Bird Suit
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A tourist town folk tale of stifled ambition, love, loss, and the bird women who live beneath the lake.
Every summer the peaches ripen in Port Peter, and the tourists arrive to gorge themselves on fruit and sun. They don’t see the bird women, who cavort on the cliffs and live in a meadow beneath the lake. But when summer ends and the visitors go back home, every pregnant Port Peter girl knows what she needs to do: deliver her child to the Birds in a laundry basket on those same lakeside cliffs. But the Birds don’t want Georgia Jackson.
Twenty years on, the peaches are ripening again, the tourists have returned, and Georgia is looking for trouble with any ill-tempered man she can find. When that man turns out to be Arlo Bloom—her mother’s ex and the new priest in town—she finds herself drawn into a complicated matrix of friendship, grief, faith, sex, and love with Arlo, his wife, Felicity, and their son, Isaiah. Vivid, uncanny, and as likely cursed as touched by grace, Bird Suit is a brutal, generous story as sticky and lush as a Port Peter peach.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mythological creatures and strange relationships shape this beguiling debut novel from Hegele (after the collection The Pump). Georgia Jackson was born in the vacation town of Port Peter, Ontario, where unwed mothers like hers are expected to give their babies up to the Birds, feminine sirens who dwell on the cliffs above the lake. Georgia's mother initially left her with the Birds, but changed her mind. Now, in 2008, 22-year-old Georgia has entered into a sexual relationship with Anglican priest Arlo Bloom, whose wife, Felicity, has given her consent. Felicity is a rare birth daughter of one of the Birds and was in love with Arlo's twin sister until her suicide. Felicity only stays with the violently abusive Arlo to protect their son, Isaiah, a tender, poetry-loving 20-year-old. Georgia and Isaiah's friendship during her affair with Arlo leads to a shocking and tragic episode, which lays the groundwork for a final act set in 2019 that sees Georgia living a new life as a successful playwright in Toronto, having buried her traumatic memories because "what ceases to exist could not be painful." Hegele's distinctive style includes bulleted lists and wry observations ("Grief is a merciless matchmaker"). This unusual tale takes flight thanks to the beauty of its prose.
