An Evening with Birdy O’Day

Greg Kearney
Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024
336 pages
ISBN: 9781551529417
$24.95
Reviewed by Bailey Bellosillo

Greg Kearney’s An Evening with Birdy O’Day is a charming and heartbreaking meander through the queer life of Roland Keener, a 69-year-old hairdresser from Winnipeg who relates the tale of: his decades-long love for the now washed-up music icon Birdy; his partner of 25 years Tony; surviving the AIDS epidemic; and his relationship with his mother. She is queer, poor, and single and his role model despite the fact that she doesn’t hesitate to remind him he is fat and a product of rape.

After being estranged for decades, Roland receives VIP tickets to Birdy’s comeback concert in Winnipeg. The significance of the gesture is understood only after flashing back to their first meeting in a bathroom stall.

Roland’s first-person point-of-view and internal monologue can be melancholic and tiring, but at its best heartfelt and witty. His language is personable, self-deprecating, and blunt while his partner Tony’s speech is more down-to-earth. The titular Birdy O’Day speaks in run-on, breathless sentences. Each character is specific and devastatingly modern.

Birdy nears 70, but Roland and Tony speak like teenagers. Roland cries, “Gosh, be an ally!” to which Tony responds, “I am an ally! I’m an ally up the arse and out again, so don’t hand me that. I’m just saying, he’s so famous. And so mainstream—my grandma has his records.”

An Evening with Birdy O’Day covers several decades over its 330 pages with references to Beyonce, Sephora, The Boys in the Band, and Skip the Dishes to gesture to pop culture of each era, but the name dropping can grow tiresome. Birdy’s interviews, album names, and details about the queer scene in Manitoba seemed more genuine.

Regardless, the novel was endearing thanks to its characters with big personality, some more likeable than others. When it chooses to delve into more difficult subjects it’s gripping.