Review "The Birdcage"- Eve Chase

It is human nature to keep some secrets, deep in their souls, although these get to be shared with others sooner or later… What are the characters' secrets from the novel The Birdcage, by Eve Chase? Three stepsisters, who have been competing for their father’s love and attention since they know each other, hide something that happened twenty years ago and changed their lives brutally and tremendously.

Kat, Flora, and Lauren reunite in their holiday house from Rock Point, responding to their father’s invitation and, though they try to show that they are satisfied with their lives, they discover that the past can’t be locked forever, being forced to go back again and again in that fateful August of 1999, in the day of the solar eclipse.

During the 397 pages full of emotions, and suspense and defined by the introspections of the three women, step by step we find out what every character feels and the perspective of each one about the events that happened in the past. As a reader you are caught in this enigmatic story, alongside Lauren and her sisters, becoming an immersive witness of their feelings and experiences and, one cannot escape the strangest impression of captivity, which they also feel.

Although time passed and each of them tried to forget and to heal the way they knew better, the sisters remained prisoners of their guilt and remorse feelings. Caught in the cage of the past, of that tragic day, they feel the desperate need to free themselves. Once they arrive at Rock Point, they realize their situation and must face the memories that come to the surface, their father’s girlfriend whom they don’t like, and some mysterious notes with menacing messages. It seems someone knows what they did and is unhappy with their return to Rock Point.

This novel's themes are various and well-defined: family relations, the need for integration, belonging to a group, friendship, guilt, and the wish for revenge. The characters are complex and realistic, each playing an important role in the story, with a different view of the events and a personal solution to face the past and build a happy and safe future.

I recommend The Birdcage for its complex plot, well-built characters and their world, and the story's mystery that makes you read until the end and discover the sisters' secrets.

The author of this book, Eve Chase (the pseudonym of the journalist Polly Williams) also wrote the novels Black Rabbit Hall, The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde, The Glass House, and The Midnight Hour, which I am sure are just as promising as the novel The Birdcage.