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Author Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow talks to us about her debut novel All the Little Bird-Hearts and about the underrepresentation of autism in modern media.
Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Kent. Like her protagonist, Sunday, in All the Little Bird-Hearts, Viktoria is autistic. She has presented her doctoral research internationally, most recently speaking at Harvard University on autism and literary narrative. Viktoria lives with her husband and children on the Kent coast.
Her debut novel, All the Little Bird-Hearts, was published by Tinder Press on 2nd March and you can find it on our catalogue.
I grew up in a town which had a good public library, and I spent a lot of time there. I have always enjoyed non-fiction as much as novels and I explored every section of that library; it was a happy place for me. Teachers and peers often considered the books I read to be unsuitable for my age – the material I chose was typically perceived as too young or too advanced. I read broadly, unfashionably, and indiscriminately then, just as I do now. As a child my heroes would have been the writers whose subjects included my ongoing series of interests.
Like many autistic people, I have a spiky academic profile – in my case, while I am very able in language and literature, I struggle enormously with other subjects. As a child who was increasingly aware of my social and practical difficulties, it was a profound joy to discover I had a natural aptitude for reading and vocabulary. Books were a real refuge for me; they were instantly accessible in a way that nothing else could be. And reading is essentially a solitary and immersive process, so I was well suited to the practice.
I am a parent to both neurotypical and atypical children and I was concerned they might perceive autism as an impediment to pursuing their own interests, whatever those might be. I worried that as my children grew up, my abilities and the things I care about might become less obvious to them than the difficulties and differences were. For this reason, once my youngest children started school, I decided I would study too.
After taking an access course, I did a literature degree with the Open University. Although I loved books and reading, school was difficult both socially and academically. Unlike school however, I found university study immensely rewarding. I think almost everyone experiences dark times during their lives, but I feel fortunate to have always had consuming interests that serve to inform and console me in such situations. At university it is possible to immerse oneself fully within a subject, so I was incredibly happy there. Instead of leaving after my undergraduate study, I did a postgraduate degree and then planned to take a PhD in Italian Literature.
But I came up with an idea for my PhD on the Contemporary Novel instead and it was a part of that eventual thesis which formed All the Little Bird-Hearts. Jenny Hewson at Lutyens and Rubinstein became my agent just before I took the viva, and she found the book publishers shortly afterwards.
My book is set in the Lake District in the mid-1980s and is narrated by a single mother, Sunday whose teenage daughter is moving towards independence. A charming and socially sophisticated couple from London move in next door and Sunday, who is autistic, becomes as bewitched by the new neighbours as her daughter Dolly does. The book covers a summer in which the relationships between the four characters develop in unexpected and life-altering ways. It explores the ways in which families might navigate the physical and emotional separation that comes as children become independent adults.
Sunday is single and her relationship with her daughter is fundamental to her identity. Although she is proud of her daughter’s ambitions, she worries that the differences between them both will be highlighted and problematised by Dolly’s growing independence and future plans to move away from her. Sunday believes that their relationship will be destabilised by that change and so she is looking for ways to ensure that she can continue their bond. This vulnerability makes her susceptible to the new friends whose charisma overwhelms both her and her daughter.
The book tells Sunday’s story in a relatable way, exploring family relationships and the emotional flexibility which is required to maintain these. Sunday dislikes change and finds this aspect of relationships particularly difficult which I think is common to both atypical and neurotypical people, but particularly for the former. I respect the advocates who present autism as a kind of superpower but that is not the experience that I and many others have. Personally, I find the condition to be less straightforward; for me, it creates powerful connections between unrelated concepts but simultaneously inhibits other abilities as distinctly as a wall. All the Little Bird-Hearts explores this complexity via Sunday’s narrative, exploring the individual experience, rather than idealising or catastrophising the condition itself.
Autistic life is underrepresented in the cultural narrative, and this is particularly true for neurodivergent women. There is an enormous amount of non-fiction available on autism and the majority of this is written by neurotypical people. However, the most significant and effective writing I have found on the subject is exclusively written by those who are autistic themselves. I wanted to read fiction that functioned along the same representative and authentically narrated lines and so I wrote with this objective in mind. All the Little Bird-Hearts is primarily a literary novel; the first-person autistic protagonist never impeded this function, but instead afforded the text a distinctive and lyrical form.
I did not write with the conscious objective of informing a potential reader on autism because so much of both the condition and the existing narrative on that is about neurotypical observation and the self-monitoring of ourselves in response. My intention was to write in an honest way about the interiority of autism; that would not have been possible if I was cognizant of explaining or excusing my protagonist’s perception to a non-autistic reader. Most of all, I did not want to mask Sunday’s traits as so many of us do in our real lives. Sunday’s experience and expression of autism is not muted in the book and proves to be a genuine comfort to her in difficult times. Throughout the book, she demonstrates and benefits from the visceral joy that exists in the sensory aspects of the condition.
Like Sunday in All the Little Bird-Hearts, I am fascinated by the history and culture of South Italy, and, also like Sunday, I have never been there. The book has been translated into Italian and I will be going on my first visit there to buy it in an Italian bookshop!
Years ago, I saw a new writer being presented with an award and when asked what advice he would give aspiring writers he replied, ‘Read.’
I am going to read Delphi by Clare Pollard and The Home by Penelope Mortimer next. I recently read The Pumpkin Eater by the latter, and it was so good I am planning to read all her books.
Focused. Loyal. Overthinker.
One of the best things about being published has been meeting and working with other people who love books as much as I do. Spending time with my agent and with other writers and my publishing team has been really special. I am doing some bookish podcasts and literary festivals over the summer and feel fortunate to be involved with events like that.
All the Little Bird-Hearts is released in early March, so I haven’t seen it on the shelf in a bookshop yet, but I imagine that will be exciting. I recently heard a sample from the audiobook on Audible and the excellent actress, Rose Akroyd, sounded exactly as I had imagined all the characters when I was writing it. I listen to audiobooks regularly, but I hadn’t expected to feel such a connection to a reading of my own book as I did.
The best thing about being published is that the two people who believed my book could ever exist at all are proved right. My PhD supervisor Amy Sackville and my husband Steven were unfailingly supportive while I was writing, and I am grateful to them both.
