ALL THE BIRDS, SINGING by Evie Wyld – A Review.

After a tricky start(the writing style took a bit of getting used too), I found myself in the day really looking forward to reading more of this book whenever I next got the chance. Jake Whyte the female Australian central character is odd, but odd in a good way, I came to really like her. Two thirds of the way through, I started to think of the glowing reviews I would write of this after I finished it. I picked it up with forty pages left to read, highly excited at unresolved issues being resolved, I had that familiar, ‘not wanting this book to end’ type feeling. When it was all over however, I was left feeling somewhat frustrated and confused. I wanted more from Wyld, there were too many unanswered questions that never got fully answered. It went from being a really good book, to a ‘just ‘alright’ book in a matter of moments, and for me this was a bit sad.

Do not get me wrong though, Wyld is clearly a great talent and the premise of the book is an original one. Jake Whyte  is a mysterious Australian sheep farmer who lives on fictional remote island in the UK somewhere. She is a loner, an outsider, and at the start just has her dog and her sheep for company. The start of the book sets the downcast tone of the entire piece as we are told of a sheep who has had it’s guts ripped out by some creature, together with her accidentally crushing a pigeon to death with her hands. Something keeps attacking her sheep which adds further to Jake’s already highly paranoid state. She sleeps with a gun in her bedroom and is convinced something or somebody is spying on her. Her more human side is shown when she converses with local older farmer called Don, who acts as a more or less kind of Father figure to her. We also see her hard edges further smoothed over when she comes in contact with a posh guy called Lloyd, she catches him sleeping in her barn.  This linear present day story is then told in counter balance to the one which tells us of Jake’s past, back in Australia when she was much younger. This second story can get rather confusing however. This is because it is told to us in reverse. By this I mean that at the start we read about her being the only woman in a sheep shearing station, where she has a loving relationship with a guy called Greg. By the end of this second story, we read about her at school, it just takes a bit of getting used too. In the second story we are told of an event which explains her current paranoia back in the UK, the fact that she has brutal scars on her back, and the fact that she worked as a prostitute for a time.

My main issue I have of this book however as previously stated, is that Wyld does not fill in the blanks for us at times, things I wanted coming to a resolution at the end are never resolved or told to us. She could have written a hundred pages more and done this, or even fifty would have done. Without spoiling it for people who have not read this yet, at the end there are remaining questions over this supposed creature who she thinks is attacking her sheep. Or maybe I am being thick here and Wyld wants us not to be certain about this, surmising it could just have been Jake’s mind playing tricks with her(she is extremely paranoid as I stated). It is revealed why Jake had to flee her family home back in OZ and run away, but it is not really explained to us why she had to move all the way to this remote UK village. After an initial scare of her secret/s coming out things settle down for her in Sheep Shearing Station.  I wanted her trip thousands of miles away explaining more, how did it come to that? Rather than going backwards all the time with the second story, I also wanted it to progress more. How did her and the likable charming Greg go their separate ways? Furthermore, I found the explanation behind the scars on her back a tad unconvincing if truth be told, I’m not sure I really believed such an event would have happened as we meant to believe it did.

In summary then, yes I enjoyed large sections of this book. Jake Whyte is a strong, ballsy female character with an interesting story to tell. Was I ever moved to tears by any of it, no, but that does not mean it was not gripping to read in parts either. It just lacked clarity in my opinion and I longed for further narrative development. It has been said many times about me that I am a very ‘black or white’ kind of person, there are never any grey areas with me, I like absolutes. I therefore guess I would frame this book as being not a clear black or a clear white, rather more a uncertain,unfulfilled grey…….and one thing I’m not too keen on in life is anything GREY. 3/5