Blog tour: All the Little Bird-Hearts

Welcome to the blog tour for All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow!

More about the book…

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.

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 other’s 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.

More 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.

My impressions…

I’ve long turned the last page of this book but the characters are still with me. That’s a good sign, surely? I’m not quite sure how to do any justice to this incredible debut novel. A novel that was so character-driven that I would have been happy even in the absence of a plot. The plot is there, though, and I am also happy about that! Sunday’s autism, her relationship with her daughter, her daughter’s fascination with what she sees as ‘normal’ behaviours in people who are ultimately strangers… the tension became almost palpable as I was reading. Unforgettable.

Three words to describe it. Poetic. Authentic. Phenomenal.

Do I like the cover? It’s so delicious I could eat it!

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, this is a dazzling debut!

 

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