Birding is a multilayered and reflective novel that focuses on two middle aged women, exploring the very different lives that have taken them to this point in time and location, in a run down town on the southern English coast, off season.
While Lydia has lived a life of apparent freedom and relative independence, after being a teen star in a 90s band, Joyce has had a locked-in life smothered by a manipulative, demanding mother.
Lydia is there to stay with her ex-bandmate Pandora, trying to recapture their old friendship while picking through her feelings after being overwhelmed when her ex, Henry, released a #metoo apology that sheds new light on their past relationship and forces her to face her past and the meaning of ‘consent.’
There must be millions upon millions of middle-aged women who find themselves in a similar state today. You see, back then (Lydia is looking back on the 90s, but what about the 80s, 70s and 60s?), ‘consent’ wasn’t a thing. ‘Consent’ was a term from the past: it was, mostly, what fathers used to give their daughters’ suitors. Permission to marry. In the mid- to late 20th century, ‘consent’ was not something one thought about much. Back then, we thought about how cool we were (or weren’t). We placed ourselves on a scale of coolness and defined our position there by the clothes we wore, the music we listened to, the friends we hung out with and the men we spent time with. It was ‘cool’ to be a bit wild and rebellious, daring, and attractive to [older] men. And when things went beyond our comfort zone, sometimes far, far beyond, we retreated, licked our wounds in private and blamed ourselves. Many, many girls and women found themselves like balloons on a string. We knew we didn’t want to live the constrained lives of earlier generations of women. We found a sense of freedom and power within a discourse of feminism. We tried to feel that we were the ones holding our own strings, while actually being buffeted from one emotional/sexual experience to another, lacking the vocabulary to pin down and define what we truly wanted. Drawn to the images of freedom that surrounded us (from Woodstock and free love to David Bowie, punk, etc.), while still totally brainwashed by generations of insistence on the need to be polite and submissive.
Assault was [still] something that was never talked about. So girls and women who were assaulted didn’t have the opportunity or the words to admit to it. Even in their own minds. Unable, at the deepest level, to distinguish between consent, ambivalence and resistance. Unable to even ask the question.
Of course, not all women were Lydias. And why were some women Lydias while some became Joyces? There are many different flavours of subjugation.
To get back to the story, Lydia finds herself suddenly facing an uprising of feelings hitherto repressed, as she questions her whole past. Joyce is at a different type of crossroads, slowly emerging from a stifling relationship with her abusive, controlling mother.
It’s a fascinating contrast: one woman emerging from control to freedom, another struggling to build a sense of control out of a rootless life. Both trying to examine their past and redefine themselves on today’s terms.
Birding is wonderfully constructed and beautifully written, and is asking so many of the right questions about submission, subjugation and what free self-expression could look like. Questions that we are only now starting to find the words for.
All this makes the novel sound ponderous. It’s not. It’s interesting, immersive and at times very funny. Some of the characters are horrible (Joyce’s mother, oh god!) but mostly feel very real and true.
In many ways, it’s a 5-star novel. I take it down to 4 stars as the whole storyline around Pandora’s daughter Laurence didn’t really work for me; While the social commentary blends lightly into the rest of the novel, this thread is more clumsy. Still, in the larger context of all this novel has to offer, it’s a minor quibble.
Thank you to @NetGalley_UK, @roseruane and @corsairpublishing for giving me a free copy of this book. All my reviews are 100% honest and unbiased, regardless of how I acquire the book.
#birding #roseruane #NetGalley_UK #bookreview #MeToo #corsairpublishing
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