Review: All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

Even after finishing All the Birds, Singing, I feel mesmerised by Wyld's storytelling skills and ability to violently tug a comfortable rug from underneath the reader's feet.

A woman called Jake lives with her dog (unimaginatively, charmingly called Dog) and flock of sheep in an old farmhouse on an unnamed island off the British coast. This is how she wanted to be: isolated, alone. But this peace is shattered by something killing her sheep, 'every few nights it picks one off, leaves it in rags'.

The novel works like a jigsaw: You trace Jake's life on the British island alongside interruptions from her past, set in the desolate landscapes of Australia, in order to complete a picture of her life. Whilst Jake's life moves forward in the old farmhouse, her Australian narrative travels backwards, and you seek to work out the reasons for her escape and exile. You will find yourself hopelessly feeling protective towards Jake, but Wyld forces you to question these feelings in the final pages with pockets of Jake's distant past aligned with her present existence on the island. 

Wyld uses the brutality of nature to reflect the harsh, unsettling realities of human existence. This is not a novel that upholds the beauty of nature; birdsong becomes synonymous with human pain and, in my reading, the sheep mirror Jake's condition. In the sheep of Otto's farm, especially, we can see glimpses of Jake: the flock are scarred, burnt by the sun, and Jake's scarred back is repeatedly mentioned in the text, as is the suffering and damaging heat of the Australian sun. 

The shifting between two settings is surprisingly effortless; without obvious signposting, the reader finds themselves in the cold, grey and green British island and then in the sweltering heat of Australia. Wyld masterfully builds settings with subtle strokes of atmosphere and snippets of dialogue.

You will find yourself reading the final pages of All the Birds, Singing with your heart in your throat as you piece together the jigsaw of Jake's identity. It is an unsettling read, but always captivating. 

Image source: sophiebroadbridgeblog.co.uk

My grandparent's house and fictional settings

My grandparents lived for 47 years in what was an end-of-terrace council house in Harlow's Churchfield, just a short walk from The Stow. The Stearn family were the second to live in that house - with Harlow built as a New Town following the Second World War, my grandparents and their three children (the youngest being my mum) moved out of London in 1956 to a place promising large green spaces. My mum remembers her aunt Gwen holding the goldfish on her lap in the removal van. Now, Harlow can't be described as green.

Sooner or later they would own 18 Churchfield. It had a hallway, a living room with burgundy settees and pink carpet. For a month of the year the room would be stringed with Christmas cards from the ceiling. Behind that, there was the kitchen/diner, with a larder that smelled of marmalade and a dark wooden table with six chairs with grey geometric-print cushioned seats. Upstairs: three bedrooms and a bathroom. The same fluffy carpet throughout. Later on, they got french doors installed, and they had a downstairs loo. In the garden there was an apple tree and a greenhouse for tomatoes.

I spent lots of my childhood in 18 Churchfield. I would sit at the small red desk in the back bedroom where I kept a tube of Smarties (one for every visit), watch a recorded version of Mary Poppins on Channel 5 on a VCR, jump with a skipping rope in the kitchen (not allowed to do that at home).

In 2002, my Nanny suffered a severe stroke in the nighttime and from then on had to be cared for in hospitals and care homes. My Grandad spent another two years living in Churchfield alone, until he was convinced to move to a flat closer to us. The day Grandad moved they dismantled the greenhouse and he told me he had found something under the concrete. He placed a tiny mouse skeleton in the palm of my hand and I cried fat angry tears. I discovered the Smarties I'd been eating had gone out of date in 1999. Grandad's 97 now and still living in that flat.

It's been over ten years since I have been in that house and I've obviously done a lot of growing up since - it annoys me that I can't quite remember little details about the house (was the carpet really pink?). 18 Churchfield has continued to be present in my mind, however, and never more so than when I read fiction.

It's strange, I know, and probably telling of how unimaginative I am, but so many books I read are set in that house. From the age of ten, that living room would repeatedly prop up in mind as a setting for a character's home. I imagined families that weren't mine sitting around that dining table (the same table was my desk throughout secondary school).

For example, Callum's house in the whole Noughts and Crosses series by Malorie Blackman is set at my grandparent's house. Even though Churchfields doesn't fit Blackman's brief, I made it so it did. I bent the dimensions of the house in my head, and my grandparent's narrow hallway was stretched into this imaginary family's living room.

So many books, short stories and moments in poems take me back to that house, or rather I map that house onto these texts. It is something I assumed I would grow out of, when the house and my experiences there would slowly slip from my memory. But again, at 20 years old reading Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo last year, I imagine the main character Barry to be sat at my grandparent's dining table with his wife's Antiguan friends, eating Caribbean food. In my grandparent's living room I had replaced their burgundy furniture with Barry's white leather suite covered in plastic. I had transported this Harlow house into East London.

But why does this house appear so prominently in my imagination? We of course all use our bank of memories to construct fictional worlds, but why this house? Perhaps I spent my most imaginative years visiting 18 Churchfield, and it's structure has been glued to my mind ever since. Perhaps it was my young mind's way of making sure I did not forget this house which I loved?

Does this happen to anyone else, I wonder? Do settings repeat themselves in your mind between texts?