“One side of love, an undervalued one, has to do with letting the other person walk their own path.”
María José Ferrada’s How to Turn into a Bird (translated by Elizabeth Bryer, Tin House 2022) echoes with the same tender ache of growing up as Le Petit Prince and Peter Pan, and it has just as much heart. Originally published in Spanish as Hombre del Cartel, the novel follows 12-year-old Miguel – a young boy whose uncle, Ramón, has decided to live on the platform under a Coca-Cola billboard sign.
Miguel’s mother is angry, and while we get glimpses as to the hardships she’s faced that made her this way, she’s painted through the eyes of a child who finds more warmth and love with his aunt and uncle next door. When Ramón gets a job keeping an eye on the billboard and decides to move up there, Miguel is more intrigued than anything else. He joins his aunt in visiting his beloved uncle in the nest he’s built, surrounded by the beer bottles that buy him the silence he craves. Meanwhile, society (and Miguel’s mother) are in a tizzy because it’s not “normal” or what folks in polite society do. Ramón’s willingness and desire to break away from what is acceptable becomes a point to be addressed at the neighbor council meeting. They will not tolerate it, much like they will not tolerate the children from the shanties coming to Children’s Day. Miguel finds himself torn between his mother and the neighborhood in the “life down below” and his aunt and Ramón in “life up above” – as much as he tries to strike a balance, decisions will be made.
It’s a beautiful book with the same lyricism and brightness as songbirds in flight.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 