Cuckoo Song (novel)

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Cuckoo Song
Cuckoo Song (novel).jpg
Author Frances Hardinge
Cover artistKamille Freske (Paperback 1st ed)
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
SubjectFantasy, Fiction
Genre Children's or young adult fiction, Fantasy novel
PublisherUK: Macmillan
US: Abrams Amulet
Publication date
8 May 2014
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages416 pp (1st ed Paperback)
ISBN 978-0-330-51973-1
OCLC 1031707809

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge, is a children's or young adults' fantasy novel by Frances Hardinge, published on 8 May 2014 by Macmillan in the UK, and by Abrams Amulet in the USA. It won the 2015 Robert Holdstock Award for best fantasy novel, [1] and was short-listed for the 2015 Carnegie Medal.

Contents

The story takes place in the early 1920s, a few years after the First World War. It is mainly set in the imaginary English city of Ellchester. Ellchester is beside an estuary, hilly, and has many bridges. It also has a fairy underworld, called the Underbelly, populated by the Besiders, forgotten fairy beings. The Architect built it as a new home for them to move to now hidden secret places in the countryside are becoming rare.

Hardinge tells us that the name of The Grimmer, the pond Triss is rescued from, is taken from the name of a millpond in her grandmother's village, Wickham Skeith in Suffolk. The character of Violet Parish is loosely based on her grandmother, who as a young woman shocked her home village by arriving there riding a motorcycle. [2]

Plot

Triss has been unwell since being rescued from The Grimmer, a pond near their holiday cottage in Lower Bentling. Her memory is hazy. She sees her dolls coming alive. She has a gargantuan appetite, and feels an urge to eat her possessions as well as food. She finds dead leaves in her hair, and her tears are spiderweb. Her sister Pen hates her with a vengeance, and makes curious insinuations. At home in Ellchester, she discovers a Besider delivering letters from her dead brother, Sebastian, who writes of being stuck in a perpetual winter. Catching it, she learns about the Underbelly where many Besiders live, and that she only has seven days to live.

Triss follows Pen to a meeting with the Architect. Pen admits she led Triss to the Grimmer to be abducted. The Besiders threw a stick doll containing some of Triss's possessions into the Grimmer, which emerged as a changeling with Triss's appearance and some of her memories. Learning she is not the real Triss, she now identifies herself as Not-Triss.

Mr Grace the tailor exposes Not-Triss as a Besider changeling to her parents, and urges them to burn her. Pen rescues her, having become sympathetic to Not-Triss's situation. Violet Parish helps keep them safe from Mr Grace and her parents. The girls visit the Underbelly to meet the Shrike, who explains Triss's abduction was to punish her father for breaking an agreement with the Architect.

Not-Triss now seeks to locate and rescue the real Triss from the Architect. She also wants to release Sebastian's soul, and prolong Not-Triss's own life beyond its seven-day design.

In the end Not-Triss manages to save herself by trapping one of her belongings in her brother's watch and frees Sebastian from the limbo of the afterlife while saving Violet from her winter curse.

Characters

Adaptation

In December 2020 it was announced that Cuckoo Song would be adapted for Netflix by screenwriter Sarah Dollard. [3]

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References

  1. Barnett, David (2015-10-26). "Frances Hardinge's Cuckoo Song casts spell over British Fantasy awards". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2019-03-03.
  2. "Cuckoo Song: My Grandmother and the 'Grimmer'". Frances Hardinge's Twisted City. Retrieved 3 March 2019.
  3. "Netflix Unveils New U.K. Projects". Variety. Retrieved 14 December 2020.

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