Review: The Birdcage by Eve Chase

Being one of five half-siblings (seven, if you count my half-siblings’ half-siblings), a story about the dynamics that occur when you’re related but spend a lot of time apart from your closest family struck especially close to the bone. The Birdcage by Eve Chase is about the daughters of famed artist, Charlie Finch, and their summer together up to the time of the solar eclipse in 1999. It’s told in parallel with the sisters in 2019, coming together to their father’s house again for the first time since that summer. Together, the sisters work through the trauma of what happened twenty years ago, and let go of the family secrets they’ve been guiltily holding on to all that time.

The blurb sells The Birdcage as something of a gothic mystery — a family coming together to a creaky old house to discover long-buried secrets. In actuality, while there are gothic moments, The Birdcage is much more comfortable exploring the lives of women and women as they appear to their families in the 21st century. It’s at its strongest when showing the juxtaposition between the front these women have to put on to appear a success in their father’s eyes, and the threads of their lives that are rapidly unravelling.

Chase’s writing is beautiful, and she has a clear and true understanding of this kind of family dynamic. Her characters are well-realised, and their pain is visceral. She’s very good at showing the scabs that family secrets leave, and the catharsis of picking those scabs off and finally letting the wounds heal, even if it means everything is raw and bloody for a while.

The mysteries themselves are perhaps less cryptic than I might have hoped. I felt like I had a good grip of ‘what had happened’ before the reveals were made. For me, the joy was more in how the characters reacted to revelations than in my own pleasure at having been hoodwinked. Readers looking for mystery before emotion might be disappointed.

Overall, I would recommend The Birdcage to those who love twisting, complicated family dynamics, and books which think about how secrets change lives.

The Birdcage by Eve Chase is out now and can be purchased in your preferred format from its publisher’s store.

With thanks to the publishers and Netgalley.co.uk for providing a free e-advance review copy.