Library Journal - Audio
06/01/2022
In Lund's debut, teenager Owen has a bird named Gail in his chest. It will be obvious to listeners that being a Terror—someone with an animal inside them—is a metaphor highlighting society's prejudices. However, the novel doesn't use this as an excuse to erase representation within the narrative. This is a coming-of-age tale where one's true self is accepted and celebrated even though the characters live in a rough world where abusive families and bigotry attempt to crush them. Narrator Nicky Endres has incredible range, sometimes making listeners want to double-check whether there aren't multiple narrators. While they perform most of the main characters in more similar, though still distinguishable, voices, the character most elevated by Endres's narration is Gail. The bird's voice is given such personality and verve that it feels utterly natural for Owen to literally have a bird speaking to him from a hole in his chest. VERDICT This is a story that tells listeners that no matter how harsh the world is, being true to yourself is really the only option.—Matthew Galloway
Publishers Weekly
10/18/2021
Lund’s accomplished debut imagines an LGBTQ allegory with a blend of magical fantasy and stark reality. A talkative bird named Gail lives inside the rib cage of Owen Tanner. After a nurse discovers Gail during an emergency doctor’s visit for Owen’s asthma at 14, his mother moves him from their home in Montana to the outskirts of Olympia, Wash., to live with his uncle Bob and teenage cousin, Tennessee, where he is safe from the clutches of the doctors his mother calls “the Army of Acronyms.” There, at 16, Owen’s suicidal ideations tempt him to wade into the ocean to “live with the mermaids.” He discovers a kindred spirit in Tennessee, who is exploring her sexual identity, and who places a ring of salt around the house to protect him. Together, they navigate the traumas and heartbreaks of their formative years, with Gail present at every step of the way: Owen crushes on a neighbor named Clyde, the boys contend with Clyde’s abusive “thief of joy” father, and the trio of Owen, Tennessee, and Clyde plan to run away after a climactic “last hurrah” involving a psychedelic rave. Lund’s emotive prose treats Owen’s burgeoning development with grace and care. This fine effort succeeds at bringing new life to the coming-of-age story. Agent: Cassie Mannes Murray, Howland Literary. (Feb.)
Alta
Lund’s debut novel is a tender bildungsroman that deals honestly with magic, love, grace, and fear.
Isle McElroy
Emme Lund’s The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is the queer coming of age novel I wish I’d had when I was a teenager. Funny and gutting, tender and scorchingly honest, surreal and a little too real, this novel captures the pain and joy of learning to live with your body and all its desires. The Boy with a Bird in His Chest reads like The Perks of Being a Wallflowers written by Kelly Link. Lund’s vision is striking, resonant, and unforgettable.
Christine Hyung-Oak Lee
The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is a beautiful and atmospheric allegory for what we hide in the world, executed with tense lyricism.
Porter House Review
Emme Lund has managed to capture so many of these feelings and weave them naturally in a story about a boy with a bird in his chest.
Kristen Arnett
Emme Lund’s The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is a beautiful, tender book. I was deeply moved by this story; very caught up in the ways in which family, grief, love, queerness, and vulnerability all intersect. Lund’s sentences are sweet and stick to your ribs. I found myself falling in love with these characters—these messy, deeply realized, fully lovable, and wonderfully human people. The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is a terrific first novel and Emme Lund is a profoundly gifted writer.
Debutiful
Lund’s brilliant debut is unlike any other coming-of-age out there [...] This is an unputdownable and weirdly relatable book readers won’t want to miss.
Andrew Sean Greer
Lund has created a fable for our age: a modern coming of age full of love, desperation, heartache and magic. An honest celebration of life and everything we need right now in a book.
The Washington Post
The burden of living with a secret is poignantly rendered and illuminating for those who seek to understand living a life outside the ordinary.
Alex McElroy
Emme Lund’s The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is the queer coming of age novel I wish I’d had when I was a teenager. Funny and gutting, tender and scorchingly honest, surreal and a little too real, this novel captures the pain and joy of learning to live with your body and all its desires. The Boy with a Bird in His Chest reads like The Perks of Being a Wallflowers written by Kelly Link. Lund’s vision is striking, resonant, and unforgettable.
Christine Hyung-Oak Lee author of Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember
The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is a beautiful and atmospheric allegory for what we hide in the world, executed with tense lyricism.
Christine Hyung-Oak Lee author of Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember
The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is a beautiful and atmospheric allegory for what we hide in the world, executed with tense lyricism.
Library Journal
09/01/2021
First in the "Kithamar" trilogy, set in an ancient city with a blood-bathed history, Nebula-nominated, Hugo-winning Abraham's Age of Ash tells the story of a thief named Alys whose hunt for her brother's murderer reveals secrets that could bring down rulers (40,000-copy first printing). With Clean Air, award-winning author Blake introduces a postapocalyptic world where trees are so overgrown that pollen chokes the world and people must live in domes that someone is viciously slashing. From Hugo nominee and internationally best-selling Dutch author Heuvelt, sends Nick Grevers and climbing partner Augustin up a remote mountain in the Swiss Alps called the Maudit ("cursed" in French), whose eerie stillness presages the horror to come (150,000-copy first printing). In The Thousand Eyes, a follow-up to Larkwood's LJ-starred debut, The Unspoken Name, Csorwe has defied the wizard she served and disappeared into the unknown to lead a quiet life with her mage-girlfriend—but not for long; bits and pieces of an ancient goddess are arising in the worlds of the Echo Maze, and Csorwe must join with old companions to resist (150,000-copy first printing). Owen, The Boy with the Bird in His Chest in Lund's debut, is hidden away by his mother for years to protect him but decides to risk an outing in the woods that turns catastrophic (60,000-copy first printing). Successful YA author Ross's first adult fantasy, A River Enchanted takes place on an island as magical as Prospero's, where spirits responding only to a bard's music thrive—and the trouble they are stirring up forces just-returned musician Jack and his nemesis, heiress Adaira, to cooperate (50,000-copy first printing).
Kirkus Reviews
2021-12-15
A boy with a bird in his chest navigates all the perils of adolescence while learning to accept and celebrate his queerness.
Arriving during the yearly floods in Morning, Montana, Owen is born with a mysterious heart ailment. His mother, Janice, takes him home, expecting the worst. Instead, she awakens one morning to see a baby bird settled “inside the rib cage, next to his heart and lungs.” So begins Owen’s life as a boy with a secret, a boy who is kept inside by his mother, a boy with only the bird, Gail, for company. And so begins Lund's symbolic tale of growing up queer in the early 2000s. Isolated and hidden from the rest of the world for most of his childhood, Owen begins to long for companionship as he enters adolescence. But his mother's concern for his safety from "the Army of Acronyms" is warranted; when he enters a doctor's office in an emergency, the doctor calls him a "Terror," and Owen barely escapes. To protect her son, Janice takes him to live with her brother and his daughter, Tennessee. What follows is Owen’s coming-of-age story: his efforts to survive high school, his sexual awakening, and his growing pull toward water and the ocean. In a lovely piece of magical realism, Gail is physical proof of Owen’s difference from the people around him, but she also plays a parental role, offering advice and care. Owen's queerness is presented both as an essential piece of his identity from birth and as a piece of himself that he must keep secret. He struggles with self-confidence and belonging and with suicidal thoughts. Yet in the end, it is love that will save him—love, Gail, and the infinite beauty and power of the ocean. The novel follows the conventional structure of a bildungsroman, but the symbolism is decidedly unconventional. And while it takes a little while to sort out the layers of literal versus figurative meaning, the strangeness sets it apart from other coming-of-age stories.
Embrace magic and suspend your disbelief and this novel may just take you on a beautiful, necessary journey.
