The Birds that do not Sing by Steve Gay
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 303 KB
Overview: Beautifully observed and thought provoking, this unforgettable story of love and loss in wartime Britain will appeal to fans of Crooked Heart, and My Name is Leon. With its captivating window into the mind of a young boy it draws us into a saga of human frailty, how the traumas of our youth become the guilt of our adult life, the silences we keep, the redemption we seek.
That autumn day in 1940 changes everything for ten-year-old Jimmy. Coventry is smouldering on the horizon, neighbours are missing and faces are grim all around. It is the day when family and community collides, a time of confusion and recrimination, of choices that will echo for a lifetime.
Jimmy Brown plays in the park on Sundays whatever anyone says. His family has a reputation, his father a militant socialist who makes surgical boots in his shed, his sister struggling with polio as she distributes pacifist leaflets, and his brother refusing to fight for his country. When the Luftwaffe comes and public opinion shifts to embrace the war effort, social expectation and conflicting loyalties send Jimmy down a fateful path.
‘Little birds that do not sing… must be made to sing.’ That’s what Jimmy’s teacher would say in a classroom where beatings were a daily occurrence and as fearful as the bombers passing overhead. Seventy-five years later the words still have their hold on him, the events of that November day haunting his dreams and waking hours despite the passing of generations. When he hears about a concrete elephant in a nearby garden he wonders if it is the one his father made before the war, the elephant that listened to his troubles when he was young, who heard him when nothing made sense. Will finding it again help him face what happened that day in 1940, or open new and more painful wounds?
Genre: Fiction > General Fiction/Classics
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