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Tim O'Brien

829. Evie Wyld - All The Birds, Singing


A wonderful book, read it before (177 & 8) and still difficult.

So, just to help out any other baffled reader, the even numbered chapters are written in reverse chronology and follow Jake’s adolescence and teenage growing maturity in Australia where she begins by creating (unintentionally but carelessly) a murderous bush fire, is beaten across her back for this by the locals such that she is scarred for life, and runs away across Australia initially as a teenage prostitute, latterly as a sheep shearer.

You need to read the even chapters from 32 through 30 to 2 to follow this narrative. 1( I think) then begins on an island off the south coast of England where she has fled and is living as a reclusive sheep farmer and where something (never clear to me quite what) is killing her sheep.

The odd numbered chapters proceed in (I think) a chronological narrative and she seems to find love, with another weirdo, in the end.

I might understand it better at the next (4th) attempt. Strange contrast to no. 824 which I didn’t really enjoy at all and could have been by a completely different writer.


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