From the very first image conjured in All the Birds, Singing – that of a slain sheep ‘mangled and bled out, her innards not yet crusting and the vapours rising from her like a steamed pudding’, Evie Wyld throws readers into the thick of it. Named in Granta’s list of Best Young British Novelists for 2013, Wyld’s debut novel After the Fire, A Still Small Voice won both the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Betty Trask Award. All the Birds, Singing confirms these accolades are genuinely deserved.
All the Birds, Singing is the narrative of hardened Jake Whyte who ekes out an existence of self-imposed isolation on an English island, seeking peace, or at the very least refuge, from her mysterious past in Australia. Despite the formidable shell with which she arms herself, Jake is continually in conflict with her surrounding environment: biting winds and silent crows ‘eyeing [her] but not speaking’ trigger unwarranted reminiscences and ominous suppositions. The novel dexterously explores the way in which past and present are inextricably linked and questions whether the tabula rasa is ever a true possibility. Even a ‘free guinea pigs’ sign lurks in a local farm shop long after the surplus is given to feed a relative’s pet snake.
In the present, Jake questions whether the serial sheep reaper is a foolhardy kid or a fox or indeed the ghost of time coming to collect its due. In a loosely reverse chronological order, Wyld intersperses this forward-moving plot with a parallel narrative that carefully unfolds scenes of Jake in Australia, beginning with a stint the main protagonist spent as a shearer at a cattle station.
As the reader tries to connect the dots and savour each piece of vital information as it comes, Wyld’s skilful artistry is revealed. For every sign, for every unsettling and awe-inspiring beat elicited from the creatures and the landscape they inhabit, one cleaves to the psychological suspense. When the yearned for answer finally comes, it is interwoven with such effortlessness that the reader must simultaneously process and contextualise the ramifications for the bigger picture.
Wyld’s prose contains both poetry and thoughtful pacing. The menacing visitations of wind and dark are juxtaposed alongside more visceral horrors to produce an atmosphere that engages all the senses. Yet All the Birds, Singing is not all gloom; and in the humming dread there is also beauty.
There are humorous scenes such as when an all-too-human thumb-sized redback that lives atop Jake’s shower head raises a leg when the tap turns on ‘like the water’s too cold for her’. The lightness of characters such as Karen, the sex-worker who Jake lives with for a time, who follows feng shui and thinks ‘ombionce’ is significant, is important in a novel where ambience is key to the narrative pull. Care and affection come from strange places and manifests in peculiar ways.
The characters in All the Birds, Singing keep you guessing. While they possess archetypal qualities, they never become predictable stereotypes. Jake herself evades the typical gendered conception of woman: in an established man’s world, other men call her a good bloke based on her physical strength. We are also reminded of her vulnerability in a world where men perceive the main protagonist in an Edenic role.
This is the story of a woman who perceives isolation as a necessary endgame, only to have life surprise her in its unassuming yet powerful ways.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
All the Birds, Singing
By Evie Wyld
Paperback
240 pages
RRP: $32.99
ISBN: 9781742757308
Random House
