by Averi Long
February 17, 2022
Averi Long is an intern at West Trade Review and a recent graduate from Fairleigh Dickinson University where she studied Creative Writing and Psychology. She loves writing fiction and has also written book reviews for The Literary Review.
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The Danger and Joys of an Open Heart: Emme Lund’s The Boy With a Bird In His Chest
FICTION REVIEW
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Image by Biel Morro on Unsplash
The Boy with a Bird in His Chest by Emme Lund; Atria Books; 320 pages; $27
It can be hard to tell when you truly know another person. Even after years of friendship there’s still something new to discover: a secret to unravel, a story to share, a new depth visible only in just the right circumstances. So often, we hide important pieces of ourselves from one another.
In her debut novel, The Boy With a Bird In His Chest, Emme Lund’s protagonist, Owen, has a secret that he keeps from even his closest friends. He was born with a sparrow, named Gail, living right next to his heart. For Owen, growing up is even more complicated and frightening than it is for others. As a shy, sensitive kid, the world is not always a welcoming place for him. For a long time, he believes that Gail—who embodies all that makes him unique—makes him undeniably, irredeemably different from everyone around him. However, as Owen experiences more of the world, he finds that not everything he learned and believed as a child is true. The Boy With a Bird In His Chest is a coming of age story unlike anything readers will recognize; Lund’s imaginative characterization of her protagonists, along with her unusual imagery and world building, makes the novel fascinatingly different.
Until they are fourteen years old, Owen’s mother keeps Owen and Gail hidden away, warning them never to leave the house because she is terrified that Owen will be discovered and taken away by a member of The Army of Acronyms. The Army of Acronyms includes people with authority in society, such as doctors and police officers, who call people with animals inside them—like Owen—Terrors. Eventually though, there’s a forest fire that puts Owen in danger and forces his mother to take him away from the only home he has ever known. Owen is left to live with his mom’s brother and his cousin, where he will finally have the space to face both great danger and great joy, as he becomes more fully himself.
Throughout the novel, one of the most defining qualities of Lund’s writing is the vulnerability with which she characterizes her protagonists. None of Owen’s internal world is kept from the reader because the narrator is so close to Owen and, also, because, when there is any room for doubt, his emotions are communicated through Gail. The relationship between these two is complex and difficult to describe in just a few words, but this much seems true: Gail represents Owen’s essence, his instinct, and his sexuality. She symbolizes what makes him different and what makes him human. When feeling her best, Gail is excitable, talkative, funny, and certainly not someone who would be very easy to hide. Upon meeting one of his cousin’s friends at the beach, the narrator tells us, “[Comet] placed a hand on Owen’s arm. Light-headed again. Electricity. Gail moved around in Owen’s chest and he worried she would knock around like she used to, bump into his lungs and stomp on his heart.” Instead of using internal dialogue, like a more conventional author might, Lund often uses conversation between Gail and Owen, or even Gail’s physical reactions as a way of expressing Owen’s thoughts.
Lund often uses magical realism when shaping Owen’s world, which makes everything new and strange, not only for Owen, but for the reader as well. Some of the magical elements within Lund’s otherwise realistic world are more quickly noticeable, such the existence of Owen, and others who have animals in their bodies like him, or even the supernatural pull toward water that Owen feels throughout his life. However, the magical elements subtly bleed into Lund’s descriptions and imagery as well. When Owen thinks of another boy from his school who he is beginning to fall in love with, he sometimes feels a stinging in his palm, calling the reader back to the day when the two of them walked down the beach, rescuing jellyfish and getting venom on their hands. After an encounter with the same boy one day in the woods, the narrator says that, “Owen watched the space where [the boy] and his horse had been. A man-sized hole…Owen couldn’t explain it but there was something gentle and quiet there.” It’s often with these magical details that Lund makes Owen’s experiences as unexpected for the reader as they are for Owen.
The reader is with Owen for many of his firsts: his first time discovering music that moves him, his first time seeing the ocean, his first time making a friend, his first time falling in love. Each new experience brings him a little closer to knowing how to exist in the world and how to “take up space” in his own way. In the first part of his story, he searches for the answers to these questions even before he leaves home, when he observes a group of boys in the forest: “Even from the tree he could see that they knew they belonged in that field, in the world. He couldn’t fathom taking up space like that, not caring if you were noticed.” Before the end of his story, Owen must decide if he is willing to be noticed, willing to risk being seen by his friends, by the boy from school that he eventually falls in love with, and even by others, so that he can exist in the world as he was always meant to.
The Boy With a Bird In His Chest is a coming of age story just as wonderfully unusual as its protagonists, Owen and Gail. With her openhearted storytelling, Emme Lund pulls readers into a world that is both dangerous and magical. It’s impossible not to root for Owen as he grows and finds his place in the world as a boy with a bird in his chest, as a boy who loves another boy, and as a person who deserves to “take up space.”
