Motherhood seems to have dominated the Booker nominations in recent years. This year isn’t much different. Four out of the 13 longlisted books have it as a central theme. Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow’s All the Little Bird-Hearts is one of them.
Set in a small town by the lake in the UK, the novel begins with Sunday Forrester reminiscing the summer of 1988, when she rose to her white-food routine. Her teenage daughter, Dolly, had left for school without a word. As she was going through her day, her new next-door neighbour, Vita, came in to introduce herself. Although starkly different with her flamboyant personality, Sunday warms up to her and soon, the two start seeing more of each other. The intimacy between the two families increases, even as the already-pronounced chasm between Sunday and her daughter widens.
While it is mentioned nowhere in the book, the protagonist’s mannerisms reveal signs of autism. Her self-aware inability to speak as eloquently as others, the abrupt pauses, the constant muttering of what other people say under her breath and her dependence on a guide for ‘etiquette for ladies’ shown throughout the novel are crucial to understanding Sunday.
Viktoria herself has been diagnosed with autism and the attention to details in talking about disability from own-voices is noteworthy. This is true of the author’s treatment of not just the protagonist, but also her coworker David, who lost his hearing ability as a child due to meningitis. His parents’ refusal to accept his deafness, similar to the denial exhibited by Sunday’s mother about her condition, lays out the varied forms of negotiation the disabled undergo on a daily basis with their kith and kins.
The winning quality of the novel is its slow, gentle composition like that of a soft breeze before a tempestuous night. The author does not sink into the depths of unfolding trauma by dramatising scenes. Rather, she makes use of Sicilian folklores to unsettle the readers as they await the impending disaster. Take, for instance, Sunday’s recollection of the popular folktale where a fisherman promises to give away a future child to the ‘Evil One’, in return for a catch. While her audience—Vita and her husband—laugh it off, Sunday “could not hear enough of it”. We find out later that the death of her younger sister still haunts her.
The steady build-up created by oscillating between the past and present makes the reader unprepared for the wave of emotions that is unleashed in the last 50 pages. Rage dominates as much as kindness, and the reader empathetically glides through the summer that changed Sunday’s life through Viktoria’s moving prose.
Among the many relationships explored in the book, the most deftly crafted is the one between Sunday and Vita. The author makes no hard and fast claims to define the bond. The way Vita talks to Sunday, or how she doesn’t force her, unlike others, to engage, she is the friend Sunday never had. When Vita touches her while fixing her hair or makeup, or does not laugh at her for her weaknesses, she becomes the partner Sunday “had once faithfully believed in, but never actually known”.
And, when she sees the growing bond between her daughter and Vita, “it felt something like
a memory”, akin to the one she had with her sister Dolores. The author has made their relationship expansive enough to keep the reader wondering; even at the end, when Sunday insists on knowing Vita’s whereabouts despite being thoroughly maimed by her, following an altercation over Dolly.
Viktoria’s detailed exploration of Sunday’s life is a poignant chronicle of the battles of a woman who has been failed by the sheer idea of ableism—she becomes the girl with her head sunk into books of Italian folklores, the teenager who never finished school, the woman who never managed to keep her marriage in place, and the mother whose daughter found her crazy and a mess. Through all of this, we see echoes of motherhood reverberate. The deeper recesses of Sunday’s mind are brought to the fore as she grows further apart from Dolly. So, All the Little Bird-Hearts is a novel on motherhood, but it is also about people with disabilities, and what happens to them when they take up ordinary roles.
All the Little Bird-Hearts
By: Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
Publisher: Tinder Press
Pages: 304 Price: Rs 599