Plastic Budgie

by Olivia De Zilva

Olivia De Zilva's Plastic Budgie is a brutally funny and inventive debut about family and identity, full of itchy Y2K nostalgia, curses and glimpses of birds.

Olivia was named after a lycra-clad singer her parents saw on Rage. As a child, she lost the ability to speak and spent a year barking like a dog. Her Gong Gong bought her a yellow bird in a shoebox from the Adelaide Central Markets. Her heart was broken by a guitar teacher at a school disco. She started university and learnt to swim and travelled to Guangzhou for her cousin’s wedding. And in between all that, she tried to form an adult person, while feeling more like a person-shaped hole.

In her semi-autobiographical, genre-defying and wonderfully crafted debut, De Zilva collects stories in a cabinet: neat coming-of-age anecdotes and sitcom characters trapped on shelves. Then she breaks it all apart.

Plastic Budgie questions how our memories form us, in a way that is somehow both unapologetically sentimental and eternally surprising.

240 pages, Paperback

Published July 29, 2025

Reviews

[Olivia De · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lowkey wrote this book but Goodreads won’t let me claim the profile! 😭 I hope people read it! Thanks to everyone who has xxxxxx

[Lewis Woolston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a bit iffy going into this but ended up being pleasantly surprised.
Olivia tells the story of her growing up a confused and somewhat uptight Asian girl in the suburbs of Adelaide. Her points of reference and only certainty to hang onto are her Chinese grandparents.
There is a lot of looking back and cringing at oneself here but sometimes that's what is needed to heal and sometimes it is rather funny.
All in all i enjoyed this and it's great to read another South Australian writer.

[club Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic mediation of how we become who we are and create ourselves.

The last chapters of this book remind me of the final confrontation in the film Annihilation. At this stage of the movie, the alien has absorbed a drop of the main character’s blood, a symbol of the physical and mental trauma she has faced in her journey, and uses it to create a perfect replica of her. When she attempts to fight it, it mirrors her every move, and she cannot escape the being. It is only when she stops fighting and faces it directly that it allows her to escape.

The narrators’ “other”, the conduit double that grew, parasite-like to taunt her in her most intimate moments is fed and sustained by the narrator’s trauma and grief. In reality, it isn’t really a seperate entity, rather a reflection in the mirror. What the narrator sees is a vision of herself warped by negativity, of the experience of losing her voice both literally through chilldhood bullying and more broadly through the process of cultural assimilation - but it is a reflection nonetheless, which the narrator can distinctly recognise is herself.

“The her … could no longer fight against each other, and to gain sustenance, they began to embrace each other, work together and dissapear.”

That dark reflection of yourself, left unchecked, can consume you. The narrator, by accepting “her”, along with her pain and suffering, acknowledges that she is not someone to be fought, but commiserated with. This allows the narrator to reconstitute herself more fully than she could have otherwise been had she opposed it.

Less explicitly, the other is also a wonderful underlying theme through the first part of this book, which operates as a fantastic snapshot of navigating life as a child of migrants in Aus circa mid-2000s. The awkwardness of having to explain and temper your family’s FOB diosyncracies is a universal experience for diaspora kids, as is the feeling of shame when you come to terms with what you’re actually doing, which is erasing your family’s influence on you. We destroy the parts of ourselves that don’t fit with the hegemon, presenting an other to the world that can be more easily digested (and is less easily made fun of). But the ghosts of our family, the way they shape you and the love they give are impossible to escape, they haunt us in every moment of our lives.

Chefs kiss x100000 Swag on 100 million for this work. Please hit my DM if you would like a signed copy you will need proof of purchase :))

[Bianca Hosking]

My neighbour wrote this book!!

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice snappy Adelaide book

[P H · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I'D BEEN FASCINATED WITH THE idea of the double from a very young age. Although I was alone in the womb, warm and selfish, I was born in the middle of June. According to western astrology, there would always be another part of me, living, feasting and floating in the infinite centre. In Chinese astrology, I was a rat, equally duplicitous as the Gemini, but prosperous if blessed with determination. As a cluster of cells, carried as a burden, I could never truly be alone, and waited for the other body to form and mutate beside me.”

I can’t believe this book is only 150 pages long — it’s bottomless somehow, contains so much. Plastic Budgie is nostalgic and fresh, real and not-real, precise and universal all at the same time. By being unapologetically unconventional and hyper-specific, De Zilva resists the flattening or homogenising of Asian diasporic women’s experiences. By reconciling and accepting every version and part of themselves, no matter how uncomfortable or fragile, the narrator gives us permission to do the same. I can’t wait to read De Zilva’s forthcoming novella Eggshell, and everything she puts out in the future! Everyone should read this book.

[Helena Beliveau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this in a span of two hours - could not put it down. Great debut from my funniest and most talented friend- I knew you were a star after meeting you for the first time at Edinburgh welcome week and talking about our zodiac signs all night !!!

[Alex Monterosso · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect balance of humour and sentimentality.
Fantastic debut novel. Can’t wait to see what comes next 👀

[Kristy (sometimes_i_read_books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️

[Allie CSA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fucken hell

[Georgia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful piece of auto-fiction - Olivia deserves all the praise and success. I especially loved Gong Gong and Poh Poh 💕

[Hannah Sultana · Rating 4 out of 5]

The amazing green cover caught my attentiont first, as it sat on the library trolley ready to be shelved. The spine label listed Australian. That brand new book feeling. It just had to come home with me.

A beautifully nostalgic family story of a young girl who loses (fails to find) maybe never really found her identity and scrambles through life helping those around her survive.
A story about strong family ties that can either buoy you or bury you.
Adored Olivia's writing style and pace.
Extra points for the Australiana nostalgia peppered throughout.

[Emma Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I opened this book intending to read the first chapter and then scroll on my phone in bed… I ended up finishing it in one sitting. I’ve never read a book that felt so deeply personal to the author, that I was still able to see myself so clearly in.
This encapsulates such a specific slice of time and space and reading it transported me back to my own youth and awkwardness and guitar teacher crushes…

Will be recommending this to absolutely everyone.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cried when I realised I was a few chapters off finishing this book because I didn’t want it to end already. I think it’s going to be living rent free in my head. So many gems in these stories. Agh! A lot to ponder but also a lot to feel (which is clearly what I’m struggling to articulate here!) Go read it and feel it all!

[Red · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read. Heartfelt, real, down-to earth. Olivia De Zilvia has a very honest and unique voice that comes out really beautifully in this story. I laughed, I cried, and I related to the journey, growth and wisdom found throughout her words. (Just an FYI, I was up until midnight finishing this book. And that means it's great!)

[Karen Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s amazing how powerful it is to read about a place so familiar to you. This book makes so many hilarious, relatable observations of growing up in Adelaide, but is equally heart-breaking and poignant. Highly recommend.

[Imogen · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 x wait this was so good that maybe im out of my reading slump guys????!! the last 20 pages deserve to be continuously underlined

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book so much. This book made me excited about reading again. This book made me think I may be cursed.

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. So well written and nostalgic, beautifully capturing growing up in Australia in the 90s, with a deeply moving focus on the experience of growing up between cultures.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty awesome debut novel, filled with humour among the darkness, plus all the Adelaide/00s references hit the spot well.

[Ruby Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was like enjoying it the first part then she got unhinged and I was hooked it. Rate it

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

shut up!!!!!!!!!!! this is superstar stuff