Book Review: Billy Bird

Fiction Book Review: Billy Bird by Emma Neale  

Emma Neale’s latest novel Billy Bird (Penguin Random House NZ 2016) is a bouncing, despairing examination of a loving family under stress. 

Into the warm circle created by Iris and Liam, and their small son Billy, comes Jason (Jace). Jace’s father, Liam’s brother, has cracked with the pain of his wife’s death from cancer, and has committed suicide. Iris and Liam take Jace in, and gradually their careful, sensitive love helps him to heal. Jace becomes their older son/nephew and Billy’s older brother/cousin. Then Jace dies. He is showing off on his bike, trying to make a girl laugh, and a car comes around the corner.

All three buckle. Billy takes refuge in a fantasy world where he is a bird, and as his parents struggle and fail to find an equilibrium, his bird-self becomes his preferred reality. Iris and Liam have no clue how to handle this.

I could not put this book down. I quickly came to care about these skilfully-drawn, recognisable people, and worried about them sufficiently to put the rest of life on hold while I travelled their path with them. They are easy to love. It is easy to have faith in them, to relate to their clumsy good intentions, their fragility, and the fragility and strength of their love. The heartbreak is real. And as in real life, there’s also laughter, where rollicking farce and the undiplomatic wit of a child offer humour at unseemly moments. There’s a budgie that barks like a dog. Iris and Liam make unashamed corny jokes that made me laugh, because I was so much on the inept joker’s side, and appreciated the courage behind the attempt.

Every character, main and minor, steps up in full human complexity, but Billy is a gem. Neale takes the reader into the intimate folds of each person’s mind, and so we know Billy’s not crazy. His bird-self makes a kind of sense, when you can follow his thinking and feeling. The other characters don’t have this privileged access. For his parents, and for his teachers, this could be a child falling over an edge. Iris and Liam are also on their own narrow ledges, and try to cope in ways not too dissimilar to Billy’s, but they use strategies that are more socially acceptable; they hide behind personae less beautiful, less creative, and with as much or as little success.

As in her poetry, Emma Neale is an insightful, compassionate writer. She is also honest. Catastrophe happens and not everyone survives. Afterwards, healing is difficult and needs time and patience. But the world she portrays is a good place. People mean well and, largely, do their best. Sometimes, they need help, but help can be found. I closed the book feeling that it was, among other things, a rich exploration of love and the multiple ways it works in society. This story has faith in love, even when it fails, because people, including children, keep trying to find a way.