I lived for and loved a bird-heart that summer; I only knew it afterwards.

Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people. On quiet days, she must eat only white foods. Her etiquette handbook guides her through confusing social situations, and to escape, she turns to her treasury of Sicilian folklore. The one thing very much out of her control is Dolly – her clever, headstrong daughter, now on the cusp of leaving home.

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Into this carefully ordered world step Vita and Rollo, a couple who move in next door, disarm Sunday with their charm, and proceed to deliciously break just about every rule in Sunday’s book. Soon they are in and out of each others’ homes, and Sunday feels loved and accepted like never before. But beneath Vita and Rollo’s polish lies something else, something darker. For Sunday has precisely what Vita has always wanted for herself: a daughter of her own.

My Review

Poor Sunday! Unloved by her mother, blamed for her sister’s death and then rejected by her husband, whom she refers to as the King, none of them understood her or why she behaves the way she does. Except maybe David at the farm, where she works. David is deaf and Sunday signs with him. He is probably my second favourite character, after Sunday.

As for her new next-door neighbours, Vita and her husband Rollo, they made my skin crawl from day one. Vita with her pretensions, her affectations and an accent so posh it’s ‘almost a speech impediment’, as someone once joked to me. I hope that’s not too un-PC. But Sunday is entranced by their charm, as is her sixteen-year-old daughter Dolly. Vita calls Sunday ‘Wife’ – no idea why – Rollo is Rols and Dolly is Doll. It’s like those people who refer to rugby as rugger, ‘Oh did you play rugger when you were up at Oxford, what.’ I’m not even sure how to use it in a sentence.

Vita arrives one day on Sunday’s doorstep, invites herself in and breaks every rule in Sunday’s etiquette handbook. Sometimes Vita turns up in an evening gown, at other times she’s wearing Rollo’s pyjamas with no underwear. She brings her little dog called Beast, smokes incessantly and assumes everyone adores her. Well I didn’t.

Sunday and Dolly are invited to Vita and Rollo’s Friday night dinner every week, where they drink copious amounts of Champagne (Sunday will only drink fizzy drinks), red wine and port. The menu includes hare (I remember my father cooking jugged hare and it smelled disgusting) and steak Tartare (in other words raw mince). My dad ate the latter as well.

I’m too squeamish, I’m afraid, to eat anything so ‘adventurous’, if that’s what you call it. Dolly is becoming increasingly frustrated with her mum, who has days where she only eats white food, and loves how Vita and Rollo have no such ‘issues’. Sunday has autism (about which I know very little), but neither her mother nor husband understood, just considered her outspoken, annoying and difficult. To Dolly she is just boring, while to Vita, Sunday is simply a means to an end.

I loved All The Little Bird-Hearts. It’s like poetry. The language is beautiful and lyrical and the author’s understanding of Sunday’s autism is both personal and sympathetic. But then Viktoria is also autistic and can write from her own extensive experience.

Of course, nowadays, it’s easy to criticise the lack of understanding of autism and neurodivergence, when information is out there for everyone to investigate. Thirty-plus years ago, it was misunderstood and someone like Sunday was considered too different and often inappropriate in her behaviour.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Kent, and has extensive personal, professional, and academic experience relating to autism. Like her protagonist, Viktoria is autistic. She has presented her doctoral research internationally, most recently speaking at Harvard College on autism and literary narrative. Viktoria lives on the Margate coast with her husband and children.