Christy Lefteri is a writer for whom a sense of place always takes centre stage. She understands that the creation of substantial characters is bound tightly with the evocation of a clear and immersive environment. One cannot be done – or at least done well – without the other.
In Songbirds, the divided Cypriot capital of Nicosia becomes the backdrop for a missing-persons case that raises questions about class, racism, money, motherhood and inequality.The story changes hands between Petra, a wealthy single mother, and Yiannis, a compassionate hunter who rents the apartment above Petra and her daughter Aliki. When Yiannis falls in love with Petra’s maid, their lives become tangled.
Yet, “maid” isn’t a word that does Nisha justice; aside from ensuring the smooth running of Petra’s home life, she has also almost solely raised her child and in the process become more of a mother, and more essential, to Aliki than Petra is willing to admit.
This complicated dynamic between Petra, Aliki and Nisha kindles a domestic tension that Lefteri uses to unpack how “one person’s emancipation sometimes relies on the servitude of another”. It is only when Nisha goes missing that Petra realises the scope of the influence on her life a woman she has only ever viewed as another foreign domestic worker has.
As Nisha’s absence forces Petra to take an active role in her child’s life for the first time, she is jolted out of the privileged ignorance her money has afforded her until now. Gradually we see an entire street, town and island running on the expendable lives of foreign domestic workers, family units and businesses of every kind propped up by women forced to raise their own children through iPad screens and monthly bank transfers skimmed off measly wages.
Taking leave of the intensely domestic, Lefteri spends a welcome amount of time in lush Cypriot nature. Her writing here flourishes before reeling you back into reality to show you how nothing is off limits when money is involved.
The elements that brought The Beekeeper of Alleppo such success are all here in Songbirds, a thrilling, sharp and sensitive story that peels away at the layers of relationships and the personal cost of our rigidly class-based society.
