All the Little Bird-Hearts
Ratings3
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.8
*LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023* 'Written from the perspective of an autistic mother, All the Little Bird-Hearts is a poetic debut which masterfully intertwines themes of familial love, friendship, class, prejudice and trauma with psychological acuity and wit' The Booker Prize Judges 2023 'Glorious. Unforgettable' Melissa Harrison 'Funny, lyrical, deft and devastating' Amy Sackville 'A distinct and poetic new voice' Clare Pollard Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people. On quiet days, she must eat only white foods. Her etiquette handbook guides her through confusing social situations, and to escape, she turns to her treasury of Sicilian folklore. The one thing very much out of her control is Dolly - her clever, headstrong daughter, now on the cusp of leaving home. Into this carefully ordered world step Vita and Rollo, a couple who move in next door, disarm Sunday with their charm, and proceed to deliciously break just about every rule in Sunday's book. Soon they are in and out of each others' homes, and Sunday feels loved and accepted like never before. But beneath Vita and Rollo's polish lies something else, something darker. For Sunday has precisely what Vita has always wanted for herself: a daughter of her own.
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This book is probably a master class in how to write a character who’s neurodivergent (named Sunday) and the struggles she goes through in trying to understand her daughter. A new couple moves in next door to them, and the over-the-top personality of the wife, Vita, entrances Sunday. The two seem to hit it off, but after one rewarding summer for Sunday, she slowly comes to realize that the couple next door isn’t what they appear and her entire carefully constructed life slowly starts unraveling.
I really was incredibly interested in seeing how Sunday navigates her world. Certain colors of foods and things bother her, so that her meals generally all have to be of a certain color for her to eat them. She views life and human courtesies through the lens of an old etiquette book for ladies, and dispenses pearls of wisdom out of a book about Sicilian folklore. She approaches conversations tonally, and habitually taps out speech patterns and imitates the speaker’s lilt in her head. I liked seeing how she tried to adapt to Vita’s unconventional ways, making an effort to get to know her despite being so foreign in mannerisms. It was enlightening getting inside Sunday’s head and seeing how she sees the world.
Unfortunately this only took up half the book. The other half, after the summer Sunday spent with Vita and her husband Rollo, when the wheels start falling off Sunday’s ordered life, wasn’t nearly as interesting to me. Things felt a little repetitive as the same thoughts, ideas, and plot points are reiterated and retread. The buildup to an ending I suspected was coming felt slow, and the payoff at the end felt a little weak. A lot of Sunday’s quirks felt like they were put by the wayside in favor of the plot involving her daughter, not that they stopped existing, but they stopped mattering in the story as much. I don’t know, the second half just didn’t click with me as much as the first half.
But there’s lots here for people to like! I highly recommend giving it a try if the premise still appeals to you, because it may hit you differently than it hit me.
