Other Birds

Other Birds is a novel by the American writer Sarah Addison Allen, published in 2022. It is set on Mallow Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, in a building called the Dellawisp.

The Dellawisp is an old cobblestone building shaped like a horseshoe, and it is named after the small turquoise birds that live around it alongside the people. The tenants keep to themselves and the place has an air of magical secrecy, which is what Zoey finds when she arrives.

Zoey has come to claim the apartment that belonged to her mother, who has died, and the neighbours she meets include a girl who is on the run, two middle-aged sisters who are not speaking to each other, a lonely chef and a writer with a considerable reputation.

There are also three ghosts in the building, and each of the people in it has longings of their own. The novel is about what the living and the dead owe one another, and it belongs to the southern tradition in which the ordinary and the impossible share a street.