Category: Adult fiction
I was three-quarters of the way through this book – or even more – before it dawned on me that it was Wuthering Heights
in modern dress. I was tipped off by a couple of sly and amusing
references to twigs tapping on windows and ghosts, and by the hero
disappearing for twenty years and then returning a rich man.
It’s not a re-telling, though –
it’s a re-imagining. A dialogue with the older book, if you like. It
asks, would the same story, the same deathless love, be possible in the
modern age, and if so, how?
Catherine Czerkawska |
Bird of Passage
begins on an isolated farm on the Isle of Skye, in the 1960s. Every
year, bands of Irish ‘tattie-howkers’ arrive for the potato harvest, and
one year Finn O’Malley comes with them. He is too young for the
back-breaking work, and an elderly farmer is concerned for him, and
takes him under his wing, inviting him back to his house to feed him up,
and taking him fishing to give him a rest.
The farmer has a
granddaughter, Kirsty, on whom he dotes. She’s an only child, lonely at
the farm, and strikes up a friendship with Finn which persists through
the years, as he returns again and again to the harvest. By the time
sex enters the scene, they have forged a close emotional bond that even
years of separation cannot loosen; and, as an adult, Kirsty retains an
understanding of Finn which others, kept at a distance by his silence,
never reach.
I’ll confess here that I’ve never actually finished Wuthering Heights.
While admiring the down-to-earth reality of its earlier chapters, I’ve
always lost interest once it moved on to the next generation. As far as
I’m concerned, it’s one of the classics we love and avoid today. But I
finished Bird of Passage.
Tattie-howkers |
For one, I found both Finn and Kirsty far more engaging characters than Heathcliffe and Cathy. Kirsty is a bright and loveable child when we first meet her: the sheltered, adored darling of her mother and grandfather. She can’t understand Finn’s withdrawn and touchy nature and merrily, touchingly, tries to draw him out. She’s read the ‘Chalet School’ books and, hearing that Finn attends ‘a boarding school’ in Ireland, questions him about dorm feasts. In reality Finn is a near-prisoner in an ‘industrial school’ for the children of ‘unfit mothers’, staffed by monks. Things go on in dormitories at night, but not midnight feasts.
The Curiosity Cabinet |
I was convinced, moved and impressed by Bird of Passage. It says that, yes,
undying love for another, unrelenting absorption in another, is
possible in these days of computers and motorbikes. (Guess who rides
the motorbike in leathers: go on, guess.) But, although it’s possible,
you may not want to pay the price.
Whether you love Wuthering Heights or not, if you enjoy an involving, beautifully written book, you’ll enjoy Bird of Passage.
Bird of Passage by Catherine Czerkawska can be found here.
Bird of Passage by Catherine Czerkawska can be found here.
Susan Price is an award winning author, and has recently published several ebooks.
She blogs here: http://susanpricesblog.blogspot.co.uk/
Susan Price also contributes to Do Authors Dream of Electric Books?
She blogs here: http://susanpricesblog.blogspot.co.uk/
Susan Price also contributes to Do Authors Dream of Electric Books?
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