All The Birds, Singing – Evie
Wyld
Jake Whyte has retreated to a
remote farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rains and
battering winds, with only her collie and a flock of sheep as companions. But
something—or someone—has begun picking off her sheep one by one. There are
foxes in the woods, a strange man wandering the island, and rumors of a
mysterious beast prowling at night. And there is Jake’s relentless past—one she
tried to escape thousands of miles away and years ago, concealed in stubborn
silence and isolation and the scars that stripe her back.
Review: I’ve
always wanted to go to Australia, but I’ve heard that Australia has a bit of a
spider situation. Like, there are lots of spiders. This is not okay with me.
Spiders go against everything I stand for in this world. All the Birds, Singing just confirmed that Australia has entirely
too many spiders for me.
Jake Whyte is a young woman who
has made some deadly mistakes. To avoid being captured by the police or hunted
down by her ex-boyfriend, she leaves Australia and becomes a sheep farmer on a
lonely British island. But, Jake can’t relax. Something is killing her sheep, a
strange man is roaming the woods, and someone has been inside her house. Jake
will do whatever it takes to protect her secrets.
“I'm out of knives for the time
being” – All the Birds, Singing
The
writing in this book is so good. I wish
all books were written like this one. It’s dark and menacing and atmospheric.
I’ve never been to England or Australia, and I know nothing about sheep, but
the author makes the settings easy to imagine. The descriptions of the
landscape are beautiful. Evie Wyld is an extremely talented writer.
None
of the characters are likeable, but they’re realistic. Jake
has made some bad choices in her life. The story is about her memories, and how
you can never escape from yourself, no matter how far you run. Bad memories
will always follow you. You can’t hide from them.
The
structure of this novel is kind of bizarre. The present-day part of
the story moves forward, and the past part moves backwards. This builds
suspense because the reader sees Jake running from her crime, but the crime
itself isn’t shown until the very end.
The
structure is slightly confusing because there are a lot of characters, but
the reader doesn’t know why these people are important at first. Also, the
tenses are weird. The present-day sections are written in past tense. The past
sections are written in present tense. Um . . . why? At the beginning of the
book, I was confused about when the
events were happening. Maybe the author did it that way to show that Jake’s
past is more real to her than her present? She’s still mentally living in the
past? I don’t know. I got confused. It felt backwards. I figured it out pretty
quickly, though.
If you can’t stand slow books,
you should probably skip this one. It
takes a long time for the action to get going. I did get a little bored
with the slowness in the beginning, but it didn’t bother me too much because I
love the writing and descriptions. Those kept me happy until the plot picked
up. The story is quietly suspenseful. It’s
all about the bleak atmosphere.
“Another
sheep, mangled and bled out, her innards not yet crusting and the vapours
rising from her like a steamed pudding.” – All
the Birds, Singing
This is
a book that I can see myself rereading. There
is a lot going on under the surface that I would see better while rereading.
The author subverts traditional gender roles and uses animals as symbols for
human relationships. (Childlike sheep, shepherd/sheepdog partnerships, godlike
birds, spiders freakin’ everywhere.)
I think this is a book that demands rereading. It’s hard to see everything on
the first trip through it.
I wasn’t sure about this novel
at the start, but I ended up being impressed by it. It’s strange and hard to
describe. I’ve added one of Evie Wyld’s other books to my TBR list. I’m excited
to see what else she has written.
