Published by Karnac, 2016. Reprinted by Sphinx, 2019.
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starlings
“But I suppose Steven and I knew something about broken things - that sometimes you just couldn't mend them. Never stopped trying though. Because you can't - until you do: stop and leave the broken thing behind.”
When Sally's visits her estranged brother, Steven, the ghosts of their shared history beat against their fragile reunion. Reconnecting with him seems to promise her a refuge from the inherited memories and silenced voices of Nazi-occupied Vienna which haunt her, but the weight of this legacy is one he can no longer bear.
As Sally's internalised persecution threatens to eclipse her sense of self and what is left unsaid takes hold, she pieces together a tapestry of fractured stories of displacement and exile, unveiling the masks we adopt as a means to survive, insisting we hold space for the shadows and silences.
At once an intimate portrayal of the bond between siblings and a rigorous exploration of entrenched cycles of persecution, Starlings reaches back through three generations to explore how the Holocaust reverberates in our time. It asks how we can carry a history we have not lived through yet cannot escape, and how, ultimately, we might find freedom beyond its binds.
Discover Miranda’s second novel, A Small Dark Quiet.
praise for starlings
“A strange, sad, original and rather brilliant first novel, illumined with flashes of glorious writing and profound insight, particularly into the ways in which we attempt to reinvent ourselves.”
"An intense and evocative journey through the mind of a troubled young woman haunted by her family history."
"Starlings is a challenging novel. It is intense and sometimes seems almost something of a battle. It is, however, a beautifully written battle, with poetic prose that is expertly paced."