In All the Little Bird-Hearts, debut novelist Viktoria Lloyd Barlow has created a richly drawn psychological drama set in the late 1980s about a woman, Sunday Forrester, who is autistic.
The novel is set in 1988 before autism was as widely diagnosed as it is today.
As readers, we pick up subtle clues about Sunday’s neurodivergence. For example, she only eats white food–things like white fish and rice. She doesn’t like to look at clocks. She can’t always interpret facial expressions.
An etiquette handbook helps guide her through social situations.
This research comes in handy when the glamorous Vita and Rollo move in next door.
They arrive and upend the life Sunday managed with her teen-aged daughter Dolly–named after Sunday’s late sister Dolores.
We learn about Sunday’s ex-husband, her job in the greenhouses on the farm of her former in-laws and the ways she likes the attention she seems to be getting from Vita, her neighbor. Vita is glamorous and cosmopolitan. But there is one thing she just doesn’t have. A daughter.
The first-person narration in this novel takes us right into the mind of Sunday–into the mind of this autistic woman who is a mother, who loves, and who is just who she is.
Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow is the author of 'All the Little-Bird Hearts.' It was longlisted for a 2023 Booker Prize.
