This was highly, highly recced by a friend, but I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting going in, other than she said it was weird. It was indeed quite weird. 

In small town Ontario, there are bird-women living in the lake, and everyone in the town knows that, and just incorporates it into their life (e.g. unwanted babies are given to the bird women), which is not what the book is about, though one of the characters is a bird woman. What it's about is generational trauma and child abuse. (Though there were so many family backstories on the go, that I got a little muddled in terms of whose ancestors did what.)

A young woman at loose ends has an affair with the local Anglican minister and his wife, being somewhat in love with the wife. It's CanLit: it goes poorly. It's CanLit: incest vibes ahoy! (though no actual incest)

My review feels fragmented, which is also true of the book, but I think that's intentional, and for the most part Hegele pulled it off, the surreality being the point, the bitterly angry feminism carried by the metaphor. My friend said she felt like there was a lot going on that she didn't completely understand, in terms of layers of meaning, and was going to reread it. I think it would probably benefit from that (to keep all the character backstories straight, if nothing else), but I also really liked it as it stood.