All the Little Bird-Hearts
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023
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3.9 • 14 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
*LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023*
*WINNER OF THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2024*
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE SOCIETY OF AUTHORS ADCI LITERARY AWARD*
'Delicate and strong... I loved it' Maggie O'Farrell'
'Darkly vivacious... mesmerising' Guardian
'Immaculate' Financial Times
'A triumph' Daily Telegraph
For readers who loved Sorrow and Bliss or Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - an unforgettable story of a mother and daughter whose lives are upended when a charming new couple move in next door.
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, teenaged daughter.
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 beneath Vita's charm lies a desperation and a certain entitled ambition - to have a daughter just like Dolly, all to herself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British writer Lloyd-Barlow debuts with a gorgeous story of an autistic mother knocked off course by a whirlwind new friendship and her daughter's coming-of-age. In 1988, divorcee Sunday leads a steady and regimented life in the English countryside with her 16-year-old daughter Dolly. Sunday's routines include only eating foods that are colored white, working at her former in-laws' greenhouse, and a fixation on Sicilian traditions. Her attempts to better understand social behavior are upended when wealthy, unpredictable Vita moves in next door. Soon, Vita sweeps Sunday and Dolly into weekly dinners with her husband, Rollo, and Sunday comes to believe that Vita is the first person to fully accept her since her older sister, Dolores, died when Sunday was a teen. What she doesn't realize is that Vita and Dolly have been covering up their plans for Dolly to join Rollo's home renovation business. The revelation leads Sunday to second-guess Vita's charms and intentions, though she feels powerless to intervene. Lloyd-Barlow's portrayal of Sunday's contentment and confusions makes for deeply humanizing autistic representation, and her prose is arrestingly sharp. This auspicious debuts brims with quiet tragedies and lush emotional landscapes.
Customer Reviews
How to lose a daughter
Very humorously written story about a neurodiverse lady “Sunday”, who is getting to know her next door neighbour Vita, who is rather eccentric, charming and somewhat reckless. They become friends, only for Vita then to draw Sunday’s teenage daughter Dolly into her circle and start to almost posess her.
The few men in the story are all vain and rather irrelevant.
Themes are mother-daughter-relationship, loyalty, discrimination of “otherness”, class divide and coming-of-age.
I found it an intriguing, rewarding read, shocking in times…
The daughter
I read this book on reading the reviews.. it's written well although there's a lot of peripheral writing that's not completely necessary.
I absolutely hated the daughter all the way through. She was selfish. I still don't like her even in the end. Her poor Mother. Vita was so false too. The only ones I liked was the main character and her deaf friend. Only rated the book 4 because it is written well. The story made me angry.