It is 1792 and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence.
Lizzie Fawkes has grown up in Radical circles where each step of the French Revolution is followed with eager idealism. But she has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a property developer who is heavily invested in Bristol's housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war.
Diner believes that Lizzie's independent, questioning spirit must be coerced and subdued. She belongs to him: law and custom confirm it, and she must live as he wants.
But as Diner's passion for Lizzie darkens, she soon finds herself dangerously alone.
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[If my friends hadn't decided that I should have a dog I would never have opened the gate and gone into the graveyard]***
(Windmill Books, 3 August 2017, first published March 2017, 416 pages, paperback, borrowed from my library)
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This is my first time reading the author's fiction. I've read a lot of her poems. I was blown away by Birdcage Walk, one of the most engaging, unsettling and disturbing books I've read in a long time. You could argue that not a lot happens in the book but so much happens that it took my breath away. Birdcage Walk is described as a psychological thriller. It's more of a historical crime novel, slow burning, intense and seeped in menace. Diner never raises a hand to Lizzie but there is always this sense that he could, that he could really hurt her if she doesn't learn to be a silent, doting wife. His attitude towards her made my flesh crawl. There's something so creepy and unsettling about him. Birdcage Walk did not go in the direction I expected which is always a good thing. A thriller to me is a book with violence in it, fast paced, full of twists and turns. None of these things are in the book but the threat of something dark and the truth about what happened to Diner's first wife is always there. Birdcage Walk is haunting.