Other Birds Summary

Other Birds Overview

 A pithy exploration of grief, Sarah Addison Allen’s Other Birds deploys elements of magical realism and speculative fiction as a means of interrogating the process of healing that follows loss. Set in the sleepy, individualistic town of Mallow Island, South Carolina, Allen’s novel examines the lives of several adult misfits attempting to find their place in the world in the wake of trauma and tragedy. Told in a shifting third-person perspective, with occasional first-person interludes from the island’s resident ghosts, Other Birds paints a broad but subtle portrait of the grieving process. Within its pages, Allen explores themes of grief, coming-of-age, parent-child relationships, ghosts, and feminism.