Viktoria Lloyd-BarlowReseñas

I listened to this book in audiobook format.

This novel is about a mother (likely autistic) and her teenage daughter in mid-late 1900s England. A flamboyant and warmly inviting couple move in next door and befriend, and then envelop, the mother and daughter. But they are not entirely what they seem. The novel is an astute and unorthodox social commentary, since it is narrated by the autistic mother. It is a subtle psychological thriller. And it is about a woman coming into her own even though she is different and disapproved of by society. I really enjoyed listening to this book. The performer is excellent. Much of the narration focuses on dialect, intonations, and accents, so I am unsure how this would come across is paper copy.½

People who perform on instinct do not keep vast libraries of information in their heads. They do not concentrate in company as if taking an important exam. They do not need to shut down frequently and turn off all the lights to find relief. And even then, find that peace does not come.

Sunday is living in a small town in the Lake District of England, divorced and with a 16 year old daughter she loves deeply, but is also somewhat in awe of. Sunday is easily overwhelmed, needs her foods to be white, or at least pale, and has trouble navigating relationships, despite frequently turning to a book of etiquette. It's the 1980s, so while in a later time, she'd be labeled autistic, here she's mostly thought of as peculiar or difficult. Her refuge is her work, in the greenhouse of her ex-husband's farm. Then a new couple moves into the house next door and Vita sweeps Sunday into the heady whirlwind of her erratic life. It's not a friendship that should work, but Vita is so self-centered and her husband so eager to keep everyone having a good time that it all works and before long, both Sunday and her daughter are centering their lives around this couple. Which works so well until it doesn't.

This is gorgeously written book told from the point of view of a woman for whom the world is a frightening and hostile place, but who nevertheless keeps trying to find a way to belong. She is both keenly observant, as a survival tactic, and utterly unaware of much of what is going on around her. There's a sense of rising dread in this book, something the reader can see coming, but not clearly, because we're seeing the world through Sunday's eyes, and how the author managed to do that is astonishing from a debut novelist.½

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

I need to really sink into the idea of it to really chew over what I got out of it. I really sympathized with the main character, being the one in a family who is sensitive and overstimulated and watching others exist around you in constant motion. All in all, an interesting story, that I think could have been fleshed out further.

Reason read; it was long listed for Booker. I don't know why other than that I chose to read this but I enjoyed it! It is a story of an autistic woman and mother of a daughter. And I now find that the author is also autistic and that this is a debut novel. Sunday basically raises her child alone though she is employed by her ex-in laws farm. Her daughter Dolly does receive support from them but they basically don't acknowledge Dolly's mother as part of the family. A strange couple inveigles themselves into Sunday's and by extension into Dolly's life. There is something sinister in this relationship. The writing is a window to the struggles that an autistic person puts into deciphering the world. Sunday is a heroic narrator who you love to know and cheer on. She is a survivor. This was a really good novel for a debut novel.

For good reason, Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow's All the Little Bird-Hearts was included on the 2023 Booker Prize longlist. The novel's main character, Sunday Forrester, is autistic and lives alone with her sixteen-year-old daughter Dolly, a teen who is starting to explore the outside world on her own - something her autistic mother has never been capable of doing easily. Sunday is the novel's narrator, and everything that happens is seen and recounted via her individual way of looking at the world. It all seems very real to the reader thanks in no small part to the fact that author Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow is herself autistic.

Sunday is surprised one day to find a woman confidently sunbathing in the garden next door because Tom, her neighbor, had not told her to expect anyone in his absence. Little did Sunday know that she was beginning "The Year of Vita," or that in a few months she would barely remember the life she was living before meeting Vita on that fateful day. Within days, Sunday and Vita became "best friends," and Sunday and Dolly were joining Vita and her husband for regular Friday night dinners. Dolly, sensing a certain kinship spirt with the new neighbor, succumbed to Vita's charms just as quickly as her mother had done.

And that was the problem.

Lloyd-Barlow's characters are all flawed in unique and individual ways, some more likable than others, but all of them so vividly imagined that they seem as real to reader's as their own neighbors and friends. Some characters understand themselves, some don't; some are weak enablers of bad behavior on the part of others; and some are just doing the best they can to make it from one day to the next.

Sunday is one of the ones who knows exactly who she is:

"My mind is an electrical and involuntary force. Everything touches many, many other things, and these points of intersection are the only way in which the world can be properly understood.
I remain convinced there is a universal code to be broken, a pattern to be understood...What would it be to live without the laborious work of translation, to hear and instantly know what you have heard."

Too, Sunday's way of seeing the world results in an unforgettable description of the behavior she observes in Vita, behavior she sees as being very bird-like:

"I see that my frequent muteness was a convenience to someone who was soft-feathered and sharp-eyed. And who sang away to herself in my presence, happily and without interruption, for she knew I had no song with which to call back...Birds have traditionally been banned from Italian households, whether as pets, paintings, or ornaments. They are believed to bring the Evil Eye...I would not have knowingly allowed even the image of a bird into my home, however beautiful. But I lived for and loved a bird-heart that summer; I only knew it afterwards."
All the Little Bird-Hearts is very much a psychological drama, one in which the pressure is turned up on Sunday - and on the reader - so gradually that imminent dangers are never anticipated until it is too late to do much about them. The construction of the novel's plot is as clever and fascinating as the deep dive into the mind of a character like Sunday Forrester. If you enjoy well written psychological drama, this is one you should not miss.

I just finished reading this book and I want to start reading it all over again. Narrated in the voice of a neurodivergent woman named Sunday, who is reflecting on events three years past. Sunday is the mother of Dolly, a 16 yr. old who is just finishing her GCSE's and is in the developmental throes of separating from her mother. First Vita, and later Rols, move into the house next door. They have come to the Lake District from London for vague reasons.

Vita is eccentric and voluble and inserts herself into the home of Sunday and Dolly. Sunday is smitten by Vita and Rols because of their garrulousness, it seems easier for her to understand social context with them than most people. The relationship between the two households deepens, especially through Friday night dinners. Dolly in her rebellious phase is drawn to the lifestyle of this couple and their generosity toward her. Then the relationship begins to darken.

Through the narrative, the author gives us insights into the efforts that Sunday puts into everyday interactions and sensory distractions. Her various methods of coping, including echolalia and hand movements. She has memorized an outdated book about social etiquette to help her deal with social expectations. And she clings to a book about the way of life in Sicily which she has had since childhood and represents her father's heritage.

At times the descriptions of the Friday night dinners was a bit tedious to read. Yet tucked here and there are marvelous insights into the nature of people. The resolution of this book is a triumph.½

71. All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
reader: Rose Akroyd
OPD: 2023
format: 9:14 audible audiobook (304 pages in hardcover)
acquired: December listened: Dec 10-17
rating: 4
genre/style: contemporary fiction theme: Booker 2023
locations: An English village
about the author: English author with autism. Born in 1974 and living in Kent.

This is why I read the entire Booker longlist. Otherwise I never pick this gem up. A novel narrated by an autistic mother trying to navigate her daughter‘s teen years. The whole perspective is quirky, but it works elegantly. We learn about ourselves as our narrator tries to understand the people around her. But her emotions are a mother‘s and we feel them too. There‘s a lot of interesting stuff going in here. It's well written, and well structured. I found it terrific, moving and rewarding.

2023
https://www.librarything.com/topic/354226#8323312

This book came to my attention when it was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. With its unique perspective, it made for a good read.

It is 1988 in England’s Lake District. Sunday Forrester is a neurodivergent single mother living with her 16-year-old daughter Dolly. She works in the plant nursery owned by her former in-laws. Sunday and Dolly’s lives are upturned when Vita and Rollo rent the house next door. Sunday has difficulty with social interactions but is happy in her encounters with Vita because she seems to accept Sunday as she is. And Dolly, an impressionable teenager, is attracted to the excitement and glamour of Vita and Rollo’s lives, qualities not found in her staid life with her mother. But all is not as it seems.

Though an official diagnosis is not given, Sunday, the narrator, seems to be on the autism spectrum. She is a creature of habit; change really disturbs her so she strives for a life of consistent routine. I loved her comment that “[Dolly] is all that I have loved more than adherence to my routines.” She also tries to avoid sensory overload: “I was born with this intolerance of noise and light, and an accompanying greed for touch and smell” so “I want my choices narrowed so that they do not become overwhelming.”

Sunday is very self-aware. She knows how her behaviour is different and considered odd: “Facial expressions typically tell me nothing more than what is said” and “it takes time and considerable effort for me to adjust my conversation or focus” and “I naturally speak in a monotone.” To help herself in social situations, Sunday has virtually memorized an etiquette book from the 1950s.

With her exuberant personality, the exotic, free-spirited Vita is Sunday’s foil. Vita is glamourous, confident, and unpredictable, all things that Sunday is not. Like almost everyone, Sunday is dazzled and captivated by Vita. But Vita, lacking the ability to understand people’s motives and intentions, is an unreliable narrator, as she admits: “the details I am drawn to are often secondary, and these often mislead.” As a result, Sunday’s descriptions of Vita mean something different to the reader. Statements like “[Vita] seemed entirely without curiosity or concern” and her having “a profound lack of interest in pleasing people” though she “had an unimaginable desire for company” and “needed constant attention” suggest that Vita is a narcissist. And only later does Sunday see that Vita is manipulative: “I had not properly understood, then, that people could be played like instruments to produce whatever sound you demanded of them.”

As soon as Vita appears, I experienced a sense of unease which grew into a sense of foreboding. Vita is so self-absorbed and has such a sense of entitlement that it seems she must have a hidden agenda, especially once she starts paying particular attention to Dolly. Knowing that her daughter is so important in Sunday’s life, I could only fear Vita’s intentions. I suspected she would have no difficulty blithely taking anything belonging to someone else if she wanted it.

This growing menace is emphasized by Sunday’s foreshadowing. She is narrating her story from the future looking back at the summer of 1988 so she often makes comments like she would still like to hear Vita’s posh accent, “even at the very end” and “Vita was extravagant and theatrical in all her expressions, and I appreciated that then.” Sunday hints that she came to realize that Vita’s “appearance of naturalness was, in fact, a construct.” Even Rollo is described as “solid and sweet as he seemed then.”

I loved seeing Sunday’s growth. She comes to see Vita as shallow and self-centred. For so much of her life, Sunday has suppressed her natural reactions to appear more “normal” but at the end she no longer holds on “to the compulsions and tics inside; these must be expressed to become feelings. . . . I no longer resist the urges to tap, to touch, or to wave my hands, . . . but allow them instead to travel through me uninterrupted.” And she knows that though she may have difficulty expressing her feelings, she feels more deeply than those with little bird-hearts (like Vita, Sunday’s ex-husband, and Dolly’s paternal grandparents) who are capable of only a “superficiality of feeling.” Her love for Dolly is a “solitary devotion without asking for reciprocation.” She concludes, “my love for her remains constant; it is as fat as a beloved pet and receives the same frequent attention. It is more, certainly, than conjuring polite and pleasing lies for onlookers.” Vita is all artifice but Sunday is a genuinely loving person.

One element that bothered me is the repetition. The weekly dinners with Vita and Rollo follow a pattern. Sunday’s repeated references to Sicilian folk tales and constant phonetic pronunciations mimicking Vita’s accent become tedious. Yet this repetition is appropriate to the narrator who finds comfort in it. The reader’s impatience actually reflects the impatience Sunday would see regularly in people who thought her strange.

The book is not action-packed or fast paced. But I found it engaging. And it feels authentic in its depiction of the thought processes of someone on the autism spectrum. For me, the novel was a quiet but compelling read.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/DCYakabuski).

I had not understood, then, that people could be played like instruments to produce whatever sound you demanded of them.

from All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
Oh, I was mislead, too. Vita bursts upon the scene like a ray of sunshine that breaks through the clouds, eccentric and lively and unsettling all at once. Sunday was awestruck by her inclusion into Vita’s world, suddenly someone’s best friend.

Vita broke every rule. She showed up on Sunday’s doorstep in pajamas, or a in a fancy frock just back from the dry cleaners. She proclaimed to be enchanted by Sunday’s forthrightness. With her husband Rollo so often in town, she was lonely in their summer rental house. Now, she had Sunday.

Sunday was unused to this. Her mother had debased her, her husband divorced her, the world didn’t understand her anymore than she understood the world. As a person with autism, she struggled to translate the world, to understand. Now, she had a friend, and weekly Friday dinner invitations. It was one of Sunday’s “four acts of faith,” loving Vita, along with her love for her sister, her ex, and-her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, who is old enough to condemn her mother’s strange ways.

Sunday was proud to introduce her friend Vita to her daughter. But Vita’s impact on Dolly was not something Sunday could have imagined. First, Vita has Dolly for over-nights, then she and Rollo ’employ’ her to help them with their business, and then there are trips to London and new clothes. They have money and charm and a lifestyle that is hard to resist.

The delight of the early chapters turn dark and ominous, and I was turning pages quite worried about what would be revealed.

The novel’s portrayal of Sunday’s experience and response to the world is wonderfully done. Sunday is struck by Vita’s way of talking, echoing her words in her head, which also offered a more vivid portrayal of Vita. Sunday’s inability to eat any food that isn’t white is countered by Rollo’s Harrod’s meals that lure Dolly, steak tartare and petits fours. Rollo pours Dolly rich red wines.

What starts as a lively friendship of acceptance is revealed to be a manipulation of the rich and charming.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.