Out of the past, into the future

She struggled to recall anything but, as with most things concerning her mother, her memory was more wish than real.

Sarah Addison Allen, Other Birds

Zoey Hennessey had hardly known her mother at all. She had been a prostitute who died young. But she had left an apartment for her daughter on Mallow Island off the coast of South Carolina, and now as Other Birds (2022) by Sarah Addison Allen opens, Zoey, 19, moves to the island to discover her future, and perhaps something about her past.

She quickly becomes involved in the lives of the four other tenants in the small apartment building owned by a man named Frasier. Two of the tenants are sisters, Lisbeth and Lucy. Lucy is a hermit, rarely seen. Lisbeth, meanwhile, is seen too much, always complaining about everything her neighbors do. The others living there include Mac, a talented chef, and Charlotte, a talented henna artist. Every character, it seems, either has a past to discover or a past to hide.

And then there are the ghosts, more than you will find in most ghost stories, yet none of them is frightening. They are ghosts who behave more like angels, looking out for those they love. The novel also has many birds, who may also be angels. "Birds are supposed to be messengers between heaven and earth," Charlotte says at one point. Zoey has her own bird, Pigeon, whom nobody else can see.

So, yes, this novel is a bit weird, yet it also proves tender, moving, meaningful, beautiful. Ghosts disappear. Love happens. The past fades as the future opens up.