Published 8th July 2021 by Manilla Press.
From the cover of the book:
She walks unseen through our world.Cares for our children, cleans our homes.
She has a story to tell.
Will you listen?
Nisha has crossed oceans to give her child a future. By day she cares for Petra's daughter; at night she mothers her own little girl by the light of a phone.
Nisha's lover, Yiannis, is a poacher, hunting the tiny songbirds on their way to Africa each winter. His dreams of a new life, and of marrying Nisha, are shattered when she vanishes.
No one cares about the disappearance of a domestic worker, except Petra and Yiannis. As they set out to search for her, they realise how little they know about Nisha.
What they uncover will change them all.
***********************
Nisha has spent the last few years making a living as a maid in Cyprus, far away from her homeland of Sri Lanka and the daughter she left behind. She spends her days cleaning for her employer, widowed optician Petra, and looking after Petra's daughter Aliki as if she were her own - parenting her own child over the internet at night.
Petra rents the apartment above her own to a man called Yiannis, unaware that he and Nisha have been in a relationship for the past two years - something she would definitely disapprove of. Yiannis loves Nisha dearly and wants to marry her, but his profession as a poacher, trapping the tiny migrating songbirds as they fly over Cyprus on their way from Africa to Europe and selling them on the black market, is not something Nisha approves of.
One night Nisha disappears without trace. Yiannis is convinced he is to blame and does not know what to do with himself. Petra finds herself left in sole charge of her own daughter for the first time since her birth and is forced to connect with her child in a way she has been unable to do so before, haunted as she has been by the death of her beloved husband. She is mystified by the disappearance of Nisha, especially when she finds her precious belongings and passport left behind in her room. Where can she be?
When the police seem uninterested in looking for a lost immigrant, believing she has just run away, Petra and Yiannis find themselves working together to solve the mystery of Nisha's disappearance, and what they uncover has them worried. In the process, Petra finds herself looking at Nisha in a very different light, discovering details of her life that she never knew - or was ever interested in finding out about. She also comes to look anew at the many young immigrant women working around her in Cyprus - the women who go quietly under the radar, cooking, cleaning and caring for the children of their employers, without ever once being considered people with lives of their own, and sometimes being treated in the most dehumanising and abusive ways. Yiannis meanwhile, tries to extricate himself from the life of crime he has been caught up in, as a way to redeem himself in the eyes of Nisha, in the hope she will return to him soon.
Christy Lefteri has a way of writing the most beautiful stories that work their way under your skin and into your heart, before totally breaking you apart - and Songbirds, the much anticipated follow-up to the incredible The Beekeeper of Aleppo, is no exception.
Telling her story through the eyes of Petra and Yiannis (with glimpses of someone much darker, in the form of lyrical prose about a enigmatic character whose part in the story we can only guess at, until the bitter truth of their identity becomes known), Lefteri deftly combines a mystery, a love story, and insight into the world of those in the background who are treated with contempt instead of compassion for the lives that are forced to lead - while cleverly working in threads about parenthood, coping with loss, redemption, and conservation at the same time - and she does it astoundingly well.
I am always impressed by the way Lefteri brings so much poetry and achingly beautiful symbolism into her stories, while forcing you to direct your eyes and thoughts to some very tangible and painful real world situations. Underlying every part of this tale, the phenomenal way she uses the motif of songbirds to represent freedom, and gold to express the concept of a spiritual dimension connecting all living things is superb, but there is no ignoring the blood she draws from the cutting message underpinning her gorgeous prose. The intention of this book is very clear: to raise the profile of the plight of immigrants who find themselves living sub-human lives to support the loved ones they have left behind - and there are many lessons to be learned from the way she paints them as just as human and worthy, with stories every bit as authentic, as those that employ them.
Yet again, Lefteri has left me broken and sobbing, but the experience has been one I will treasure for a long time to come. Songbirds is as captivating as it is conscience-pricking, as tender as it is traumatic, and as rewarding as it is raw. If you loved The Beekeeper of Aleppo, then you are in for a treat!
Songbirds is available to buy now in hardback, ebook and audio formats from your favourite book retailer.
Thank you to Manilla Press for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers Tours for inviting me to be part of the blog tour.
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