I listened to this book in audiobook format.

This novel is about a mother (likely autistic) and her teenage daughter in mid-late 1900s England. A flamboyant and warmly inviting couple move in next door and befriend, and then envelop, the mother and daughter. But they are not entirely what they seem. The novel is an astute and unorthodox social commentary, since it is narrated by the autistic mother. It is a subtle psychological thriller. And it is about a woman coming into her own even though she is different and disapproved of by society. I really enjoyed listening to this book. The performer is excellent. Much of the narration focuses on dialect, intonations, and accents, so I am unsure how this would come across is paper copy. ( )

People who perform on instinct do not keep vast libraries of information in their heads. They do not concentrate in company as if taking an important exam. They do not need to shut down frequently and turn off all the lights to find relief. And even then, find that peace does not come.

Sunday is living in a small town in the Lake District of England, divorced and with a 16 year old daughter she loves deeply, but is also somewhat in awe of. Sunday is easily overwhelmed, needs her foods to be white, or at least pale, and has trouble navigating relationships, despite frequently turning to a book of etiquette. It's the 1980s, so while in a later time, she'd be labeled autistic, here she's mostly thought of as peculiar or difficult. Her refuge is her work, in the greenhouse of her ex-husband's farm. Then a new couple moves into the house next door and Vita sweeps Sunday into the heady whirlwind of her erratic life. It's not a friendship that should work, but Vita is so self-centered and her husband so eager to keep everyone having a good time that it all works and before long, both Sunday and her daughter are centering their lives around this couple. Which works so well until it doesn't.

This is gorgeously written book told from the point of view of a woman for whom the world is a frightening and hostile place, but who nevertheless keeps trying to find a way to belong. She is both keenly observant, as a survival tactic, and utterly unaware of much of what is going on around her. There's a sense of rising dread in this book, something the reader can see coming, but not clearly, because we're seeing the world through Sunday's eyes, and how the author managed to do that is astonishing from a debut novelist. ( )

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

I need to really sink into the idea of it to really chew over what I got out of it. I really sympathized with the main character, being the one in a family who is sensitive and overstimulated and watching others exist around you in constant motion. All in all, an interesting story, that I think could have been fleshed out further. ( )

Reason read; it was long listed for Booker. I don't know why other than that I chose to read this but I enjoyed it! It is a story of an autistic woman and mother of a daughter. And I now find that the author is also autistic and that this is a debut novel. Sunday basically raises her child alone though she is employed by her ex-in laws farm. Her daughter Dolly does receive support from them but they basically don't acknowledge Dolly's mother as part of the family. A strange couple inveigles themselves into Sunday's and by extension into Dolly's life. There is something sinister in this relationship. The writing is a window to the struggles that an autistic person puts into deciphering the world. Sunday is a heroic narrator who you love to know and cheer on. She is a survivor. This was a really good novel for a debut novel. ( )

For good reason, Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow's All the Little Bird-Hearts was included on the 2023 Booker Prize longlist. The novel's main character, Sunday Forrester, is autistic and lives alone with her sixteen-year-old daughter Dolly, a teen who is starting to explore the outside world on her own - something her autistic mother has never been capable of doing easily. Sunday is the novel's narrator, and everything that happens is seen and recounted via her individual way of looking at the world. It all seems very real to the reader thanks in no small part to the fact that author Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow is herself autistic.

Sunday is surprised one day to find a woman confidently sunbathing in the garden next door because Tom, her neighbor, had not told her to expect anyone in his absence. Little did Sunday know that she was beginning "The Year of Vita," or that in a few months she would barely remember the life she was living before meeting Vita on that fateful day. Within days, Sunday and Vita became "best friends," and Sunday and Dolly were joining Vita and her husband for regular Friday night dinners. Dolly, sensing a certain kinship spirt with the new neighbor, succumbed to Vita's charms just as quickly as her mother had done.

And that was the problem.

Lloyd-Barlow's characters are all flawed in unique and individual ways, some more likable than others, but all of them so vividly imagined that they seem as real to reader's as their own neighbors and friends. Some characters understand themselves, some don't; some are weak enablers of bad behavior on the part of others; and some are just doing the best they can to make it from one day to the next.

Sunday is one of the ones who knows exactly who she is:

"My mind is an electrical and involuntary force. Everything touches many, many other things, and these points of intersection are the only way in which the world can be properly understood.
I remain convinced there is a universal code to be broken, a pattern to be understood...What would it be to live without the laborious work of translation, to hear and instantly know what you have heard."

Too, Sunday's way of seeing the world results in an unforgettable description of the behavior she observes in Vita, behavior she sees as being very bird-like:

"I see that my frequent muteness was a convenience to someone who was soft-feathered and sharp-eyed. And who sang away to herself in my presence, happily and without interruption, for she knew I had no song with which to call back...Birds have traditionally been banned from Italian households, whether as pets, paintings, or ornaments. They are believed to bring the Evil Eye...I would not have knowingly allowed even the image of a bird into my home, however beautiful. But I lived for and loved a bird-heart that summer; I only knew it afterwards."
All the Little Bird-Hearts is very much a psychological drama, one in which the pressure is turned up on Sunday - and on the reader - so gradually that imminent dangers are never anticipated until it is too late to do much about them. The construction of the novel's plot is as clever and fascinating as the deep dive into the mind of a character like Sunday Forrester. If you enjoy well written psychological drama, this is one you should not miss. ( )