Birdy is utterly chilling. As much as it’s a brilliantly written book, it’s also a genuine experience. I know that’s a cliché, but Birdy deserves every cliché simply because it’s excellent.
It catapults the reader into the terrifying experience of not being able to trust your own instincts. I wish that I could elaborate on that, but Birdy will surprise you, and I’d be doing you an injustice if I didn’t let you discover that for yourself.
It’s not the kind of book you’ll read more than once: it’s disturbing, and it’s strange, and it’s ever so slightly psychotic, but most of all it’s unlike anything you’ll probably have ever read. It packs so much punch and so much emotion, that reading it just once is more than enough!
I think anyone who’s read Birdy’s synopsis expects the same thing. Birdy is a story about obsession. It’s a story about one girl, Frances, who doesn’t feel particularly special; she’s a bit of a loner, and there’s not much that makes her stand out. Until she becomes best friends with a new girl, Bert, who has a dangerous past and a strange present. And from that, we all draw the same conclusion, and expect the plot to follow exactly that conclusion. (I realise I’m being irritatingly vague, but read it! You’ll see why!)
A few chapters in, you expect the same conclusion.
Halfway through, you expect the same conclusion.
Three quarters of the way in, you get a bit uncomfortable, start to doubt yourself. But you still expect the same conclusion.
Then you get to the last couple of pages, and everything you expected is completely blown apart.
I’m currently in the process of persuading my mum to read the book, who’s slightly put off by my description that I feel fits Birdy nicely: “It’s disturbing and it freaked me out and I don’t even know how I feel, but what I do know is that it’s insanely good.”
Birdy makes you doubt yourself, it makes you not trust your judgements, but it’s also a strand of YA I haven’t seen before. It pushes boundaries I was unaware of, and it’s almost rebellious in the the sense of the plot. I didn’t like the characters from the offset, but they almost weren’t meant to be likeable – however they were compelling, and Frances’s voice is convincing and real and engrossing, and the story flies off the page, giving you a slap in the face, making you want more and making you so utterly confused. Vallance’s writing is a voice of creative addiction, you don’t want to read the next page, you need to read the next page.
It’s not a hugely long book, but it doesn’t need to be, it’s expertly written in such a way that is succinct and haunting and brilliant. I’d thoroughly recommend this to you, on the warning that you should prepare for the last couple of pages. Birdy is unapologetic. Quite literally.
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