Friendship isn’t a concept that Frances Bird knows very well; she’s always been alone at school and her home life isn’t happy either, living with her strict grandmother and her grandfather, whose memory is disappearing before their eyes. Frances had lost all hope of her life improving when she is asked to take the new girl under her wing by her teacher.
This girl is the bubbly, posh and always eccentric Alberta Fitzroy-Black, who immediately takes a liking to Frances, nicknaming her Birdy. Much to Frances’s surprise, they form a close bond rapidly. Alberta (Bert) needs Frances’s help to navigate the school as she was previously home-schooled and Frances needs Bert as she is the primary source of happiness in her life. Their friendship is intense and Frances will do whatever it takes to keep it.
The concept of this book really interested me; I had never thought about obsessions in a friendship context, in my experience, it’s usually played out within a romantic relationship. Immediately I was curious about how it would all end so that really helped me get into the book.
Frances is a really interesting narrator, I didn’t warm to her but you don’t necessarily need that to enjoy the book. When it works, unreliable narrators can make a reading experience ten times more interesting, it works in Gone Girl, We Were Liars and it certainly works here. Despite not being the narrator, Alberta is actually the most likable character in the book for me and due to her naïve but excitable nature.
Some of the questions that the book left open were pretty easy to guess and so the revelations at the end weren’t very surprising. However the events at the end were a lot more dramatic than I anticipated, perhaps a little too much but I found it very entertaining and satisfying to read. I really liked the themes of old age running through the book and the description Frances’s home life helped put her situation in perspective. It gave it another level of depth and brings to light a subject that isn’t really talked about in YA fiction.
Overall, this book is really enjoyable to read and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys looking at the psychological side of relationships or really anyone who is curious about this concept!
- Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
