tamaranth | 2024/090: All the Little Bird Hearts

2024/090: All the Little Bird Hearts — Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow

... in a painting, the artist intends all the uncomfortable truth he has put there, somewhere within the beautiful image, to be read. In life, the opposite is more often true. [loc. 1264]

Sunday is neurodivergent, raising her teenage daughter Dolly alone (though Dolly's father, who Sunday calls 'the King', is still around: Sunday works in his parents' greenhouse) and accustomed to a solitary, quiet life. Then she befriends, or is befriended by, glamorous new next-door neighbour Vita, and is beguiled by Vita's kindness and her childlike demands. Sunday is not very good at people, but Vita and her husband Rollo welcome her and Dolly, and don't seem fazed by Sunday's insistence on dining solely on white food and cold fizzy drinks.

Sunday's painful family history comes gradually to the surface as she watches Dolly bloom under Vita's attention. Her unique perception of the world is not sufficient for her to interpret or withstand Vita's machinations, or to unravel the 'social riddles' of Vita's behaviour.

This Booker-shortlisted novel is fascinating because of its protagonist: the author is also autistic. I found Sunday's memories of her relationship with her mother acutely painful and disturbing, and that relationship's shadows still persist: Sunday takes great pleasure in making choices that seem good to her, 'without being told I am making a show of myself. That I am hysterical, attention-seeking and to be ignored' [loc. 55]. Her sensual enjoyment of gardening, her sensory overload, her reliance on her book of Sicilian folklore (and an etiquette book from the 1950s), are vivid and immediate. And she sometimes addresses us directly: 'people like you', neurotypicals. I felt more like Sunday than like Vita.