Cuckoo in the Nest by Michelle Magorian

Cuckoo in the Nest by Michelle Magorian

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had mixed memories of this. I had remembered it as being a bit stiff to read and something that I was not even sure I had finished. Yet Michelle Magorian is one of my favourite writers (A Little Love Song, for example, is something very close to perfection) and when I recently saw a copy of Cuckoo In The Nest, I knew it was time to try again with it. This is one of the great things about literature – and particularly children’s and young adult, the door is never closed. You can always go back to it, to try again and see whether this time the two of you work together.

And Cuckoo In The Nest worked for me. There were moments when I still felt that stiffness and I can’t deny that but it’s part of the story, really. Sometimes stories need to be told in a particular way, to feel the way they feel, and the stiffness about this is kind of the point. The war is over (but it is also not: life is still shaped and marked every day by it) and Ralph, the young lead, is home after being evacuated. Also, he wants to be an actor. None of this goes down well with his recently demobbed father.

As Ralph begins to fight for his dreams, he encounters a whole cast (pun not intentional) of dynamic and wonderful supporting characters. There’s something incredibly about Magorian’s eye for people – she gives you dynamics on every page. Everybody is different, with different motivations and different interests, and within moments you know exactly what’s happening and where you are. She grounds the reader in an enormous amount of truth and part of that comes from her understanding that we’re all growing and changing, all of us, every day. Life is complicated. Nobody ever understands it. Nobody ever really completely figures it out. All you can do is rise to the performance.

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