The Boy With a Bird in His Chest
By Emme Lund
“A java sparrow lives inside of Owen’s chest.” This is the opening line to Emme Lund’s debut novel, The Boy With a Bird in his Chest. There is a clarity to these first words. An immediate understanding without knowing any of the other things that make Owen a complex and fascinating character. You can visualize some, fairly accurate, version of him without any other physical description. The vivid portrait of the title itself is immediately satisfying, setting up the novel’s characters to glow like psychedelic flowers on the side of a cliff.
Owen’s journey through childhood and into early teenage rebellion is tumultuous. Not only does the creature living inside his body make him what’s called a Terror, but he slowly discovers that he likes boys in a world still unwelcoming to that lifestyle of love. Gail, the java sparrow in Owen’s chest, is at times his conscious, anxiety, self-doubt or pride. She flits through every page of their story, never straying far from the heart of the boy she lives within. Though Gail and Owen have a symbiotic relationship, she is often split between being her own character and another piece of Owen’s body. It is not parasitic, and she is often the one good thing in his life, but her existence in a world of prying eyes complicates his life as her presence comforts. While boy and bird is one of the most miraculous relationships there is, the tangled web of connections keeps the book alive. The queer found family, punk show crew, and private love affairs allow the impossibility of Owen to fit into wherever he goes. There are few characters you despise, and even those you come to understand in some small way.
While the java sparrow makes Owen more of an outsider than that term can do justice, his relationship with Gail and their shared body says something more than “young gay boy struggling to fit in”. Owen’s journey as something other than average human was analogous to identifying outside of the gender binary. Owen sought personhood through drastic physical change, not wanting to alter Gail, but how the public would see her. Without being able to change society, he changed his place within it, creating a personality for them to see, to hide what he did not want others to know. There is a scene where he wraps his chest to heal a wound, the act of doing so imitating how someone would bind their breasts. The novel never blatantly names what it is doing, Owen doesn’t go beyond a tentative exploration of what he wants for his body because he doesn’t have time by the book’s end. There are other people within his circles with their own unique stories we catch glimpses of, leaving everything on the table but heterosexuality.
The Boy With a Bird in his Chest is a queer coming of age story that doesn’t have to follow the path laid out by others. Emme Lund combines magical realism, romance, queer fiction, and whatever else she wants to write about a sweet little boy growing up quickly in an unkind world. She doesn’t let the tragedy of existence sour her characters for too long; no matter how bleak the situation, the love they are capable of is always abundant and just within reach when they need it most. Maybe it’s unrealistic, but what do you expect for a boy with a bird in his chest?