Sarah Addison Allen’s novels are always magical. They’re few and far between, and the rarity just adds to the magic that she puts into her books. If you haven’t read Garden Spells or The Peach Keeper or any of her other books, you’ve missed the magic that is interspersed with everyday life, just accepted as part of it. Other Birds is a coming-of-age novel, a story of ghosts, a story of the past and hope. All of those are magic in themselves, but Allen adds elements of magical realism.

Zoey Hennessey has high expectations for the tiny condo on Mallow Island, South Carolina. She inherited it from her mother, and now that she’s eighteen and going to start college in Charleston in the fall, she’s moving there, leaving behind her father and his second family who never wanted her. The Dellawisp Condos were in the only building on the island that survived when all the houses burned during the Civil War. Most people didn’t know they were down an alley, hidden behind a gate, and named for the tiny turquoise birds, dellowisps, that lived in the bushes. But, Zoey brings her empty birdcage and an invisible bird, Pigeon, with a strong personality.

And, Zoey brings hope – hope that she finds friends and a home, something she hasn’t really had in years. But, the people locked behind that gate are loners; Frasier, the manager, haunted by the ghosts of the island itself; Mac, a chef clinging to Camille’s memory, the cook who fed all the starving children of the neighborhood, and the only mother he ever loved; Charlotte, a henna artist running from her childhood memories; and the two Lime sisters who don’t speak to each other. And, the stories of Roscoe Avanger, the local author who brought fame to Mallow Island, unites all of them.

Sarah Addison Allen’s books are always too special to spoil. They’re filled with unique people. She has a way of writing, of composing a sentence that sometimes takes your breath away. Roscoe Avanger’s account of Mallow includes this. “Stories aren’t fiction. Stories are fabric. They’re the white sheets we drape over our ghosts so we can see them.” As Zoey encounters the other residents of the Dellawisp Condos, she wonders about their silence, and their untold stories. She’s uneasy with the thought of untold stories. “What happens to them? Where do they go?”

Allen has magical stories to tell us, stories that bring her characters to life. Zoey is the instrument that brings hope into hopeless lives, but every one of the characters plays a part. People shouldn’t be trapped in their pasts. In Other Birds, Allen finds a way to release the ghosts of the past. It’s magical.

Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen. St. Martin’s Press, 2022. ISBN 9781250019868 (hardcover), 290p.

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