The Blackbird Singularity

Matt Wilven

Average Rating 7/10 (1 Review)

Shortlisted for an Amazon Rising Star Award

Longlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker prize 2016

Selected for WHSmith Fresh Talent 2017

'Wilven does a masterful job of keeping his readers as off-balance as his protagonist... an intense and satisfyingly off-beat examination of a man lost in a landscape of unresolved grief and his heroic fight to find his way back home.'
Melissa DeCarlo, author of The Art of Crash Landing

Vince stops taking his lithium when he finds out about his partner's pregnancy. As withdrawal kicks in, he can barely hold his life together.

Somewhere between making friends with a blackbird in the back garden and hearing his dead son's footsteps in the attic, he finds himself lost and alone, journeying through a world of chaos and darkness, completely unaware of the miracle that lies ahead.

Featuring a foreword from Dr Eleanor Longdon; Dr Longden's TED talk, Learning From the Voices in my Head, was featured on the front page of The Huffington Post and has been named by The Guardian newspaper as one of 'the 20 online talks that could change your life.'; It has been viewed over 3m times and translated into 36 languages.

Review by Ben Macnair (311217) Rating (7/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 7/10
The Blackbird Singularity is one of those novels that packs magic realism, issues about mental health, success, writing, grief, pregnancy, new hope and life in all of its forms into a story line that is full of action, pathos, believable characterisation and everyday situations with more than a hint of the supernatural.

Vince is a once successful writer, struggling with his second book, lithium withdrawal and missing his dead son. His partner Lydia, although also grieving their loss has to work to provide the home they both share, but they are both limping along. Vince’s life is blighted by tablets, and his delicate mental state, and although his family and friends are patient, caring, and understanding at the start of the novel, their patience starts to wear thin, as Vince spends more time communing with a Blackbird in his back garden, than caring about the imminent birth of his second child, and all of the issues that brings.

As Vince’s Lithium withdrawal develops, he gains more insight into life, and is able to finish his novel, even though his publisher has ended their contract, instead supporting the burgeoning creative talent of an over-hyped accidental zeitgeist novelist.

The ending, blends light horror, and magic realism, and a sense of new hope for the beleaguered couple, and their families. Matt Wilven has produced a debut novel that many more established writers would be justly proud of. I await his future development with much interest.
Ben Macnair (31st December 2017)