bird will touch your heart as well as break it.'
‘What a marvellous invention is Ricky Bird … Often funny and frequently heartbreaking.’
All stars
Most relevant
Ricky Bird's young life is in turmoil. She is confused by puberty and her sexuality. Her parents have separated, and her mum has a boyfriend who's paying way too much attention to Ricky. She's moved to a new London home where friends are hard to find, and her adorable and adored little brother suddenly becomes seriously ill. To cope with her terrifying new world, Ricky often lives in an imaginary one – and it's through this that the author totally charms and disarms the reader until we reach the devastating and tragic conclusion. But not an ending without hope. This is a beautiful, unflinching, and important novel. It should be available to all teenagers in schools, as well as all adults who are seeking to understand or simply remember the turmoil of those years of transition from being a child to becoming a young adult.

A gem of a novel

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.