You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
arjasalafranca 's review for:
Birdcage Walk
by Helen Dunmore
“I thought that if my heart were taken out of my body there would be many cuts in it: sharp, distinct, each of them in a different place.”
“America was another pipe dream. I saw clearly now that it was not so easy to step out of the life which held us. No matter how far we went, we would take with us not only our selves but all the ghosts of our lives.”
“There must be love, even if it destroys us.”
“I did not know what breath meant until she died. It was everything that gave quickness and life: it was thought, feeling, animation. Without it there was nothing.”
Helen Dunmore’s last novel before her death in June 2017 combines her trademark poetic lyricism with her skilled art of telling a story and moving a narrative along seamlessly.
It opens in 1792. Lizzie Fawkes is recently married to John Diner Tredevant. Her ties to her activist mother are still strong though, a woman who has written for justice and the rights of women, publishing them in pamphlets. While she is pulled back toward her mother, her new husband grows increasingly jealous and possessive – in seems only in marriage can we really know a person. Diner is attempting to build a terrace of homes above the Gorge as part of Bristol’s housing boom. But the building is beset with difficulties – and as the difficulties mount so does Diner’s paranoia and fear. Across the channel, France is in the midst of a revolution – and the growl of that dissent reaches Lizzie in her circle. This is a story that encircles many themes – the burgeoning independence of women, the sense of freedom and change in the air, and the danger of a relationship in which not all is as it appears to be. The language is beguiling, pure poetry – even as Dunmore builds tension through the narrative. Highly recommended.
“America was another pipe dream. I saw clearly now that it was not so easy to step out of the life which held us. No matter how far we went, we would take with us not only our selves but all the ghosts of our lives.”
“There must be love, even if it destroys us.”
“I did not know what breath meant until she died. It was everything that gave quickness and life: it was thought, feeling, animation. Without it there was nothing.”
Helen Dunmore’s last novel before her death in June 2017 combines her trademark poetic lyricism with her skilled art of telling a story and moving a narrative along seamlessly.
It opens in 1792. Lizzie Fawkes is recently married to John Diner Tredevant. Her ties to her activist mother are still strong though, a woman who has written for justice and the rights of women, publishing them in pamphlets. While she is pulled back toward her mother, her new husband grows increasingly jealous and possessive – in seems only in marriage can we really know a person. Diner is attempting to build a terrace of homes above the Gorge as part of Bristol’s housing boom. But the building is beset with difficulties – and as the difficulties mount so does Diner’s paranoia and fear. Across the channel, France is in the midst of a revolution – and the growl of that dissent reaches Lizzie in her circle. This is a story that encircles many themes – the burgeoning independence of women, the sense of freedom and change in the air, and the danger of a relationship in which not all is as it appears to be. The language is beguiling, pure poetry – even as Dunmore builds tension through the narrative. Highly recommended.