{"id":4987,"date":"2014-06-09T11:23:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T11:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=4987"},"modified":"2014-06-27T11:11:42","modified_gmt":"2014-06-27T11:11:42","slug":"all-the-birds-singing-by-evie-wyld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=4987","title":{"rendered":"All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Vintage 19 June 2014 UK, PantheonUS
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208 pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Even the birds suffer in Wyld\u2019s second novel, a world of pain spread over both hemispheres. Brutality and anguish are explored in tinder dry Australia as well as on some small, cold, wet British island. Women are abused, animals are burned and gutted, arsonists threaten, dogs devour. This is a tormented, near-pitiless vision.<\/p>\n

At its heart stands Jake Whyte, a woman on the run from a sequence of dark events \u2013 a fire, a beating, a history of prostitution, incarceration by an abusive sheep farmer \u2013 all these narrated in reverse order, while the present-day, UK narrative runs chronologically. Strong and skilled with sheep but less good at human interaction, Jake has fled Australia to a small-holding in the UK and a life of self-protective isolation. But even here, there are torments and gothic threats. Something \u2013 or someone \u2013 is picking off Jake\u2019s flock, not perhaps the vagrant she finds lurking on her land, nor maybe the delinquent son of an adjacent farmer. But what, or who? And what exactly forced her into the terrible life she led down under?<\/p>\n

Part thriller, part psychological unravelling, Wyld\u2019s novel guards its secrets well. Named among Granta<\/em>\u2019s most recent list of best young novelists and now winner of the Miles Franklin Award, this author writes succinct, controlled prose and isn\u2019t afraid to focus unrelentingly on the dark side.<\/p>\n

The answer to the book\u2019s questions, when they come, don\u2019t entirely satisfy and the novel\u2019s conclusion arrives with more of a jolt than a resolution, nevertheless this is a tough, poetic and gripping account of a woman struggling to stay afloat in a man\u2019s world, by an author of evident talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n

Strong and skilled with sheep but less good at human interaction, Jake has fled Australia to a small-holding in the UK and a life of self-protective isolation. But even here, there are torments and gothic threats. Something \u2013 or someone \u2013 is picking off Jake\u2019s flock, not perhaps the vagrant she finds luring on her land, nor maybe the delinquent son of an adjacent farmer. But what, or who? And what exactly forced her into the terrible life she led down under? […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4987"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5192,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4987\/revisions\/5192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}