Details:
- author: Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
- full title: All the Little Bird-Hearts
- narrator: Rose Akroyd
- genre: literary fiction
- topics: #family, #neurodivergent
- publisher: Hachette Audio, Algonquin Books
- publish date: 05 Dec 2023
- timing: 9:14:00
My Rating of the Audiobook:
- content: 💙💙💙.5
- narration: 💙💙💙💙💙
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| Goodreads |
Excerpt from the Book:
... I was in a long-standing white-food routine that summer, and my meals typically comprised various breakfasts: toast, cereal or crumpets. On days when food does not have to be dry, scrambled eggs or omelettes can also count as white. I cannot tell if it is a day on which an egg is a white food until I hold one in my hand. It is a small but real joy to me that as an adult I can decide, without explanation, whether eggs qualify as white, and therefore edible, on any given day. Without being told I am making a show of myself. That I am hysterical, attention-seeking and to be ignored until I eat something that is violently coloured.
Occasionally, and only in front of Dolly, I would showily eat something that did not adhere to my assigned list of foods. You can eat normally then; you can do what the rest of us do without a fuss. My mother said this, often. I answered her silently when she was alive and I continue to do so now she is dead: There is a cost, Mother, always a cost to such transgressions, and I am the one who pays. I am the one whose throat and body burn when I politely swallow down food of the wrong colour; it is my arm that itches when a neighbour greets me by lightly placing a hand on my skin. I wear the marks of these encounters, these painful sensory interruptions.
My Thoughts:
The story is very slow, and I believe it is too slow for some readers. But when we get used to this rhythm, we get to know autistic Sunday and her daughter Dolly, her mother-in-law and father-in-law. And most importantly, we also meet her new glamorous neighbors, Vita and Rollo. The story is multi-layered. We also learn about the past life of Sunday, her sister Dolores, her parents, and her childhood.I liked Sunday and how she organized her life to cope with everyday challenges. But I didn't like all the other characters in the book. Only Dolores, Sunday's late sister, seemed a nice and understanding person, but there's not much story about her.
This is not a novel I would expect to be nominated for the Booker Prize. But nonetheless, I appreciate this novel and found the presentation on neurodivergent thoughts and functioning very insightful.
All the Little Bird-Hearts is excellently narrated by Rose Akroyd. I enjoyed her narration. I think an audiobook format was a better experience for me.
About the Author:
Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Kent. Like her protagonist, Sunday, in ALL THE LITTLE BIRD-HEARTS, Viktoria is autistic. She has presented her doctoral research internationally, most recently speaking at Harvard University on autism and literary narrative. Viktoria lives with her husband and children on the Kent coast.
