Who were these people? Where was all this joy, and where does joy go when it leaves your family? Does it go to someone else's family, soak into the earth, or does it dissolve away like your breath in the winter? And if it doesn't leave like this, then why isn't there any left for me?įor the majority of the book, there is a very languid sort of pace- slow, but a pace that suits the story perfectly. There's an innocence to the narrative voice which makes it that much more poignant. We see her attempt to communicate with her mute grandfather as he shuts the door to his room. We see her trying to get her parents to really see her as she is, to stop seeing her as the shadow of a boy already lost. Of course, most, if not all books would really fall into both categories, but if you were to sort every book into one category only, I feel like Bird would fall into the latter.īird is about the struggle of one girl, Jewel, to find and forge her own identity in a house full of people chasing after the ghost of her dead brother. I feel like you can basically categorise books into two really general categories: books that purely entertain and books that are supposed to make you think. Grandpa stopped speaking the day he killed my brother, John. And that maybe the time has come to break through the stagnant silence of the past.Įntrenched secrets, mysterious spirits, and an astonishing friendship weave together in this extraordinary and haunting debut. Grandpa is convinced that the boy is a duppy, but Jewel knows that he is something more. Jewel is sure that no one will ever love her like they loved Bird, until the night that she meets a mysterious boy in a tree. Now Jewel is twelve, and she lives in a house full of secrets. Her parents blame Grandpa for the tragedy of their family’s past they say that Grandpa attracted a malevolent spirit-a duppy-into their home. Jewel never knew her brother Bird, but all her life she has lived in his shadow.

Bird by Crystal Chan