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Summary
Summary
A disturbing secret haunts two sisters in this spine-chilling YA historical thriller from award-winning author Frances Hardinge
An ALA/ALSC Notable Children's Book
Following a mysterious accident that leaves her sopping wet, Triss awakens to a world that's eerily off-kilter. Her memories are muddled, her sister despises her, and when she brushes her hair, out come crumbled fragments of leaves.
Is she going mad? Or did her accident trigger a nightmarish chain of events? In her quest to learn the truth, Triss ventures from the shelter of her parents' protective wings into the city's underbelly. There she encounters strange creatures whose grand schemes could forever alter
the fates of her family.
From master storyteller Frances Hardinge comes the unnerving tale of one girl's struggle to confront her darkest fears in order to triumph over a world where nothing is as it seems.
Author Notes
Frances Hardinge was born in 1973 in the United Kingdom. Her first novel, Fly By Night, won the Bradford Boase Award in 2006. Her other books include Verdigris Deep / Well Witched, Twilight Robbery, and A Face Like Glass. Cuckoo Song won the Robert Holdstock Award for Best Novel at the British Fantasy Awards in 2015 and The Lie Tree won the 2015 Costa Book of the Year award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this painful and powerful tale set in post-WWI England, readers meet 11-year-old Triss, the coddled daughter of a respected civil engineer and an overprotective mother, as well as her jealous younger sister, Pen. As the story opens, Triss has somehow fallen into a local pond, barely escaping with her life, and she regains consciousness to find that the world has gone strange. Her memories are spotty and inconsistent, store mannequins and dolls turn their heads to follow her movements, and every time she closes her eyes she senses "dreams waiting at the mousehole of her mind's edge, ready to catch her up in their soft cat-mouth and carry her off somewhere she did not want to go." Triss feels an overwhelming hunger that cannot be assuaged by human food and suspects she is no longer human. In the guise of a gorgeously written and disconcerting fairy tale, Hardinge (A Face Like Glass) delves deeply into the darker side of family life, particularly sibling rivalry and the devastating effect war can have on those left at home. Ages 12-up. Agent: Nancy Miles, Miles Stott Literary Agency. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Eleven-year-old Triss Crescent wakes up confused after a terrifying accident. Her memories dont feel like her own; she hears a voice like dry leaves; and a ravenous hunger devours all self-control. Mysteries quickly darken further, with whispers about secret enemies and a missing-presumed-dead brother; meanwhile, dolls come eerily to life, and Trisss spiteful little sister Pen seems to know what is going on. Though the sisters have been at odds for years, mutual trust will be the only way to set things right. As Triss tracks down the sinister explanation for her bizarre circumstances, her sheltered life turns into an adventure through a grotesque magical world, one that exists in the shadows of her own, vividly evoked, 1920s town. Hardinge (Fly by Night; The Lost Conspiracy, rev. 9/09) writes with a comfortable command of changeling-child story traditions, twisting them into her own darkly imaginative contribution to the genre. Breathless chases and tense foreboding drive the plot toward a harrowing climax, in which mortality and magic contend spectacularly. Hardinge is equally adept at capturing family dynamics; even during the most fantastical occurrences, the Crescent familys strained interactions are realistically nuanced. Cuckoo Song is a sophisticated, disturbing tale that shivers with suspense and touching moments of bravery. sarah berman (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Few authors can evoke a twinned sense of terror and wonder better than Hardinge. After a perilous dunk in the river Grimmer that she can't recall, Triss is unsettled by the strangeness of familiar spaces and people. Triss remembers her life, but it doesn't feel quite . . . hers. Her room and possessions are like a dream. Her protective parents, who never fully recovered from her brother's death in WWI, seem fearful, while her adversarial younger sister, Pen, is blatantly hostile. Add to that a gnawing hunger only satiated by ingesting, impossibly, her most treasured objects, and Triss worries she's lost her mind. In her efforts to learn the truth, Triss uncovers a magical community of Besiders led by a malevolent figure called the Architect, and it's here that she learns of the hidden deals that have given her family wealth and success but prolonged their grief. In addition to her beautiful, enrapturing, and careful use of language, Hardinge's story is vivid, frightening, and inventive, with narrative twists and turns that feel both surprising and inevitable. Hardinge uses her characters to explore the destabilizing effect of war, both on a societal and personal level, but the novel's heart is the grippingly sympathetic Triss, prickly Pen, and their shared journey to save their family. A piercing, chilling page-turner.--Hutley, Krista Copyright 2015 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5 Up-Ever since her older brother died in World War I, things have been tense for Triss and her family. After Triss suffers a horrible accident, her memory is hindered and all of a sudden she feels a strange, insatiable hunger that can only be calmed by digesting unusual items. From here, events proceed in an unexpected way as magical promises are made, relationships are tested, and characters question what it means to be alive. Mysterious letters and dangerous strangers create a mood of suspicion and paranoia as pieces of the story fall into place at just the right moment. Many secondary characters make understandable but regrettable mistakes throughout, cementing themselves as realistic and complex individuals. The beautiful writing is full of rich language that is reminiscent of an old fairy tale. Fans of Hardinge will not be disappointed in this latest spine-chilling, creative work that offers a nuanced depiction of grief within the structure of a well-wrought fantasy.-Carrie Shaurette, Dwight-Englewood School, Englewood, NJ (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
Frances Hardinge writes peculiar books, and Cuckoo Song, the latest in her award-winning canon, is her most peculiar yet. I mean this as a compliment, and have no doubt that Hardinge, in her trademark black hat, will take it as such. Her work is ostentatiously eerie, and she writes with all the gleeful menace of one of Macbeth's witches brewing a spooky potion while dancing wildly around a cauldron. In Cuckoo Song, instead of eyes of newts and toes of frogs in medieval England, we have doll-eating girls and girl-eating cinema screens in the 1920s, but the end product is something similar - a deliciously dark and dangerous concoction that casts a bewitching spell. After almost drowning in a millpond known as "The Grimmer", 11-year-old Triss Crescent wakes up in bed surrounded by the familiar faces of her nearest and dearest; only, they're not quite as familiar as they should be, and the house she has lived in her whole life only vaguely feels like home. Triss tries to dismiss this as nothing more than a disorienting loss of memory following her accident, but things soon become too weird for such a simple explanation: dolls come to life in her hands, a rasping voice inside her head counts down the days she has left to live, and a voracious hunger drives her to demolish an entire windfall of rotten apples. Forced to accept that something odd happened at the mysterious Grimmer, "black as perdition and narrow as a half-closed eye", Triss starts to investigate, while trying to convince her parents that she is still their perfect daughter. If she lets the mask slip, they might send her away for being "the wrong kind of ill". Triss's younger sister, a rather irritating, abrasive character called Pen, holds all the answers. She was there when her sibling emerged from The Grimmer, but is "sibling" the right term for the girl who climbed out of the water to take Triss's place in the Crescent family's home? Pen doesn't seem to think so, and delights in telling Triss that she is "getting everything just a bit wrong. Everything. All the time. And sooner or later they'll notice." Triss has no idea what she is talking about. She believes wholeheartedly that she is the real Triss, so it comes as a shock to both her and the reader to discover that she is an imposter. It is an ambitious idea to have a protagonist who thinks for 100 pages that she is someone else, but Hardinge pulls it off with aplomb. If you're worrying that I have spoiled the big surprise of the novel, fear not: there are bigger and better twists to come. Who is the imposter, and why did The Architect, an evil "bricks-and-mortar magician", switch the two girls? What is he up to in the city, and why do letters keep arriving from Sebastian, the Crescents' dead son? The mystery is complex and skilfully handled, with every plot strand delicately interwoven into an impressive spider-web whole. Cuckoo Song is not without its bum notes, and Hardinge has an exasperating tendency to overwrite, but in a weird sort of way it only adds to the novel's charm. This is a bold piece of literature, and I admire the guts and flamboyant imagination behind it. There is nothing careful or reserved about Cuckoo Song. It's magical, menacing stuff. Annabel Pitcher's Ketchup Clouds is published by Indigo. To order Cuckoo Song for pounds 6.39 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk. - Annabel Pitcher [Triss]'s younger sister, a rather irritating, abrasive character called Pen, holds all the answers. She was there when her sibling emerged from The Grimmer, but is "sibling" the right term for the girl who climbed out of the water to take Triss's place in the Crescent family's home? Pen doesn't seem to think so, and delights in telling Triss that she is "getting everything just a bit wrong. Everything. All the time. And sooner or later they'll notice." Triss has no idea what she is talking about. She believes wholeheartedly that she is the real Triss, so it comes as a shock to both her and the reader to discover that she is an imposter. It is an ambitious idea to have a protagonist who thinks for 100 pages that she is someone else, but Hardinge pulls it off with aplomb. - Annabel Pitcher.
Kirkus Review
This dense and twisty fantasy set in post-World War I Great Britain mixes monstrous creatures, sibling rivalry, a supernatural doppelgnger, family dysfunction and a kidnapping into a complex brew of eerie atmosphere and unexpected events.Hardinge is a master stylist whose imaginative works resemble one another only in the consistently impressive quality of her writing. Each narrative builds a unique world, and this combination of postwar tristesse and scary magical beings known as Besiders is no different. Evocative descriptions of the parallel settings, sharply drawn characters and fast-paced action pull readers along, though some may occasionally be distracted rather than transported by the heavy use of metaphor. Freakish actions and confusion on the part of the main character set the stage for an unsettling revelation a quarter of the way through that adds even more suspense and challenges readers' ability to empathize. While sisters Triss and Penelope are 11 and 9, the dangers they face and the issues their family grapples with suggest that readers slightly older than the protagonists will be best equipped to sort through the murky motivations, painful betrayals and matter-of-factly presented alternate reality. Nuanced and intense, this painstakingly created tale mimics the Escher-like constructions of its villainous Architect, fooling the eyes and entangling the emotions of readers willing and able to enter into a world like no other. (Fantasy. 11-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.