Fed to Red Birds (Rijn Collins, S&S)

Rijn Collins’s novel Fed to Red Birds is beguiling and moody. Our heroine, Elva, is an Australian–Icelandic woman in her mid-20s. She’s living in Reykjavik to learn Icelandic, connect with her heritage and feel closer to her vanished mother. She works in an oddities store selling items such as stuffed dead animals and books made with arsenic. Her day-to-day life consists of working in this strange store with a woman who has become her surrogate mother, spending time with new friends and working on her taxidermy hobby. She also obsesses over words written on pages, in particular the book her grandfather authored, Fed to Red Birds. The obsession is more of a compulsion, because Elva has xylophagia—paper-eating—and one particular page in this book needs to be torn and chewed. Fed to Red Birds is dreamy and immersive. We spend time with Elva as she puts on a big coat and braves the Icelandic cold, drinks at the bar her friend works at, goes to language class and dates a good-looking Belgian man. We’re also with her as she struggles with OCD and a dark memory. This book is both travelogue and beautifully written literary fiction. It is for readers who loved the insightful prose and armchair travel of Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au and the brooding, fairytale-esque feelings of Hydra by Adrianne Howell.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Danielle Bagnato is a book reviewer and marketing and communications professional. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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