What Birds Can Only Whisper

Janet Money, a former sports editor of the Woodstock Daily
Sentinel-Review, is a London-based freelance writer.

What Birds Can Only Whisper is a disturbing novel about a survivor of
childhood sexual abuse and her attempts to come to grips with both the
abuse and her adult sexuality.

Kendra Quillan is the lead singer of Survivors, a Toronto rock band
heading out on tour. Kendra’s relationship with Axel, her first sexual
partner in years, triggers dissociative out-of-body experiences
involving bird flights—the beginning of her journey back to a
childhood of abuse.

While the bird theme seems clever at first, it soon grows tedious and
then, sadly, humorous, even as Kendra’s on-earth situation becomes
more and more challenging. At one point birds come to check on Kendra in
the hospital, where she’s recovering from a bout of self-mutilation.

What Birds Can Only Whisper, Brickman’s first novel, would have
worked better as a novella. The author does a fine job with parts of the
book (such as the family Christmas vignette), but there is not enough
character development to stretch the concept to novel length.