5/ 5 Stars – Birdie excels the norm of storytelling.
Lindberg’s novel is dark, humorous, heartbreaking and twisting. Bernice “Birdie” Meetos’ life is brilliantly given life and sometimes even becomes an internal complicated life. This coming of age novel is a staple of the passage from childhood to adulthood, in which resonates for all of us. Although the story’s specifics are remote to our own experiences, the story of Birdie can make you understand her struggle and find ways to relate to you. Birdie’s reality is living with the painful experience of sexual abuse.It is her painful legacy that she lives as a Cree woman.
Birdie was born and spent her life on a reserve in northern Alberta. She is sent to Christian school there, foster care, and a psychiatric hospital, eventually she ends up living on the streets of Edmonton. She later in her life moves to Gibsons in British Columbia. She moves there in hope of meeting a native actor whom she had loved and idolized as a teenager. Throughout the entire book, she lives in a room above Lola’s Little Slice of Heaven, which is a bakery where she works in Gibsons. She then, in her waking dreams, begins to deal with her emotional and sexual abuse she endured as a child and the death of her mother.
Now, the book is very hard to follow. The timeline and plot are so difficult to follow, they move between the past and the present of Bernice’s dreams in the spirit world. The book’s strength lies within the small moments, especially when Birdie is reflecting on her childhood. It is brilliantly done with metaphoric and figurative images that the words give.
Lindberg is a Cree woman and Métis lawyer and a professor of law and indigenous studies at two universities. I believe she is the most important voice of the First Nations in Canada.She has a distinct way of telling a sadly and familiar story.She incorporates Cree folklore and oral tradition into the story’s language. Although we are reading a dark story, she often hints to earthly humor. She also isn’t graphic when it came to writing Bernice’s past and confrontations with her uncle, who from an early age had abused Bernice.She vividly conveys Bernice’s psychological damage.
My favorite aspect of this book was the fact that I was finally hearing a voice that isn’t often heard - a woman’s voice, an abused victim’s voice, and a Native American’s voice. This is the novel Canada has been waiting for and Americans should look for more unheard voices, rather than always allowing the same voices to tell stories. Being a Hispanic-American, I am so inspired by Bernice’s story. Lindberg invited the read to share Bernice’s struggle and psychological state, only to find the biggest meaning of love, hope and happiness. Being Canada’s Reads Finalist of 2016 I did expect a traditional novel, in which the characters start at a point and end in a very different part. Being that this novel is a non-linear or not traditional novel, I can’t describe this book in any way but beautiful. I have never described a book as beautiful but this was a beautifully well told novel. Lindberg told this novel as if she was telling the novel through the traditional storytelling of her Cree people.
