All the Birds, Singing

All the Birds, Singing is big like the sun on an Australian summer day, bare like a newly shorn sheep’s skin, cooing softly and then screaming loudly like the birds that are its namesake.

Jake, independent and unapologetic, buys a farmhouse on a British island. It’s the rustic type of place where a strong-shouldered woman tending sheep herself is suspect. Jake accepts her outcast status, talking to her dog, Dog, for company. But someone (or something?) is killing her sheep, mauling them at night. She isn’t shocked by the violence; as we see, she’s grown tough. The story alternates between Jake’s life on the island and the life she has left behind, a hazy, angry history.

Just when Jake’s lone tale becomes almost too much to bear, an endearing Englishman appears in her barn. Jake reluctantly opens her home to this odd man. They make a wonderful pair, as his oblivious charm begins to penetrate her stern aura.

All The Birds, Singing is an unexpected page-turner. It’s a literary mystery about sheep-shearing, about all the beasts in this world, and how we come to call so many imperfect creatures our own.