Book Review: The Hummingbird Effect by Kate Mildenhall
An epic, kaleidoscopic story of four women connected across time and place by an invisible thread and their determination to shape their own stories, from the acclaimed author of The Mother Fault.
Longlisted for the Indie Book Awards 2024
Sydney Morning Herald Best Reads of the Year for 2023
One of the lucky few with a job during the Depression, Peggy’s just starting out in life. She’s a bagging girl at the Angliss meatworks in Footscray, a place buzzing with life as well as death, where the gun slaughterman Jack has caught her eye – and she his.
How is her life connected to Hilda’s, almost a hundred years later, locked inside during a plague, or La’s, further on again, a singer working shifts in a warehouse as her eggs are frozen and her voice is used by AI bots? Let alone Maz, far removed in time, diving for remnants of a past that must be destroyed? Is it by the river that runs through their stories, eternal yet constantly changing – or by the mysterious Hummingbird Project, and the great question of whether the march of progress can ever be reversed?
Propulsive, tender and engrossing, this genre-bending novel is a feast for the heart as well as the mind and senses. For fans of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Michelle de Kretser’s The Life to Come and Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House, it confirms Mildenhall as one of the most ambitious and dynamic writers in the country.
Published by Simon & Schuster Australia
Released August 2023
My Thoughts:In pieces, each of the storylines were engrossing. I have long enjoyed Kate Mildenhall’s writing style. Yet, taken as a whole, this novel was ultimately confusing.
Part of this can be attributed to listening to it instead of reading it. It’s not a novel suited to audio, there were too many other elements to it. I ended up going back through the ebook version after I finished listening, looking for clues and connections that I might have missed in the audio version and there were diagrams and an illustration as well, all of which was not conveyed over audio.
I think I was expecting more from this novel, some stronger connections, not just between the characters but thematically. I ended up searching online for articles and reviews, because ultimately, I really just wanted someone to explain to me what the novel was about. What I had missed.
The Hummingbird Effect is a visionary, genre bending novel. I would recommend reading it above listening to it. Best suited to readers who like their fiction speculative and open to interpretation.
