Review of Birdcage Walk, by Helen Dunmore

Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In Helen Dunmore’s last novel before her death, a young woman named Lizzie is caught between allegiance to her writer-mother, Julia--“Mammie”--and an intense bond with her new husband, John Diner Tredevant, a real estate developer in Bristol. The novel is set in England during the time of the French Revolution, and paints a portrait of the illicit society of radical thinkers in England, who write, publish, and preach for equality, the rights of women and the poor, and against the divine right of kings. The novel is prefaced by the discovery of an 18th century gravestone in a Bristol graveyard, commemorating Julia Fawkes, which intrigues a modern visitor. No writings of hers remain, except for a damaged letter. As Dunmore says in the Afterword, “The question of what is left behind by a life haunts the novel” (405).

The rest of the novel imagines Julia’s life, through her daughter’s eyes. Lizzie herself has no talent for writing, is not particularly interested in radical politics, and has left the family nest for love of her new husband, who goes by his middle name, Diner. Gradually we come to know Diner, through Lizzie’s eyes--and what we learn is ominous and weaves a skein of tension into the narrative. Lizzie and Diner’s half-finished home, among a group of grand houses under construction, overlooks a spectacular gorge and wild forest beyond. As Diner struggles to complete the properties and persuade others to buy into his grand vision, the sense of entropy and ruin grows, against the backdrop of increasingly violent news from France. Throughout the novel, Lizzie shuttles back and forth between her husband’s house and her mother’s home in Bristol, where she becomes more and more caught up in her mother’s health and the well-being of her new-born brother. Her thoughts on the paradoxes of life and death are bleak, brave, and unflinching, and seem to express the author’s own voice. As a character, Lizzie can be frustrating for her stubbornness and naiveté; but she is all the more real for this, and shows her strength as the story hurtles toward a searing climax. Dunmore’s favorite themes of deception, devotion, obsession, and loss come together in this stunning historical narrative—a fitting culmination of the writer’s long career.




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