Published 15th September 2022 by Sandstone Press.
From the cover of the book:
The public think Ava’s a monster. Ava thinks she’s blameless.In prison, they called her Butcher Bird – but Ava’s not in prison any more. Released after 25 years to a new identity and a new home, Ava finally has the quiet life she’s always wanted.
But someone knows who she is. The lies she’s told are about to unravel.
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Ava is newly released from prison, after receiving a life sentence for a crime serious enough to mean she must now live under a new identity to protect her - even though she believes herself to be innocent of the sins laid at her door.
But settling into life on the outside as Robin Smith is proving to be harder than she thought. Although she longs for a quiet life, the tedious conditions placed on her as part of her release make it necessary for her to live far away from the peace and isolation of the Scottish Islands that she loves, and Ava is not cut out to rub along well with others.
At first Ava tries her best to become what is expected of her new alter-ego Robin, but then someone discovers who she really is, and wants revenge for the crimes they believe she has not been punished for. As her paranoia overwhelms her, the web of lies she has created to hide her true nature starts to unravel. Is Ava really the monster that her fellow inmates dubbed The Butcher Bird, or is she just misunderstood?
Caged Little Birds is a wonderfully dark and twisty tale that offers so much to delve into around the best way to deal with offenders who have received long sentences for very serious crimes - all tied up in unsettling story that, despite becoming increasingly disturbing as it unfurls, is impossible to look away from for a second.
It is hard to convey quite how many really knotty themes Lucy Banks touches on this this incredible book, but I will start by looking at the woman who consumes your attention from the first page to the last - Ava. Her first person narrative flips back and forth between her childhood, her life before prison, her experiences during her sentence, and what is happening in the present now she has been released. We only ever see the world through her eyes, and her account is fractured, becoming less lucid as her paranoia takes over, especially as she succumbs to over use of sleeping tablets and hits the bottle hard, so it takes a while to piece together the truth about her crimes. Everything is coloured by her conviction that whatever she has done in her life has been justified, by her need for male approval, and by the problem she has relating well to women, but as her tale unfurls you become more and more convinced that her version of events is highly unreliable on all fronts - especially given how circumstances spiral horribly out of control.
It sounds like it might be easy to paint Ava as the monster she has been branded as, but Banks very cleverly manipulates your perception throughout the story, making you second guess yourself. Even though you come to see that Ava's account of events is badly skewed, sifting through her ravings you get the impression that the things that have happened to her are likely to have had some part in shaping the person she has become. Or have they? You are never quite sure if she is telling the truth at any point along the way, which makes it doubly delicious. Is Ava the Butcher Bird after all despite her belief that she is blameless? Is there some good in her? Was she born evil, or made that way? Banks leaves it open for you to decide in the end, which I really enjoyed.
But this is not just a tale about a character we would probably not want to be living next door to. Among the gripping spiral into chaos, Banks asks some very meaty questions, and these leave you with a head that is absolutely buzzing when you reach the end of the story. What is the best way for society to deal with the perpetrators of the most serious crimes when they are eventually released from prison? Can they ever settle into normal lives when they have been completely institutionalised? Does prison offer a chance to rehabilitate offenders like Ava? Indeed, can someone who never acknowledges their guilt even be rehabilitated? And my personal favourite, given my own background in psychology, how much of an impact does it have on someone to be given a whole new identity that they have no concept of how to live up to? Lots to delve into here!
There are no easy answers to any of these questions, whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter, but what Banks does highlight beautifully is that there certainly are failings in the way long incarcerated offenders are integrated back into the world, that do not protect them, or the public, from harm. Ava's probation officer is clearly stretched far beyond her capacity to do her job at a competent level, and the same goes for the basic level of psychological support she is given too.
This is a book that will put you in a spin, which is highly impressive for a work of under 250 pages. Ava is a character you will love to hate: arrogant, manipulative, cunning, and convinced that she is smarter that everyone else, but she is oh so compelling at the same time. Ava's mind is an uncomfortable place to be, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. This is the perfect choice for book clubs, because there is so much to talk about too!
Caged Little Birds is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Sandstone Press for ending me a prof of this book in return for an honest review.
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