Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino

Parakeet started out strong with the bride when, on the week of her wedding, she receives a visit from a bird she feels is her dead grandmother. The parakeet-grandmother drills the bride about her life at present before telling her not to get married and to go find her brother, from whom the bride is estranged.

As the days count down to her wedding, the rest of the week unfolds in and around the mesh overlay of the past she has long avoided. Much of the writing is witty, tender, and empathetic as it explores heavy identity and trauma themes. There is a strong surreal, experimental feel to it — and the disjointed and meandering style increases in intensity and frequency, while simultaneously dipping into intentional confusion. And while I appreciated the style at the beginning, the distinct lack of direction made this feel more like a writing assignment stretched to fit a novel, rather than something with intention from the author.

The novel feels like a deluge of dissociative fugue, overwhelming and fragmented. And with Bertino's skill, this largely worked well. The unnamed narrator was, despite all levels of wackiness and self-delusion, she was pretty fun to get to know. Much of the present-day narrative takes place in a newly renovated, but old-looking hotel on Long Island.

Having loved Bertino's newest novel, Beautyland, I did enjoy seeing some of the same elements explored here, but I think this suffered a bit from a storytelling perspective in that she allowed the core of the novel to wander too far off base before hauling it back for a beat too short. Nevertheless, I look forward to what Bertino does next, and I am going to take a peek at her earlier novel, 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas.