Starlings

Starlings enter the novel through one rescued bird whose abrupt flight gives Yolandi Von Riesen a physical image for irreversible loss. The bird is not only a metaphor for her absent sister, Elfrieda Von Riesen: it is a living creature whose recovery, release, and movement beyond the household unfold on their own terms. Yet watching it leave makes Yolandi’s grief newly immediate, and the image later shapes a dream in which she begins to understand what survival requires.

Rescue and Release

A month before Yolandi visits her, her neighbor Amy finds a fallen starling on the sidewalk and takes it home to nurse. Amy makes a small house for it in her back bedroom, furnishing the space with a branch and a Frisbee filled with water. She puts live earthworms in a bowl of dirt, feeds the bird baby food and applesauce from the end of a tiny Popsicle stick, and plays starling songs so it can learn to sing in its own language. After about three weeks of care, she decides the bird can manage on its own and should leave the nest she has made.

The departure is a brief passage through the house. The starling first hops onto Amy’s shoulder; together they move down the upstairs hallway, descend the stairs, and cross the downstairs hallway toward the open back door. At the rectangle of light, the bird sees its chance and flies out. Amy’s husband films the flight on an iPhone, preserving the small dark blur as it passes into the light and disappears. Care has prepared the bird for this moment, but it cannot make the moment gradual.

Yolandi’s Response

Yolandi watches the video Amy shows her and is struck by the departure’s suddenness and irreversibility. She is already crying, though trying not to, and the image overwhelms her: the bird’s quick escape makes loss feel like something that can happen in a second, before anyone can hold it back. The scene does not explain away her grief; instead, the ordinary recorded flight gives it a concrete form. The image’s force lies in the contrast between the weeks of patient care and the speed with which the bird is gone.

The Image in a Dream

The bird’s movement returns in Yolandi’s dream of Elfrieda. In a yellow kitchen beside a large picture window, the sisters talk and laugh; when Yolandi tries to bring up an urgent fear about finishing her book and how it will be received, Elfrieda stops her and tells her she is on her own now. Yolandi recognizes in the dream the same feeling the starling’s flight produced: her sister, too, appears as a dark blur moving toward a rectangle of light.

After hearing her mother’s survival dream, Yolandi considers that this dream may be a survival dream rather than a nightmare. Its significance is not that the starling’s departure promises reunion or removes grief. Instead, the image helps Yolandi identify the loss she must survive; recognizing what has happened becomes, for her, the beginning of a possible cure. The bird’s flight thus connects a neighbor’s act of care to Yolandi’s changing understanding of her sister’s absence.