A review by jayshay
Birdbrain by Johanna Sinisalo

2.0

Can a book cheat? Sure all novels are constructions. The author is building something to cause an effect. A book that effectively manipulates a reader is a successful one. But is there an onus to be honest?

I think I came into this with too much in the way of genre expectations. The book is set up like a thriller. There is much forboding. There are endless Heart of Darkness quotes. There is a little brother who is a complete anti-social little fuck. Even at 50 pages from the end I was waiting for the various threads to collide. But in the end the book doesn't cohere except in the most random, understated, pat way: nature will have its revenge. Frustratingly, the little brother turns magically into the kea bird or a merciless, angry symbol of nature. The problem is that it feels so much like a writerly creation that it didn't resonate for me. Sinisalo is a wonderful author and watching the characters circle around each other and survive is worth the read, but the end is a cake that didn't rise, a gun that didn't go off, an acorn that didn't grow.

I was gripped all the way through, but I feel like Sinisalo did a bait-and-switch on me at the end. Ha, ha! It was nature all along! How surprising! Not really. The constant bits about the Kea bird drove home that much of the mischievous disappearances were possibly benign, but Sinisalo countered that with the possibility of sociopathic little brother shadowing and fucking with the couple. That at the end she waved her authorly wand and combined bird and brother to make nature have its revenge on these two hikers was far too convenient to make a satisfying story.