Playing The Hand You’re Dealt
Where The Sweet Bird Sings by Ella Joy Olsen is a beautiful contemporary heartfelt novel about loss and the search for identity.
Loss consumes your every waking moment. The loss of a loved one just one year after a previous loss, compounds the feeling of isolation and despair. The question why? is naturally on your lips, along with the desire to retire from the world and hide away. This is the heart of the novel as the lead character feels like they are sinking in a sea of tears. “The sun was rising and setting, and yet what was the purpose?” Life loses its meaning. The reader ‘feels’ the pain as the novel is written in the first person. We sense the despair and also the pressure to return to the land of the living. Life seems to have stopped still on that day in the past, and it is hard to see how to carry on.