I requested an advance proof copy of this book after it was recommended on the Penguin podcast. The set-up is intriguing – a love story and a ghost story with cosmic consequences. I also want to learn more about the islands of the Caribbean: so easy to think of as a group, but so diverse. When We Were Birds is set on Trinidad, one of the southernmost islands of the West Indies and just a few miles off the coast of Venezuela.
It’s written as a Trinidadian would speak, so that the prose is of a piece with the dialogue. I think that helped me imagine the place and people more easily. I like that Ayanna Lloyd Banwo makes it clear at the start that the places are fictional (otherwise I have a tendency to get side-tracked looking up places on Google Maps; I couldn’t resist a little look at the island though). She takes her time in setting the scene and introducing the two main characters: Darwin, a grown man who has never been to the city, and Yejide who has endured the cold indifference of her mother. One has been brought up with death as a taboo subject, the other in a house inhabited by the dead. They don’t meet until halfway through the book but it’s worth waiting for – there is electricity in the air.
Despite being so much about death and the dead, the book is anything but morbid. I found it hopeful, even life-affirming. The language and imagery are rich, descriptions of the everyday sing. The last part of the story is told at such a pace I wanted to put the brakes on. I wanted it to go on longer. This is yet another debut that’s so accomplished it has whetted my appetite for the author’s subsequent books.

This book cycles between reality and myth, life and death, and other contrasts in ways that can at times feel disarming, but that feels like the point.

The characters take on aspects of the mythic too, and the overarching story behind the main story plays with this cleverly. The pace and rhythm of characters’ dialect helps weave it all together comfortably, and there are some passages where your only job as a reader is to let the words wash over you.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely loved this book, read it one sitting and immediately passed it on to my dad and his family who are from Trinidad & Tobago. A must-read by an amazing author.

I got When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo from NetGalley for free for a fair and honest review.

When Darwin leaves his mother and Rastafari faith behind to become a grave digger in the city of Port Angeles, he not only hopes to find his fortune but his dad who left for the city when he was a young boy.
At about the same time Yejide’s mother is on the verge of dying and leaving her a legacy that she may not want.
In the novel about death, how are Darwin’s and Yejide’s Lives linked in this magical fantasy story set on a Caribbean Island and using its timeless magic and myths to weave a story about Life and Death.
When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, is one of those stories which I feel would gain a lot, by being read as an Audio book, as the book is written in the local accent.

The story is set around two young people who are both at turning points in their life the first is Darwin, whose character I really connected with as he must leave both his home the mother who brought him up since his dad did the same journay and never came back.
In addition to taking a job which he was not allowed to do in the faith he was brought up in, which also meant he had to shave his hair and beard of to work in the graveyard.
The other main character in the book was Yejide, whose mother was about to pass away and be left an inheritance that is as much of a curse than a gift.
While Yejide’s story felt a little disjointed and almost seemed like an afterthought in the writer’s mind to expand the story.
However, once the two individual stories became interconnected the story started to become a real page turner and had me gripped
What I really liked about this novel was the imagery that Ayanna Lloyd Banwo was able to give to the book, which really did make the book come alive while reading.
All this makes When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo a novel that should get and needs a wider audience.

Loved, loved, loved! A great book: well written, riveting, and enthralling. A great mix of magic realism, fantasy, and a pinch of mystery.
Great characters, world building and excellent storytelling.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

When We Were Birds is set in Trinidad and is beautifully written, although I will admit it took me a couple of chapters to get used to the language. I thought I was reading a book full of grammatical errors at first until I realised it was written as the characters speak. Once I had this, I became fully absorbed in the story of Darwin and Yejide. The story is told in dual narrative so we get to see the struggles of both characters. It works really well and the plot is excellent. The concept is original and if you can keep in mind that the book is written to show the accent of the characters you will really enjoy it.

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s debut novel centres on two people brought together by mystical forces to create an unexpectedly powerful bond. Yejide and Darwin are loners, both estranged from their families, albeit in different ways, both grappling with their ancestry, the ways of life and the beliefs that have surrounded them since childhood. They’ve each reached a crisis point, desperate to work out how to carve out a space for themselves as individuals despite the weight of the histories that formed them. They’re also linked by their ties to death. Yejide’s a necromancer whose connection to the realm of the dead stretches back through generations of women. Darwin has been forced to stray from his Rasta heritage, ending up on the gravedigging crew at Fidelis cemetery, even though it’s against his religion to be close to the dead. Their unfolding love story’s entangled with a series of strange, supernatural events, and Darwin’s growing awareness that Fidelis harbours terrible secrets, a site of nefarious deeds that threaten his very existence.

Lloyd Banwo’s evocative narrative has a gothic flavour, interwoven with elements of magical realism rooted in Caribbean myth and legend. She uses Darwin and Yejide’s experiences to examine the rituals surrounding death, exploring the ways in which culture impacts on grief and loss. Her novel’s set in Trinidad, but in a fictional city, and I liked her decision to reflect Trinidad’s language forms in her writing through what she’s called ” indigenous Caribbean cadence.” Lloyd Banwo’s prose’s lyrical and well-crafted overall, as you might expect from a graduate of UEA’s famous writing programme, and she’s a more than promising storyteller. I particularly liked her portrayal of Darwin, his everyday life and inner conflicts, Yejide’s sections I found less compelling, a little overblown and forced at times. There’s a wonderful sense of place, and attention to detail here though, which I relished and which compensated for an overly leisurely pace. The first half’s almost entirely exposition, the plot doesn’t really emerge until the midpoint when Yejide and Darwin finally come together. This made some sections feel slightly thinly spread and uneven, a reminder that this started out life as a short story. However, I was quickly caught up in Darwin’s experiences, increasingly invested in his fate and that carried me through the more frustrating elements.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for sending me the ARC. I am giving this review voluntarily.

I think this would be fantastic as an audiobook - read by someone with an authentic accent from Trinidad and Tobago. The idiosyncratic grammar reflects the speech patterns of the island of Trinidad and Tobago and this in turn reflects the author's love of the oral tradition of storytelling. Personally, I struggled with the grammar initially, but I think anyone who has been more exposed to the accents of the Caribbean won't have the same level of difficulty surpassing it. I will say, even while I was adjusting to the grammar I could recognise that the writing is absolutely beautiful.

I loved the magical world that Yejide inhabits and the contrast between that and the literally earth-bound existence that Darwin is eking out as a gravedigger. Yejide appears to have no role or function at all (until her mother dies and passes on her legacy) and not even household chores to do to contribute to her local society. Darwin is obliged to work and has such a financial need to work that he takes the only job available to him even when it means he has to sever ties with his mother and his upbringing. Yejide spends most of the book looking after herself - okay, she's grieving so the people that surround her all indulge her. Darwin looks after people even after they've died and the living loved ones that remain even when he shouldn't. Yejide and Darwin have other things in common, though: their difficult relationships with their mothers and their absent fathers.

Probably because I took too long to get past the grammar (damn you mono-cultural upbringing in Ireland!), I found the pacing of the book a bit strange. By the middle of the book, before the two stories become connected, months appear to have passed for Darwin, whereas Yejide's story has only covered a few days. I realised that this was probably because we start following Darwin's story much earlier whereas I had made an assumption that they were scrolling along simultaneously.

Once the two main character's meet, the book's pace and storyline(s) really take off and the book really comes into it's own. (By-the-by, I'm not sure what the sub-plot with Darwin's Dad contributed - I could have done without it and would have preferred to see more of a resolution to Darwin's relationship with his mother.)

I will certainly be looking out for more by this author and I really hope that this book becomes an audiobook - it would be so perfect!

I will think about this book for a long time. Set in an imagined Trinidad, which is vividly and beautifully depicted by the author, we meet Darwin, a man faced by necessity to go against the wishes of his mother and move to the city to become a gravedigger, the only job on offer and Yejide, who lives in hill-top house with her mother who can see the dead.

The joint narrative provides the reader with two different and seemingly unconnected views of life in the city, and the struggle each character has with family, responsibility and death. Both narratives are beautiful, Darwin's earthy and gritty and Yejide's more fluid and ephemeral.

The dual narrative also works well with the dual themes of life and death and the very blurred boundaries between the two. It is beautifully written, and the narrative floats along until we get to the last few chapters of the book, and then arrive at the enigmatic ending.

Absolutely fabulous for a debut novel, and a book I would wholeheartedly recommend. Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is an author I shall follow with interest.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and Penguin General UK for an ARC of this beautiful book in return for a honest review.

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's When We Were Birds was featured on the 2022 editions of Guardian's (typically remarkably prescient) annual 10 best debut novelists.

The novel is a magic-realist love story, set in the Trinidadian city of Port Angeles. The set-up is fascinating, and beautifully sketched, our two protagonists:

Yejide, from a matriarchal line descended from the corbeaux, the black vultures of Trinidad, who in this novel's oral history are descended from green parrots, after a world-shattering event, and now serve to ease the passage of the dead into the next world, as her Grandmother explains to her when Yejide was a child. As the novel opens, Yejide's mother is dying and she will inherit the family destiny and duties:

"'The parrots watch the rain and watch the hills and watch the rivers and watch the dead pile high. They gather together in the branches of the last sacred silk cotton tree and hold a council. At the council’s end, the parrot battalion split and divide in two. One half fly to the east and the other half fly to the west. The parrots that went west became the little green birds we see today, those that sing and fly toward the setting of the sun. But those that went east toward the sunrise mute their green feathers to black and curve their beaks into sharp hooks. Their bodies get fat and their wingspan stretch so wide they darken the land below them as they fly. They release one last great song that make all the animals and men tremble, then grow grey hoods around their heads and necks that silence their throats forever.'

‘You know what they turn into, Yejide?’ Catherine stare out the window, smile and puff on her pipe.

‘Corbeaux!’ Yejide cry out.

She love getting the right answer. No matter how many times she hear the story, knowing the answer always make her feel grown up and very important.

Catherine nod and pull deep from the pipe. ‘When the change was complete, they feel their bellies get hungry for flesh. They spread their wings wide and circle the land slow, searching out the dead. And with their new long, curved beaks and talons sharp like caiman teeth, they tear into the flesh of the animals who was once their friends and the men who was once their enemies. When they done, they take to the silk cotton tree again, leaving nothing but bone. The living look on in horror to see the devouring of the dead. They don’t understand how the birds they once knew could do something so terrible. But the chattering parrots they knew were gone. They turn into something else entirely now. When they shed their green and change their form, they take on a sacred duty – to stand at the border between the living and the dead. So they wait for the dying and watch over the carcasses and consume the flesh. And no one but the corbeaux know that inside their bodies the souls of the dead transform and release.'"

And Darwin, bought up in a strict Rasta tradition, subject to the Nazarite vow. But, down on his luck, he seeks work from the job centre and ends up assigned perhaps the worst of all jobs for a Nazarite, to be a grave-digger in the city's main cemetery:

"It wasn’t a vow so much as law – like how water does run down a mountain and not up. Like how from November the sun start to set just a little bit earlier every day and the breeze get a little chill in it. Like how no matter how hard Darwin used to stare at the mango tree in the schoolyard when he was a little boy, he could not force it to bring forth fruit outside of its due season. It had no ceremony, no words that he had to memorize and repeat in front a crowd, but it was as irrevocable as high tide. All the days of his vow of separation, no razor shall touch his head. Until the time is completed for which he separates himself to the Lord, he shall be holy. He shall let the locks of hair of his head grow long. All the days that he separates himself to the Lord he shall not go near a dead body. Not even for his father or for his mother, for brother or sister, if they die, shall he make himself unclean, because his separation to God is on his head. All the days of his separation he is holy to the Lord."

But while I enjoyed the set-up, I wasn't so convinced with the execution. 300 pages was too long for me and the tension between Darwin's job and his vows and Yejide's challenges of growing in to her destiny took a back-seat to a story of scurrilous activity amongst Darwin's colleague (even the naive Darwin starts to realise it's a little odd that he gets much more in cash backhanders than he gets in an official wage). And the 'crime' story rather suffered from what I call Myron Bolitar Syndrome (after Harlan Coben's character), where things are rather too neatly resolved by the powers of the protagonists (here Yejide's supernatural abilities to invoke the aid of the dead).

A poignant book, so well written, with an enchanting plot. It is like no other book that I have read. I love the ancestral theme. Amazing for a debut novel.

This will no doubt delight many readers. The concept is original, the book is well-written and each of the two main characters is interesting. The book is written in a form of patois which I think was perfect - it added to the atmosphere without being at all difficult to follow.

However I found it quite hard to connect with. The first two-thirds of the book is very slow-paced - I felt that I knew what was going to happen and was just waiting for the story to catch up, and then when something did happen, it all felt a bit too immediate, and then the ending felt slightly rushed. Just at the point when I finally wanted more story, I got a conclusion instead.

That said, this is an extremely interesting debut, and I will be watching out for more from this author.

This is a short but very rich book, everything in it feels like it has its place, there isn't wasted space. The book is heavy with meaning, with the weight of the dead and the entwined fates of the two main characters, Darwin and Yejide.

The book centres strongly around the role of death in a culture, the way there is less general understanding of this in current times but that it is, nevertheless, incredibly important. Yejide is the current in a line of women who live with one foot here and one foot in the world of the dead. Set in Trinidad, the book brings to life the traditions and culture of death in the modern world in a similar way that Black Water Sister did for the culture in Malaysia. It is interesting and affecting to read, and I looked up a lot where I felt I was missing the context of this book as I'm not an own voices reader.

The book is well written and I felt for Darwin and Yejide separately. They are both on a different but hard journey towards accepting the role Death has played in their lives. The way death moves around the living world. I struggled to bring that feeling to them as a couple, however, and I think the second half of this book really needs you to believe they are each other's opposite force.

I was so excited to receive this ARC as the book was included on the 2022 annual Observer Best Debut Novelist list which has a proven track record in identifying the best upcoming authors.

When We Were Birds is an intertwined love and ghost set in Trinidad and Tobago between our two protagonists Darwin and Yejide.

Darwin has taken a new job as a gravedigger in the Fidelis cemetery through economic necessity. He had grown up in the Rastafarian faith which precludes you working with dead bodies and as such becomes estranged from his mother and leaves the family home and moves to Port Angeles for a new life. When he starts working in the graveyard he starts having visions driven by his closeness to death and mourning.

Yejide is living in an eclectic matriarchal household in the hills which is steeped in traditional mysticism and storytelling. As a child her grandmother recounted mystical stories of her family’s history which she believed were folklore but she soon uncovers that the females in her family have a special role to play with the afterlife.

This book is just beautiful, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo writes it in a patois which gives an extra layer of authenticity as she blends the folklore with magic realism into a beautiful love story with cosmic consequences,

This is a really strong debut novel which I anticipate featuring on award lists later this year.
Huge thanks to @netgalley and @penguinbooks for this ARC

First of all I'd like to thank Penguin and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.

The book is essentially the story of how Yejide and Darwin, two young people from vastly different backgrounds, meet and fall in love. Don't let this description fool you, as the story is much more complex and nuanced than one might imagine. This book was a journey. It's a brilliant debut, and is imbued with a unique atmosphere, like the gentle flow of a river, which, despite it tribulations, proceeds in a gentle pace, calmly rippling.

This must be the first novel by a Carribean author I've read, and it's a fantastic introduction to a new culture and way of thinking. Within this world, the book reveals local interpretations of family, religion and spiritualism, socio-economy, and love. While many of these are universal, some are unique and beautiful in their uniqueness. Much of the book touches spirituality, but I particularly liked how it dealt with the concept of family, and the permeability of its construct. The added "magical realism" felt natural and organic as well, rather than a thing that sat at the centre of the plot.

I also very much liked the vividness of the text (partly achieved through the use of the TTSE language) and the descriptions of events. The author is able to combine describing semi mystical scenes with moths flying out of a person's mouth with grotesque scenes of violence. Yet it feels natural and not intended to achieve a cheap "effect" (other, perhaps, the use of the word p***y, which I just found irrelevant in that particular context).

The ending was also well executed. While a bit predictable, it was satisfying and cathartic. Very well executed and conceptualised.

The main thing I struggled with was the pacing - nothing much happens before I was nearly 60% of the way through. Too little happens in the first half, and way too much happens in the last third. The balance is off, and it feels like the author was rushing through the last bits a bit.

Very much looking forward to see how the author evolves over time.

I really loved the idea of this book from the moment I read the description of it. It's dark, it's deep, it's captivating.
The thing I would definitely would like to read.
However, the impression of this book left me in two minds. On one hand loving and embracing the idea and story behind it, on the other - constantly distracted by funny grammar, which, as I understand, is to show the accent of how people talk in this corner of the world. Yes yes, I do get that. And yet, it was so very distracting and probably because it is all the text like that, not only dialogs. At some moments I would just loose the grip of even which tense is being talked about - past, present, future?... There are better and far more interesting things in this book to emerse yourself into, rather than that. But then again, it might be just me.
3,5 stars. Yeah, I like halfs, and that is never an option when I try to rate it. It's just there somewhere in a middle for me.

I'm not sure how to review this one! It takes a little while to get used to the Trinidadian dialect and think it would be great as an audiobook or even read out loud by the reader. But that has never stopped me reading other books before. I think what I found difficult was the confusing plot and I really struggled to want to read anymore.
I can see this is a cleverly written novel, different to other contemporary fiction and a mix of genres but it just wasn't for me, particularly not at the time I read it.
Thank you for my advance copy though, I imagine this will do very well with others more literary than myself!

This story is incredibly unique and transporting, full of character building and vivid landscape. While it’s quite a mythical tale and told using authentic Trinidadian language, it covers many themes about love and loss that tie the reader to reality. I connected most with Yejide’s character and the relationships in her early life. I found Darwin’s story more difficult to become engrossed in. The lack of prominent indicators for dialogue as well as the use of present tense, while giving it an edge, made it overall slightly more unstable to read.
Overall an beautiful read unlike anything else I’ve experienced.

This book featured in the 200 version of the influential annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature (past years have included Natasha Brown, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Douglas Stuart, Sally Rooney and Gail Honeyman among many others) and was also picked out by the New Statesman (and others) as one of the most anticipated debuts of 2022.

The author was born and raised in Trinidad, moving to the UK five years ago after the deaths of her parents and her storytelling grandmother, and also taking an MA in Creative Writing at the UEA (which produced the draft manuscript of this book). Her background explains many of the influences on this book – which is steeped in its setting of Trinidad, in the tradition of oral storytelling she got from her Grandmother and in which the theme of death is key.

The book’s two main characters both find themselves draw into connections with the dead in ways they had not expected – one going against his family, his upbringing and his vows through economic need, the other only just finding out the full meaning of her part in her family’s destiny.

Darwin grew up with his Rastafarian mother in the countryside and his life had been underpinned as a result by the Nazarite vow: (Numbers 21: 6 “Throughout the period of their dedication to the Lord, the Nazirite must not go near a dead body”). With his mother increasingly unable to make money by taking in sowing, with him unemployed and with the economy in tatters he decides to travel to the City of Port Angeles government employment to look for work – and the non-negotiable job he is offered is as a gravedigger at the Fidelis cemetery. His mother did not approve of his visit to the City (not least as his father left for the City when he was very young and never returned –deserting his wife and child) and effectively throws him out when she finds out the job he has taken – which causes him to cut of his hair and effectively drop his vows.

At the cemetery he starts to find comradeship with his fellow gravediggers although he is deeply disturbed by his encounter with death and mourning. Over time though he becomes increasingly unsettled by his fellow gravediggers – their ready access to cash and the respect they seem to gain in the City’s bars. He also find almost corporeal images of his father resurfacing while his life gets increasingly murkier and more dangerous.

Yejide lives in an eccentric family who have owned a odd hill-top house outside the City. She has always known that there is something special about her family and a responsibility passed down through the generations via the female line. Her mother Petronella has spent the last year’s in mourning for her twin sister, who still appears to her as a ghost (and can be seen by Yejide) and on Petronella’s death in a storm, her ghost starts to outline Yejide’s new responsibility to ease the passage of the souls of the City’s dead into the afterlife – the family legendarily descended from Corbeaux (Black Vultures).

Yejide though finds herself torn between whether she should accept the responsibility – her relationship with her mother was always very difficult and she starts to realise that this was due to her mother living in an almost parallel world of the dead.

The book is written in a loose form of patois – one which perhaps takes a couple of pages to adjust to (I must admit for the first few paragraphs I thought I was reading a very rough uncorrected proof) but soon becomes very natural. What perhaps takes more adjustment is the world of Yejide and her family and the porous nature of any boundary between the dead and the living.

The alternating sections of Darwin and Yejide can seem like two separate books. I must admit my preference was for the Darwin sections – still thematically about destiny, family and death but, at least for me, more tangible and accessible as well as more genuinely darker. The jeopardy in the Yejide section was dampened for me by the fantastical elements.

Over time though Darwin and Yejide find themselves drawn together – later by circumstance as Yejide buries her mother, but initially through a mutual vision/dream and both apart and together they start to come to terms with the real stories of their families and whether and how they should allow stories to set their own destinies.

Overall I found this a very good debut – a distinctive take on magic realism with a hard edge to it.

What an eclectic mix we have here. The modern tangled with the classic, reality in an embrace with magical realism. Mythology clashing with present realities. The macabre intertwined with mysticism.

Classical themes like love, with its many facets, good vs bad, courage and perseverance, duty mix with Tridinidad's modern realities: crime, unemployment, underdevelopment. Creation and other myths join forces with modern day superstitions to paint a gorgeous story that made me think of Márquez.

I must admit that the language has been a cultural shock. I had a hard time getting used to it. But the imagery is was rich, so colourful, so fascinating, so immersive that it compelled me to keep reading. I loved the macabre of Darwin's world and his moral battles. I also loved the folklore and magicality of Yejide's world, her own struggles with freedom vs duty. The tidy end is something that I dread in modern novels, but it sure was fitting here.

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is a fascinating new voice and I would love to read more of what she writes!