Thanks to Kallie at Penguin Michael Joseph for inviting me on the blog tour for ‘The Birdcage’ by Eve Chase. Thanks too for my review copy of the book – as always, opinions are entirely my own.
This book was published by Penguin Michael Joseph on 28th April, 2022 in hardback, ebook and audio formats.
My Review
“Whatever lies beneath this place is flexing – they all feel it.”
Three half-sisters return to the house where they spent their childhood summers, Rock Point on the dramatic Cornish coast. Invited by their famous artist father and tasked with clearing the house now their grandparents have gone, the girls arrive with trepidation and their own secrets – including what happened on the day of the 1999 solar eclipse. But someone else also remembers that day and is prepared to act to reveal the truth…
I came to this book with high hopes – one of Chase’s previous books, ‘The Glass House’, was a Sunday Times bestseller and selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club. Armed with only this knowledge and charmed by the beautiful book cover, in I went!
It’s fair to say that the book starts as a slow burner. We meet the three sisters (Lauren, Kat and Flora) as they converge on Rock Point at their father’s behest. Their shared father (all have different mothers) is the bond between them, something that meant they shared childhood summers at the house on the cliffs with their father and paternal grandparents. The memories aren’t all happy and there is a lot of tension bubbling beneath the surface.
The narrative cuts between the Finch family gathering (2019) and the events leading up to the 1999 solar eclipse. There are two mysteries revealed early on – the eclipse events and also the identity of the dead swimmer mentioned in a news report on the first page of the book (see, no spoilers here!) The dual timeline device works well , especially as the story is also told from multiple perspectives so the pieces of the puzzle are revealed tantalisingly slowly. I’d started to put together some of the revelations but some still blindsided me!
The reader is immediately drawn to Lauren who seems the odd-one-out among the three half-sisters. She seems to have suffered trauma in her life, not least the death of her beloved mother not long before the events of the novel. She is the most sympathetically-presented of the three – in comparison, Kat is spiky and driven, while Flora is trying to maintain a perfect facade in her marriage and motherhood.
This is very much a character-driven novel, and one of the most striking ‘characters’ is the house itself. It’s precarious, windswept location gives it a sinister edge and there is always the sense that the house holds as many secrets as the Finch family. I loved the evocative descriptions of this little corner of Cornwall and the sense of unease driven by the setting.
Despite a slower start and a focus on character, there are some genuinely tense moments in the novel – and the end of the novel packs a punch. I raced through the last 100 pages in particular in search of truth and redemption, something delivered in spades.
Overall, this is a gorgeously immersive and engaging book for those who like their family dramas with bucketloads of sinister secrets. It’s a satisfying tale, meticulously plotted, that reveals truths slowly, one that pulls the reader into the intriguing events of 1999 and the echoes still resonating in the present day. It’s vivid, beautiful and absorbing – and I loved it.
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Great review, Kate! I’m really loving the premise of this book, it sounds like a great and mysterious story. I also like that it’s about three half sisters and how the house is pretty much a character on its own.