Critics' Opinion:
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Published Apr 2014
240 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists, a stunningly insightful, emotionally powerful new novel about an outsider haunted by an inescapable past: a story of loneliness and survival, guilt and loss, and the power of forgiveness.
Jake Whyte is living on her own in an old farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rain and battering wind. Her disobedient collie, Dog, and a flock of sheep are her sole companions, which is how she wants it to be. But every few nights something - or someone -picks off one of the sheep and sounds a new deep pulse of terror. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, and rumors of an obscure, formidable beast. And there is also Jake's past, hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, held in the silences about her family and the scars that stripe her back - a past that threatens to break into the present.
With exceptional artistry and empathy, All the Birds, Singing reveals an isolated life in all its struggles and stubborn hopes, unexpected beauty, and hard-won redemption.
"Searing... It is a testament to Wyld's vivid storytelling that readers will feel determined to drag themselves through her tale's more unsavory moments to its final revelation." - Publishers Weekly
"A riveting novel... Jake is both haunted by the past and struggling with the present, and the intensity of Wyld's sharp novel grows as the two threaten to collide." - Booklist
"Wyld has ordained a permanently dark life for her protagonist, a stubborn fate that offsets the surprises and the reader's enjoyment." - Kirkus
"A tremendous achievement... A dark, powerfully disturbing and beautifully observed story... almost Nabokovian in its structural intricacy." - New Statesman (UK)
"Outstanding... Evie Wyld is the real thing... She reconfigures the conventions of storytelling with a sure-footedness and ambition which belie her age... Quite as good as Ian McEwan's early fiction." - The Spectator (UK)
"Extraordinarily accomplished, one of those books that tears around in your cerebellum like a dark firework, and which, upon finishing, you immediately want to pick up again." - Financial Times(UK)
"An intensely involving tale of survival, shot through with Wyld's distinctive wit... An indelible and atmospheric novel that will have the hairs on the back of your neck working overtime." - Daily Mail(UK)
"For once, the hype matches the talent... Wyld's writing seems to come from somewhere deep somewhere a little bit unnerving." - The Sunday Times(UK)
"Vividly drawn... When the birds do 'sing,' and Jake's primal tragedy is revealed, it is clever and very unexpected indeed." - The Guardian(UK)
This information about All the Birds, Singing was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Fiona Fletcher
Evie Wyld was born in London and grew up in Australia and South London. She studied creative writing at Bath Spa and Goldsmiths University. Her first novel, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, the Commonwealth Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin literary award. In 2013 she was included on Granta Magazine's once a decade Best of Young British Novelists list.
Her second novel All the Birds, Singing won the Miles Franklin Award, the Encore Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Sky Arts Times Breakthrough Award and longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Bailey's Women's Prize for ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Evie Wyld's Website
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