*The Boy with a Bird in His Chest: A Novel* by Emme Lund. Perfect writing. Even on a scene-to-scene (or even a paragraph-to-paragraph) basis, the amount of creativity that went into this story blows my mind.
The concept itself is the title. And no, the title is not a metaphor in the least. This is a boy with an actual bird born in his chest. The bird talks to him, and the boy’s mother. It’s a beautiful book that’s quite touching, and definitely uses the bird as a metaphor, but the fact that it’s executed in the most literal way possible had be thinking, “I didn’t know you could write something like this.”
The ability to take a weird concept and execute it perfectly is a skill I am not embarrassed to say I am jealous of.
by draigonalley
1 Comment
This is the back cover blurb for Planet Janie:
I am compelled to inform you that the first communication from the biosphere has been received. The Ten Thousand Genera, as they call themselves, wish me to tell you that it is they who control your desires from the warmth and security of your gut, the mortal coil of life itself. This is as it is and has been since Luca, the Founder of the Asgard Archaea, arrived here when the earth passed through the tail of a comet billions of years ago. They want you to know that it is they who constructed us from the first single cell organisms to all that followed up the evolutionary ladder to you and me and all living things.
Since that time, microbes have used cellular vessels like us to traverse the earth in search of a way to return to their home in the stars. Know, too, that their existence within us is now and has always been fraught with joy and peril, heartbreak and desire, ecstasy and fear, sorrow and longing—all the emotions that humans experience woven into the fabric of our being that we think are ours but are really theirs.
Come with us now to experience Planet Janie’s meteoric fall from grace and the glittering heights of ultra-chic Manhattan to way off the map and learn the secrets that hold the key to life itself. This then, is the transcript of the final times of Clan Archaea dictated from the colon of a beautiful dead girl in hopes that humanity can yet be saved.
Are you ready to face the truth?