Love is a Rebellious Bird by Elayne Klasson: book review

Love is a Rebellious Bird (2019) is set in America and spans sixty years. The title comes from Georges Bizet’s Carmen.

The narrator is Judith Sherman, in her seventies, who ponders why she loves Elliot Pine. She writes her thoughts to him, confronting the good and the bad.

Written in sections, Judith looks at various aspects of loving Elliot: Beauty, Consolation, Magic, Insanity, Renunciation, Deceit, Serendipity, Sensory Fulfillment, Being Seen, Moving, Need, and Beauty Undiminished.

Judith begins her memories with Elliot’s beauty, and her initial attraction to him, sixty years ago, when they were ten-year-olds in the 5^thgrade at school in Chicago. ‘For the rest of our lives, our relationship was a cocktail mix of rivalry and loyalty – shaken with a strong dose of passion and resentment.’

Judith writes about Elliot’s brother Phillip, three years older, and his brother Jeffrey who was six years older – and comparing herself to their girlfriends. College days, different friends, different studies, different jobs, and a move separated them physically on opposite coasts of the country. Elliot begins a legal career, and Judith marries Seth. Elliot marries Laurie and then Meredith, but who was Lillian?

From heartbreak to tragedies, to her travels, they would always catch up and connect to reflect on life and about their choice of partners.

Judith and Elliot’s relationship was never equal; she loved him throughout everything, affecting all of her other relationships – with her two husbands and three children. Why does she still love Elliot? Judith acknowledges it has not always been wise to keep loving Elliot, but from childhood to old age, Elliot is the single constant throughout everything.

This is a tender monologue to a man, always loved, with no regrets.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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