EDITORS' CHOICE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 CARNEGIE MEDAL and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize"Miraculous: spry and mordant, with sentences that lull you with their rhythms, then twist suddenly and sting." —Lauren Groff, author of Florida"A twisting, strange delight, Parakeet shimmers a soft and generous light on the darkest of a woman's innermost thoughts." —Kristen Iversen, Refinery29Acclaimed author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas Marie-Helene Bertino's Parakeet is a darkly funny and warm-hearted novel about a young woman whose dead grandmother (in the form of a parakeet) warns her not to marry and sends her out to find an estranged loved one. - The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the Internet? Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother. - In the days that follow, The Bride's march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried. A novel that does justice to the hectic confusion of becoming a woman today, Parakeet asks and begins to answer the essential questions. How do our memories make, cage, and free us? Urgent, strange, warm-hearted, and sly, Parakeet is ribboned with joy, fear, and an inextricable thread of real love. It is a startling, unforgettable, life-embracing exploration of self and connection. - A Best Book of 2020 at Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and Refinery29A Best Book of Summer at Vulture, Refinery29, Yahoo! Life, Alma, Subway Book Review, and Lit Hub - A Best Book of the Month at Entertainment Weekly, Hello Giggles, and Pop - Sugar