Current Reading: Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino

 

Consider the opening of Bertino's novel Parakeet:

    One week before my wedding day, upon returning to my hotel room with a tube of borrowed toothpaste, I find a small bird waiting inside the area called the antechamber and know within moments it is my grandmother. I recognize the glittering, hematite eyes, the expression of cunning disapproval. The odor of a gym at close of day encircles her.

    What is the Internet? the bird says, does not say.

    Her head is the color of warning: sharp curve, yield-yellow. The eyes on either side of the Cro-Magnon crown are lined the way hers were in shoddy cornflower pencil as if to say, Really look, here. Her hair, that had throughout her life hurled silvery messages skyward, has been replaced by orderly, navy stripes that emanate down her pate like ripples in silk. Under the beak where he unpronounced chin would have been, four regal feathers pose, each marked by an ebony dot. She hovers inches above the sofa's back, chastened and restless by her new form.

    The topothpaste lands with a dull thud on the carpet. I'm silent when stunned. No getting me to talk. 

    What is the Internet? my grandmother the bird insists, spaking as if we are in the middle of a conversation, which, in a way, we are.

At this point, I predict one of two responses. Either you are checking to see if maybe there is another episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians you might catch on the screen. Or, if you think like me, you wonder what else is coming.

As far as what else is coming, I can say that the book delivers on the unusual: a woman who writes vivid biographies of people who have suffered brain injuries, at least one doppleganger, and a brother who, after some time away from the family, is now a sister, and a groom the protagonist is set to marry soon who is consistently and only referred to as the groom.

I am about halfway through the book and I am enjoying it.