Vita and the Birds is a beautifully delivered story with exquisite lyrical language and dream-inspired images. It breathes sadness as effortlessly as drawing salt air into your lungs. Entering this narrative portal is like opening the doors of an old building that has been closed up for years and forgotten. Now fresh winds, warming sunlight and liquid moonlight flow through each room and seep into the pages drawing out haunting secrets from the darkness into the light. To dispel sinister things lurking in the shadows so that tortured souls can be freed from cruel bondage. This is a riveting tale with more twists and turns that you can imagine for it takes you on a journey that demands your constant attention. It offers many clues you must gather to solve the complex puzzle. It is a novel about identity, mystery, love and sacrifice. Topics of abuse, forbidden relationships and lost children are present in the plot and fiercely pull on your tender heartstrings.
I was mesmerised by the Cathedral of Marshes descriptions. What a fascinating place! The comparisons, too, to vision and artwork. 'The fragmented sections in the painting reminded her of the way that everything was bent and warped when you look into a pool of deep water…it was that same sense of distortion as looking through the cathedral’s glass walls, the landscape a dreamworld beyond.’ When Vita looked at the artist’s painting, she saw that ‘It had been severed and sliced into geometric pieces. The sand, sea and sky a mosaic of fragments, a mathematical illusion.’ This reflects much of the story and its many parts of buried truth. Also what is real and what appears to be.
But I also was saddened by the events that happened within those unusual cathedral walls. There were some happy moments under the glass and green but the difficult circumstances that surrounded Vita, Dodie and Angela had me concerned and on the edge of my seat. The mystery artwork, the creative personalities, the lifelong bonds of two different families kept the plot rolling along and the interest sky high.
This haunting mystery set in two timelines of 1938 and 1997 was very easy to follow. The flow between the two eras was done with precision and no repetition. In the older timeline of 1938, we learn that Lady Vita Goldsborough has had a horrible existence living with her controlling older brother, Aubrey. There are whisperings of his inappropriate behaviour. Vita has been conditioned to obey him. But in her heart there is secret rebellion. Her love of birds sustains her through some very dark passages in her life. When she meets Dodie, an artist, who comes to the Cathedral of the Marshes to paint her, her loneliness diminishes. This woman artist shows her kindness, exposes her to new cultural ideas and boosts her courage. But this boldness and new thinking will be challenged by Vita's fearsome brother. He is determined to put her away in a psychiatric facility.
Fifty-nine years later, Eve loses her mother in a tragedy. Filled with grief, she heads to the coast where she spent her childhood summers with her grandmother, Dodie. Eve hopes to sort out her emotions and find comfort in familiar past surroundings. She finds a stack of letters sent to her grandmother and also a bird cage is left on her steps. What does all this mean? She meets an elderly woman who offers a substantial amount of money to paint her (Eve is an artist like his grandmother). Through accepting this commission, it takes her on a journey to the past, where she learns of secrets that will shake and alter her future. It will also release a long suppressed memory that her mind has tried to forget: an occurrence that happened in the Cathedral of the Marshes.
This novel swept me away to a stunning location with words that were often poetic and powerful. I enjoyed solving the puzzle (and it is definitely a mystery with lots of unexpected turns) and even though my writer brain worked out the answers ahead of their revelations from the clues, it was not an easy maze! I was moved, shaken, inspired and glad I read this amazing story. I highly recommend Vita and the Birds. And yes, there are some enchanting and wonderful passages about birds. As Vita says, ‘Birds are warm and alive, like us. And they answer back if you talk to them.’ 5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thanks to Harlequin Australia - HarperCollins and Netgalley for my review copy.
