Despite having read the description, I expected We Should all be Birds to be more about birds than about Brian. I did expect a lot about Brian based on the description but I still expected more about birds. It was in fact, more about Brian and his debilitating illness. I appreciate it his extreme care and compassion for the birds, his thoughtfulness, patience, and ingenuity. The story really is quite interesting but it also left a lot of unanswered questions. Whatever happened with Brian and L for instance. Due to Brian's illness, the story was dictated as opposed to being written. This perhaps explains why sometimes it felt a little herky jerky to me, like it was not flowing well and the ending felt somewhat abrupt. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the story. I found it fascinating both from the bird standpoint and the illness standpoint, I felt so much compassion for both. Overall I would give this 3.5 Stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tin House for a digital ARC of this book.

We Should All Be Birds is, in many ways, a love letter to an oft-misunderstood creature: the pigeon. It’s also the story of a man suddenly struck with a mysterious illness that alters his life. The bond between Buckbee and Two Step the pigeon is lovely to behold.

I struggled with Buckbee’s depiction of his ex-partner, L. The reader never learns why L ended the relationship and, although I understand the need to protect her privacy, she felt so one dimensional that she almost fell into the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” trope.

That said, relationship with animals is absolutely beautiful and this makes the book worth reading.

3.5 stars, rounded based on mood.

This was one of those books I wanted to love. I first saw it on Instagram, then happened across it on NetGalley and thought, “Yes, this one.” I even gave myself a few days to finish another read and emotionally prepare for what I thought would be a devastating portrait of a monumental human-animal friendship. What I got instead was… different. Still tender, still vulnerable—but in a way that never quite aligned with its title or my expectations.

Because of the author's illness, the book is dictated, not traditionally written. As a result, the structure leans more toward a collection of short-to-medium journal-style reflections—some humorous, some poignant, some loosely tethered to a central arc. There were early lines that really worked for me:

“Traffic (an invasive species).”
“Usually all I can see in the rearview mirror is his gorgeous butt…”
“CxwszA” (Two-Step’s first word—“What is he trying to say to us? What is on his mind?”)
These moments felt warm and strange in all the right ways.

In hindsight, maybe the point of these early vignettes is to establish just how grounding and essential this strange little pigeon—Two-Step—and his feathered cohorts became in Buckbee’s life after things had already taken a darker turn. So that when he finally recounts the earlier trip to Asia—rife with dismissive doctors, doubts from his brother, and a rescue mission led by a fiercely loyal friend—we understand what was at stake. Why survival mattered. Why it was even possible.

Still, from a narrative standpoint, the structure didn’t always work for me. The emotional thread that begins with Two-Step and the pandemic-era pigeon rescue quietly fades once the focus shifts to Buckbee’s past. I think the book would’ve been stronger had it alternated between timelines—braiding his physical and emotional collapse with the fragile new life he built with and around the birds. The title promises one thing; the latter chapters offer another.

As for Buckbee’s love story with “L.,” it’s a tricky thing. We're clearly meant to feel the weight of this relationship, but what we’re shown feels more obsessive than romantic. He refers to their friends being against the pairing when they began dating—without elaboration. He notes her leaving him, more than once, but doesn’t clarify how or why. It left me wanting closure that never came, not for him or for me as a reader.

There’s also a repeated reference to Two-Step being hit by a car (I think more than once?), but I genuinely don’t recall the story actually being told. Could be my own foggy memory—it took me ten days to read this, and I was in a bit of a personal funk—but the pacing definitely contributed.

All of that said, there are still meaningful reflections here. Loving someone (human or animal) so fiercely you’d speed 90 in a 40, or hold on until “there is nothing to do but let them go”—those moments hit. There is quiet devastation here, even if it didn’t come in the form I expected.

Would I recommend this? Not to everyone. It won’t explode onto the memoir scene, I don’t think. But it will quietly reach some people, and mean a lot to them. People who’ve lost love. People with chronic pain. People who’ve built their life around care—for animals, for others, for something fleeting and difficult and maybe even doomed.