This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me, to the point that, despite having finished reading this a few days ago, I'm still struggling to gather my thoughts together so I can write a coherent review. On the surface, the story sounds simple enough: it is the year 1957 and the McAlister family – Olivia, her husband Holly, their 2 young daughters Grace and June – live an ordinary life in the small town of Opelika, Mississippi. Holly is a bookkeeper at the local lumber mill while Olivia is a stay-at-home mother whose only pastime outside of taking care of the household is watching over the birds that seem to like making a home in the family's backyard. As an interracial family living in a society where the seeds of racial divide were starting to fester, the McAlisters kept to themselves as much as possible, often not engaging much with the outside world aside from the regular routine of work and school. Feeling restless and blown off course, Olivia dreams of returning to the much larger life she had prior to her marriage, where she ran the main office for a landing boat factory in New Orleans, during a time when everyone was treated the same regardless of the color of one's skin. It is this feeling of being blow off course to a place where she doesn't belong -- similar to the "accidentals" (migratory birds found outside of their normal geographic range) she sometimes sees in her yard – that triggers a strong reaction in Olivia when she finds out that she is pregnant again. The fateful decision that Olivia makes sets in motion a trajectory that has an unexpected and drastic impact not only on her husband and daughters, but also on other individuals whose lives end up intersecting with her family's.
There were things that I felt worked well with this story, the biggest one being character development, especially with the two sisters at the center of the story – Grace and June. However, even the "supporting" characters were well-developed, which is especially significant given the fact that these characters only feature once or twice in the story, yet I felt like I knew them as well as I knew the main characters. Having each chapter alternately narrated from the first person perspective of the various characters definitely helped, as each was able to provide some insight into their relevant backstories. I also thought it was clever how the title and the overall theme of birds and nature were incorporated into the story. The parallels between the flight patterns of the "accidentals" and how the characters led their lives were interesting and elevated the story a bit for me from a literary standpoint.
With that said, there were quite a few things about this book that frustrated me and therefore made the reading experience a bit tedious. First and foremost was the writing, which was inconsistent — there were some sections where the descriptions were either too vague or abstract imagery was used to refer to something that could've been described in a more straightforward manner (i.e.: pregnancy), which at times made it difficult to understand what was happening in a particular scene. At the same time, there were also sections that dwelled too much on descriptions that didn't seem to have much to do with the plot (something that I like to call "gratuitous descriptive imagery"). The other issue was the pacing of the story, which, as other reviewers have commented, was a bit messy. The story supposedly spanned a 50 year timeframe, however as the story progressed, the only indication there was of the time period was the mention of various historical events, mostly referenced only in passing. In terms of subject matter, the story did touch on some pretty heavy societal topics such as abortion, teen pregnancy, homosexuality, racism and segregation, mental illness, cancer, Alzheimer's, etc., but most were only glossed over and not explored in-depth. It seemed that the story tried to cover too much ground, which caused its focus to waver and made the story a bit hard to follow.
Overall, this book had a lot of potential and is definitely worth a read, it's just that it would've been better if the story had been more focused and more tightly written. Now of course, it's possible the story was deliberately written this way in keeping with the "accidentals" theme, which is fine, just need to be aware going in that more focused may be needed when reading.
Received ARC from William Morrow (HarperCollins) via NetGalley.
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