Other Birds

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Pigeon gave a crisp coo from the garden, as if to say this move hadn’t been Pigeon’s idea, so Zoey was on her own. Allen continues to serve heaping helpings of the fantastic and the familiar in fiction she describes as "Southern-fried magic realism." Clearly, it's a recipe readers are happy to eat up as fast as she can dish it out. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. Oh, joy of joys! A new book by Sarah Addison Allen, and Other Birds is her best yet! Dark and sweet, brutal and wise, full of delectable food and plenty of meddling ghosts, and soaked with an abiding tenderness and hope. One of my favorite books this year." —Barbara O’Neal, author of Write My Name Across the Sky and When We Believed in Mermaids year-old Zoey moves from Tulsa to Mallow Island in South Carolina months before she starts college. The island holds a special place in Zoey’s heart, as it is where her mother lived when she first immigrated from Cuba. Zoey moves into her mother’s studio in a quirky condo community, Dellawisp Condo, named after the dellawisp birds that call the grounds home. When one of the residents dies, the building works in mysterious ways to bring the residents together.

As soon as they were off the bridge, the cabdriver took a left and traveled down a two-lane highway that skirted the perimeter of the island. The water, dense with reedy vegetation, ended just inches from the pavement. But it didn’t seem to bother the drivers of cars with out-of-state license plates. They zipped along confidently, following decorative metal signs that read: Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, Allen attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville and graduated with a degree in literature. [3] I was impressed by the twists that turn up in the story. What initially felt like it might be too lightweight, added depth as it went on. The theme, that of a family made, not borne, might be common, but it always rings true to me.

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My last audio was amazing, but dark. I needed an audio that would brighten my spirits, and Sarah Addison Allen’s “Other Birds” received consistently high marks for “charming” and quirky. Sounds like a winner! But the connections these characters share extend far beyond the walls of The Dellawisp and exist neither on earth nor in the afterlife. They lie somewhere in between, where only birds can reach them. As Frasier explains to Zoey about the magic of the dellawisps, “There are birds, and then there are other birds. Maybe they don’t sing. Maybe they don’t fly. Maybe they don’t fit in. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be an other bird than just the same old thing.” As Allen proves in her tender and enchanting novel, each of her characters is an other bird. But seeing it will mean sharing their stories with one another, no matter how haunted or haunting.

Steelman, Ben (Sep 2, 2007). "A Magical Tale of Flirting and Flora". Star-News . Retrieved 3 November 2013. Zoey is immediately mesmerized by the beauty of the island and it’s unusual birds, the Dellawisps! They are beautiful and very vocal turquoise birds. Zoey has traveled with her bird, called simply Pigeon, and is anxious to move into the condo. She loves the beauty of the condo but was hoping to find some signs of her mother, Paloma, there, but she does not.

Sarah Addison Allen

Zoey is 18 and right out of high school when she comes to claim her mother’s condo at the Dellawisp, on Mallow Island off of Charleston, SC. Zoey’s a bit of an oddball, with an invisible parrot as her only friend. She sets out to meet her neighbors, including a chef, a henna artist, the condo manager and two reclusive old sisters. Oh, and the place is also haunted by ghosts that are bound to the various individuals. On the other side of the country, a young man finds himself without a job or means and decides to return home.