Parakeet

A Novel

By: Marie-Helene Bertino

Narrated by: Angela Dawe

Acclaimed author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas Marie-Helene Bertino's Parakeet is a darkly funny and warm-hearted novel about a young woman whose dead grandmother (in the form of a parakeet) warns her not to marry and sends her out to find an estranged loved one.

The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the Internet?

Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother.

In the days that follow, The Bride's march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried.

A novel that does justice to the hectic confusion of becoming a woman today, Parakeet asks and begins to answer the essential questions. How do our memories make, cage, and free us? How do we honor our experiences and still become our strongest, truest selves? Who are we responsible for, what do we owe them, and how do we allow them to change?

Urgent, strange, warm-hearted, and sly, Parakeet is ribboned with joy, fear, and an inextricable thread of real love. It is a startling, unforgettable, life-embracing exploration of self and connection.

A Macmillan Audio produciton from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Huh? What?

This is well written and the language is beautifully rendered but I was happy when it was over. It’s likely that, for me, reading about a mental health crisis in the middle of a pandemic just is t very appealing. I loved the characters. I loved the bird. The character transformations that took place were mesmerizing .. and given all the references to Beckett, why should I be surprised at the style?

Well written, but lackluster main character

I was looking forward to this book as I love magical realism, but the overall plot never came together for me. The novel was very well written with great analogies and satisfying ending. However all of the other characters were more interesting than the main character who just appeared as whiny and disingenuous. Perhaps that's the point, but it just wasn't for me.

A book I will forget

It was good though I found it hard to relate to any of the characters. It was confusing with occasional moments of brilliance. Ultimately, I hoped for more. I had been swayed by a review in Bookreads Magazine that I wish I had not seen. I felt the book vacillated between the absurd and the possible. It should have just gone with the absurd. It would have been more interesting.

A few enjoyable moments among many eye rolls

Had a hard time finishing this opaque and overwritten story. The aspects of a good story were there but the author's presentation was poor because it was far more verbose than it needed to be. Listening to this book literally put me to sleep on 3 occasions. I hope to never hear the word "anti-chamber" again. I would not recommend this to anyone except a literary nerd who enjoys lengthy prose.