“I would not have knowingly allowed even the image of a bird into my home, however beautiful. But I lived for and loved a bird-heart that summer; I only knew it afterwards.”
Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow’s All the Little Bird-Hearts (Algonquin Books 2023), my tenth read of the 2023 Booker longlist, is a peculiar and unsettling read. Set in 1988, our protagonist, Sunday Forrester, is autistic. We’d barely scratched the surface of our understanding of autism and the full spectrum in the 1980s, and Sunday is undiagnosed. This is the second book on the longlist with a character with undiagnosed autism, and it’s interesting to compare the two. How to Build a Boat featured a young, neurodivergent boy, and All the Little Bird-Hearts focuses on a woman with a teenage daughter. I do not believe the author of How to Build a Boat is autistic, whereas Lloyd-Barlow is. And while I loved How to Build a Boat, it was very much outside looking in. All the Little Bird-Hearts is raw in its authenticity, and it lets the reader inside Sunday’s mind. It’s a peculiar read because of the unsettling, psychological thriller aspect. I was on edge while reading the novel. There are certainly witty moments as well as extremely devastating ones, but from the first line there is a hint of bad things coming. And how Lloyd-Barlow carries that hint throughout the entire novel is brilliant but makes for a very unsettling read.
Sunday hasn’t had the easiest life. Her sister died when she was young, and her parents blamed her and died soon after. Sunday lives in the same house she grew up in, and she works the same job she had as a teenager at the greenhouse on the farm run by her ex-husband’s family. She recognizes that her mind works differently, and there is a lot of masking in her life, but she largely keeps her circles small and avoids triggers – at least until Vita and Rollo move in next door, and then there is a summer of noises and brightly colored foods and clothes. Sunday is smitten by Vita, wanting to be in her light, and relishing the love and attention Vita puts on her. Vita doesn’t treat her differently. She isn’t offended by her bluntness or preference for silence; she includes Sunday the way Sunday is. But her attentions soon turn to Sunday’s teenage daughter, and Vita’s brightness draws Dolly like a flame. And Sunday can just watch it unfold, wondering if she’s jealous of Vita or Dolly, as Vita attempts to claim Sunday’s daughter as her own.
I didn’t have much sympathy for Dolly. I understand that she is a self-absorbed teenager, but she is just so mean to her mom. My favorite relationship, and one I wish there had been a bit more of, was that between Sunday and her deaf coworker, David. But that storyline wasn’t what this was – this was Sunday and Vita’s story, or rather the story of the summer Sunday’s life changed forever.
Read this novel.
Booker count: 10 of 13
A Girl Named Tommi 