Mind Picker: All The Little Bird-Hearts

Of course, now I know Vita’s little bird-heart, I remember those one-sided conversations differently. I see that my frequent muteness was a convenience to someone who was soft-feathered and sharp-eyed. And who sang away to herself in my presence, happily and without interruption, for she knew I had no song with which to call back.

Initially, I was thoroughly charmed by All The Little Bird-Hearts: Told from the POV of a neurodivergent main character — the story is set in 1988, so she has no diagnosis and has spent her life being told to try harder and act normal — and written by debut author Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, who happens to be on the autism spectrum herself, I found the setup to be fresh and authentic and intriguing. But as the plot progresses — after initially being warned that this is the summer that the main character’s world will be blown apart — there was a lot of repetition, no real surprises, and a corresponding drop in charm. I continued to appreciate the authenticity of (and the privilege of being given this insight into the mind of) the main character throughout, and might have given this four stars overall, but the ending didn’t pull together for me, so I’m rounding down to three. Still: I’m really glad that this book exists and that the Booker longlisting will bring it to a wider audience. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

The year of Vita began as a demonstration of sunshine, a visual performance of summer without real heat. Those early days were memorably bright with a hazy quality of light promising a warmth it did not provide. On reflection, that time seems now like something of a dress rehearsal for what arrived later that year, for the explosion of heat that paced up and down our hazy streets, with a fixed grin and outstretched arms aflame.

Sunday Forrester is the single mother of lovely sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, and they live together in the Lake District in the house that Sunday inherited from her own parents when she was sixteen. Sunday knows that her quirks are hard on her daughter: she prefers to eat and serve only bland “white” foods, she quotes often from her two favourite books (a 1950s etiquette guide and a book of Sicilian folklore), and although Dolly is the light and pride of her life, Sunday’s monotone/affectless presentation can be cold and embarrassing for the teenager. And although Sunday is mostly socially isolated (except for her friendship with the deaf young man at the greenhouse where they work together), she becomes fascinated with the wealthy couple who come to rent the house next door: Vita (flaky, charming, gregarious) and her husband Rollo (sophisticated, handsome, mostly away “in town”). Vita insists that Sunday and Dolly start having dinners with them on Friday nights; and while Sunday is mostly distracted by trying to solve the puzzle of these new types of people, Dolly is completely captivated by their charm and glamour. As Dolly spends more and more time with the couple next door, Sunday doesn’t have the social acumen to recognise the danger her little family is in or the ability to prevent what has been signalled to the reader from the start.

Again, I appreciated everything about Sunday’s interior life: how she tries to suppress her natural reactions (tapping out the syllables of others’ speech; wanting to repeat words in curious accents); how she pauses before responding to everything — filtering possibilities through what her mother instilled in her, what the etiquette guide would recommend, what she had noted as natural for others; how she loves her daughter with everything in her but knows it doesn’t get transmitted. There is something very special about having this reality shared by a writer with autism.

On the other hand, there was a lot of repetition that ground on me. Not just the repetition within the plot (the Friday dinners especially), but phrases: characters were forever speaking “with their palms facing upwards” (in theatrical surrender…in a gesture of openness, or perhaps, impatience…the pose could have been that of an evangelical speaker, or of someone trying to catch stray pieces of something falling from above...) And while I was intrigued by this novel’s title when I first encountered it, it’s used many times throughout (his was a different kind of bird-heart…I lived for and loved a bird-heart that summer; I only knew it afterwards…the King’s little bird-heart bears only his own lovely image…) and it soon lost its charming singularity.

But I think what bothered me most is just how awful most of the characters are. Vita and Rollo are the antagonists, so it’s understandable that their motives should be veiled and incomprehensible to Sunday (even if the reader sees their angle from the start). But Sunday also has to deal with an awful ex and his parents (whose behaviour in the end didn’t make sense to me); the memories of Sunday’s parents are awful (they may not have known how to deal with a neurodivergent child back in the 50s and 60s, but their behaviour bordered on evil); and ultimately, Dolly was pretty awful, too (and her behaviour in the end didn’t make sense to me). It’s natural that Sunday’s character doesn’t understand what motivates the people around her — that’s one of the novel’s greatest charms — but you get the sense that the author didn’t understand their motivations either (which is not me making any assumptions about the author’s diagnosis, but the characters did not behave like real people to me).

I did like my life, and I did not want to live like her, or like Vita, however easy they found it. Everything came effortlessly to them, and was therefore replaceable and without value. Dolly does not know if she has it in her to struggle, I thought. Or even to try hard at something, or with someone. She does not know what it is to be misunderstood, or disliked, or simply not adored. When I put my hands on my plants, or immerse myself in Sicilian culture, I am gifted with something more than I really am. The awkwardness of being no longer exists when I am part of these other worlds and aligned with something bigger. I would rather be a tiny person who wonders and trembles at their surroundings than rule over everything, manipulate it to my preference, and in doing so, come to despise it.

As hard as Sunday’s circumstances seem, we’re not made to feel sorry for her: hers is a life rich with purpose and meaning — perhaps with even more meaning than those around her who exhaust themselves in social games — and again, despite not really believing in the storyline, I did believe in Sunday’s responses and it was a POV I feel privileged to have shared.