Bird Suit

by Sydney Hegele

A tourist town folk tale of stifled ambition, love, loss, and the bird women who live beneath the lake. Every summer the peaches ripen in Port Peter, and the tourists arrive to gorge themselves on fruit and sun. They don’t see the bird women, who cavort on the cliffs and live in a meadow beneath the lake. But when summer ends and the visitors go back home, every pregnant Port Peter girl knows what she needs to deliver her child to the Birds in a laundry basket on those same lakeside cliffs. But the Birds don’t want Georgia Jackson.

Twenty years on, the peaches are ripening again, the tourists have returned, and Georgia is looking for trouble with any ill-tempered man she can find. When that man turns out to be Arlo Bloom—her mother’s ex and the new priest in town—she finds herself drawn into a complicated matrix of friendship, grief, faith, sex, and love with Arlo, his wife, Felicity, and their son, Isaiah. Vivid, uncanny, and as likely cursed as touched by grace, Bird Suit is a brutal, generous story as sticky and lush as a Port Peter peach.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, Fantasy, Book Club, Canada, Lesbian, Literary Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2024

About the author

Sydney Hegele is the author of The Pump (Invisible Publishing 2021), winner of the 2022 ReLit Literary Award for Short Fiction and a finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award. Their essays have appeared in Catapult, Electric Literature, EVENT, and others. Their novel Bird Suit forthcoming with Invisible Publishing in Spring 2024, and their essay collection Bad Kids is forthcoming with Invisible in Fall 2025. They live with their husband and French Bulldog on Treaty 13 Land (Toronto, Canada).

Reviews

[Tess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve finished this book with a pit in my stomach—not empty, but like a peach’s: solid and full. It’s left me with this knot of something, of feelings, deep inside that I can’t fully put a finger on, but that will stick with me for a long while.

I can’t wait to unwrap them while I’m left with the memory of this beautiful, sorrowful, strange story

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to receive an ARC from the publisher. This book is full of muddy hope (but hope nonetheless), small-town grit, and love. Hegele’s words are as weird as they are wonderful. The story is aching, brimming. The characters walk around inside your head. I can’t stop thinking about it.

[Bex Lawlor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to come❤️🍑🐦‍⬛
Read my review here, published in Canthius:
https://www.canthius.com/feed-2/2024/...

Excerpt: Unlike the fallibility of memories, Bird Suit will stand solidly within people’s minds—a book you will joyfully return to like a complex childhood experience that you desperately want to make sense of and know you can only grow from meditating on.

[Alessia Di Cesare · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bird Suit is horny and existential and full of grief in the way funerals are horny and existential and full of grief. A beautiful and eerie study of performance; of our costumes, of our projections, of being watched - willingly and in secret. An aching and sore walk back to truth; a return to oneself. Truly exquisite. It is unlike anything I have ever read before.

[Maia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I take the first bite of a peach (which, for better or for worse, is a rare occurrence), I’m first struck with a childlike joy at its sweetness, always better than I remembered, immediately followed by a reminder of its transience and of inevitability. A reminder that endings are impending, that I will take my last bite of this peach—and that this summer, like every other, will not last.

In Bird Suit, peaches represent the opposite of desire. They’re a commodity that Port Peter residents rely on to survive, yet they’re also an excess that needs to be preserved or converted into other products to fend off their decay.

So, then, what does represent desire, and its neighbour, belonging?

It’s the book pages pasted onto Georgia’s walls. It’s Isaiah pocketing his grandfather’s copy of Anne Carson’s Glass, Irony and God. It’s Felicity’s homemade rosemary bread, her bird pendant.

Each is a manifestation of escape from reality, while also possessing the power of a possible future.

As Sydney Hegele so beautifully reminds us, we are worth more than what we remember—we are also our possibilities and our desires.

I so recommend this beautiful, Ontario-based book. I may someday forget the details, but I know I’ll remember how I felt reading it.

[RP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bird Suit is soft and perfumed as a peach, with a hard, brutal, and wildly strange pit at the center. This is a special novel, in the sense that it feels like something biological and rare, found in a mossy forest, but it is of our world, however skewed it may seem, because it investigates the difficult, true things of life. Love, sex, friendship, hatred, cruelty, violence, faith. Sydney Hegele’s writing is a delight to read, and their people are compelling and absorbing. You will love them, cry for them, and shake your fist at them. Bird Suit marks the arrival of an original, brilliant new voice.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hegele handles the difficult subject of familial abuse well and writes with a strong sense of place. I personally prefer when a character's motives aren't explained explicitly but left up to interpretation, so at times I felt like the writing in Bird Suit was a little on the nose. That being said, on the whole this was a highly imaginative endeavor that I enjoyed and have come to expect from Hegele having also read their weird as shit (complimentary) short fiction collection The Pump. I look forward to reading more of their fiction in the future.

For best results, read this novel during the month of August.

I am grateful to have been able to obtain a signed copy of this book by donating to a family in Gaza and commend Hegele for organizing the fundraiser.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sunk myself into this one expecting kind of a quirky fun fairytale and ended up feeling super sad and uncomfortable for most of it. Themes of grief and generational trauma with difficult characters in a fanciful Ontario summer tourist town. Im rating this 5 stars but would be hesitant to recommend it

Sidenote: this book led me to reading everything by Anne Carson I could find!

[Anna Farley · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I'd like to read the book of you.
Would you let me read you too?
I would try.
I would read you slowly. If that helps.
It does.
And you would read me slowly, too, right?
Yes. Very slowly."

[Jacob Alvarado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book of the year for me (so far).

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

tender, soft, raw and ripe. really fucking brilliant--looking forward to more of Hegele's work

[Anushka Nair · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5

I feel like I’ve said that many books I’ve read this year are unlike anything I’ve read before, but that is especially true of this book. The themes covered in this book range from faith, love, grief, violence, and the characters live beyond the pages. I had to set down the book a few times to process what I had read. I cannot stop thinking about this book.

A deeply sorrowful but eerily beautiful story. I’m frustrated with parts left unanswered, but such is life. It doesn’t take away from the story.

[Emilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

holy shit.

This book is a gorgeous masterpiece of grief and love and abuse and religion and fairytale. The poetic prose and modern gothic writing is absolutely beautiful and so so captivating. Every chapter had something to say with so much weight, my heart has been torn.
The metaphor of the Birds I think carries something different for everyone. Sometimes, they are written as a metaphor, sometimes with those themes, and sometimes they’re just Birds. This books setting being my home was especially heart wrenching. The difference between the city and hometown and how that all changes was so expertly written.

I feel so so connected to this book. It is so haunting and so gorgeous and I am left with this gaping hole in my heart for more. I wanna cry but also I don’t think it’s really hit me yet. Like the tears are just sitting there behind my eyes. This book is an absolute inspiration.

This book also makes me feel nostalgic towards Night in the Woods, and Runs in the Family by Amanda Palmer. I think I had that song on repeat for at least a couple chapters.

“And that feels like what stories are supposed to do. Maybe you write them for people who are like you— you write the kind of book or play or poem you needed when you were that age or in that situation. Or all the bad shit in the world that you see every day. And what happens is that people who you wouldn’t even expect to find your story find it, and it helps them in ways you never imagined, with hardships you’ve never even gone through yourself. The best stories are like that: personal and universal at the same time. . . Stories like that make me believe in God.”

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite of the year.

[Amelie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading other reviews makes me feel kinda crazy for this, but I thought it was just... kinda ok? It was entertaining enough to keep me engaged and finish the story, but I don't think it made me think much about any of the points the author was trying to make. It was a bit too tell instead of show. The motivations of all the characters were made really plain and simple, which isn't always a bad thing, but it kinda detracted from opportunities for introspection. And the Birds!! There was so much that could've been done with them!! I kept waiting for them to come back and have more of an impact on the story, but in the end they felt like they were added as an afterthought. Also, Arlo deserved worlds more punishment to feel properly satisfying. Isaiah's end felt swept under the rug.
TL;DR I just feel like this missed the mark for me. It really could've been something, I'm just kinda disappointed by how it ended up coming together.

[Rebecca Labrador · Rating 5 out of 5]

“You are only worth what you can remember”

Every summer, tourists flood tiny Port Peter for the luscious peaches, crowded boardwalk, and Lake Ligeia’s dark green water. Nine months after the season ends, the local girls, with limited options, give birth and then head up to the cliffside and leave their babies in a white plastic laundry basket knowing that the Bird Women, who live in the depths of Lake Ligeia, will raise them.

Georgia, rejected at birth by the Bird Women, is thus retrieved and raised by her mother Elsie, the town’s taxidermist. Despite there being few economic or educational opportunities in Port Peter, Georgia seems stuck in limbo until her mother’s former roommate, Reverend Arlo Bloom, moves into the local vicarage with his wife Felicity and son Isaiah.

Later in the novel, Georgia looks back on her life at different ages: “She both pities and envies those Georgias. What they know and what they don’t. What they think they know. What they still have, and what they think they’ll never get. Who they think they are. What they choose to remember.”

This multi-layered, generational, magical novel kept me up at night while I pored over the characters’ shame, faith, healing, death, love, and hope. Sydney Hegele is a must-read author!

“We are worth more than what we remember”

Thank you to Invisible Publishing for a gifted copy for a candid review.

[Tracey Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is an understanding in Port Peter, that if someone abandons their baby to the bird women who live on the cliffs, that baby will be cared for. But there are exceptions, like Georgia. Now in her early twenties, Georgia’s life is complicated. She’s in a strange three-way relationship with priest Arlo and his wife, Felicity whilst also finding true friendship and connection with Arlo’s son, Isaiah. This can’t end well…

Canadian writer Sydney Hegele effortlessly blends the weirdness of the bird women with the fraught emotional relationships. This is an incredibly harrowing read; there is one part that is just so sad and somewhat unexpected, which absolutely broke me.

I enjoyed the interweaving timelines and characters. In fact, the character development is outstanding. Although Georgia is at the centre of the story, the surrounding characters are fully formed. Felicity is especially complex, and I adored how her story developed.

Hegele paints a vivid picture of the tourist town, Port Peter, with the excitement of the peach festival, and the contrasting emptiness of the off-season. And the weirdness of the bird women is always in the periphery, like a comforting but ever so slightly odd relative.

A truly original novel from an exciting new voice.

[Kydra Mayhew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memory and grief have always been so inextricably linked in our own experience, and this is illustrated masterfully in Bird Suit. The book explores the experiences familiar with growing up in small towns - longing for freedom, isolation, violence, religion - with a tale of folklore that pushes us to look beyond our own understanding of the world around us. The blend of realism and fantasy creates a beautiful exploration of memory and belonging, and the ways in which we are bound to our own perceptions of our past, while still being hopeful for the future. I loved this book, and I can’t wait to read more of Hegele’s work.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is like a spoken word poem, one that rises and falls, one that makes you feel and then takes you by surprise with its ferocity. It holds tenderness and lyrical descriptions only to be interrupted by provocative hard truths, all wrapped up in sweet peach juice and fluttering bird metaphors. It’s so strange and also lovely. I wasn’t sure what to think for a long time… I think I like it, and I also think I don’t like it, but in a way that makes me want to still come back and think about it some more. Five stars for writing something just so interesting and eccentric and engaging.

[yvette · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do have my qualms: the themes are heavy handed, the motifs are overdrawn, the characters steep in their own archetypes, and the mythos and religion elements rely too much on the sovereignty of their own gestures, fingers touching a forehead and chest and left shoulder and right shoulder without really tapping the heart of things…but hegele does offer something truly profound: that when it comes to breaking cycles of violence, remembering can be a rebirthing act — but so too is forgetting.

[Madeline Rossell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I strongly debated between 4 and 5 stars for this, because it's a great read that I thoroughly enjoy, but I wouldn't necessarily rank it in my top 5. Though, the writing is so brilliant, and it was such an engaging read that I had trouble putting it down, so it has to be 5 stars.

[Phi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing. I love Sydney's writing style. So poetic and lyrical and gut wrenching and dripping with blood. I'm gonna think about this one for a while.

[aj · Rating 5 out of 5]

i think my favorite book of the year so far. i wanted to read it again the second i finished it.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

everyone run and go read this book is medically perfect

[Harrison McNaughtan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

I enjoyed this book.
The content was interesting, the plots moved well. The themes of abuse were appropriately layered and complex. For some reason, the part where they are dreaming up their theatre show was the only time I cried, a glimpse of the childlike imagination that was stolen from both of them.

I would have preferred a consistent 1st person perspective, the 3rd person narration bits were a little bit too organized, presenting a crystal clear sense of self knowing and motivations that I don’t think most people have, and especially not when considering the chaos that trauma most often leaves behind in terms of sense of identity and understanding interactions with others.

[dal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guys, this book was so crazy, but also it was so good

I think Flick was my favorite character. The ending was crazy. I think all women should become birds and eat their husbands, actually. The writing in this book was like. really good. I cried when Ishaiah died. Arlo is so so so evil. I hate men so much.

Everyone should read this if they dont mind a few semi-graphic sex scenes. Ahhhhhhhh Spenser ily for recommending this <3

[Steph Percival · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bird Suit is alternatingly as luminescent as the sun sparkling on the surface of a lake and as dark as its depths. Reading it is like coming up for air in a glittering world only to plunge back down to the murky underworld below.

[Patrick Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew going in that I was going to love this book, but what I found here was more than I had expected. Bird Suit in so many ways is Ontario. It is a beautiful and honest book.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whimsical bird month read that should be turned into a small scale theater production if I have anything to say about that!

[Sagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I'm enjoying Bird Suit, Felicity says. So far. The first half. It's very good. The writing. The writing is very good."