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A review by kats05
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
4.0
All the Birds, Singing is an usual, totally gripping novel. The narrative style takes some getting used to: whilst there is only one narrator, Jake Whyte (a young woman), we have two narratives from her with two storylines that move in opposite directions. One storyline takes place in the present tense (but narration in in the past tense) and moves forwards in a linear direction, the other storyline (told in the grammatical present tense, I think) takes place in the past and with each chapter in that storyline we move further into the past, i.e. backwards. Confused yet? Well, I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, so it took me a while to figure out what was going on, and I'm not explaining it very well here, either, but let me tell you that Evie Wyld certainly knows how to use this storytelling device.
The result is that we get closer and closer to finding out what happened in Jake's past in Australia that has her hiding away on a small, craggy island somewhere in Britain, a situation that is creepy and fascinating in equal measures. There are episodes in Jake's life that were extremely uncomfortable and shocking, even nauseating, to hear about. However, without making light of her dire situation our heroine tells some of these anecdotes in a way that had me laugh out loud in places, helping to ease my discomfort (without spoiling it for those that haven't yet read the book but as a future reminder to myself, here are a couple of examples: small spiders coming out of a wall scaring a grown man who likes to call himself "The Rock" and a naive, young girl attempting to make noise inside a truck).
The last few chapters, in my opinion, were a bit rushed and the very ending was not satisfactory to me, but all in all, I think this must have been a strong contender for the literary prizes it has been nominated for, even if it hasn't won any (yet).
The result is that we get closer and closer to finding out what happened in Jake's past in Australia that has her hiding away on a small, craggy island somewhere in Britain, a situation that is creepy and fascinating in equal measures. There are episodes in Jake's life that were extremely uncomfortable and shocking, even nauseating, to hear about. However, without making light of her dire situation our heroine tells some of these anecdotes in a way that had me laugh out loud in places, helping to ease my discomfort (without spoiling it for those that haven't yet read the book but as a future reminder to myself, here are a couple of examples: small spiders coming out of a wall scaring a grown man who likes to call himself "The Rock" and a naive, young girl attempting to make noise inside a truck).
The last few chapters, in my opinion, were a bit rushed and the very ending was not satisfactory to me, but all in all, I think this must have been a strong contender for the literary prizes it has been nominated for, even if it hasn't won any (yet).