Review by Dr Dee Michell
Fran Hill’s dialogue driven novel, Home Bird, is a delight - well written, funny, uplifting.
Home Bird is due to be published 20th March this year. It is a sequel to Fran Hill’s debut novel, Cuckoo in the Nest. Protagonist Jackie Chadwick—an intelligent, thoughtful, pragmatic and sometimes caustic 17-year-old—is now in the process of ‘aging out’ of the state care system—and she has a lot to contend with.
Along with keeping up with schoolwork, preparing for final exams, and part-time paid work, there’s …
The story begins on Wednesday 23 May 1979 when Jackie meets her dad, Dave Chadwick, as he is being released from prison. Three days later, he shows her around his new flat and then, on Saturday 21 September (each chapter is dated like a journal entry), she spends her first night there.
All is well until Friday 26 October:
I shut the front door. There was a pink suitcase in the hall.
In the living room, I found Doreen, the shop assistant with the rigor-mortis hair. She was standing on a chair at the window, wielding a tape measure. As she reached up in her short dress, I could see the top of her stockings, held up with suspenders.
Doreen sets to and organises the tiny flat, making curtains, taking over the cooking and cleaning, stocking up on gin.
On Wednesday 5 December, Doreen’s son moves in.
The most difficult thing for Jackie is not Doreen being there, nor Stuart, not really, but that her father resumes his old habit of consuming copious quantities of alcohol.
Difficulties at home result in Jackie writing some dark poetry:
You look for good signs. Stop here! for cream teas.
The sun will shine tomorrow. Money off!
A mile until you’re home. Pink-blossomed trees.
Two for the price of one. An easing cough.
You hope for true signs. Promises: they’re kept.
Letters come from those who said they’d write.
Kisses are sincere. The facts correct.
Doors are locked and rooms are safe at night.
Lament the sad, the bad signs. Artful words.
The dropping of the gaze. The alibis.
The hidden, veiled. The sudden caw of birds.
The rosebush in the flower bed that dies.
Stop here! for cawing, blossom dead and gone,
for veiled sunshine, two dropped flowers for one.
Jackie’s teacher, Mrs Collingworth, notices and is concerned enough to ask if the teenager is okay.
The support available to Jackie, from Mrs Collingworth and other school staff as well as former foster carers, is a notable theme in Home Bird and reminds me of examples I’ve read and heard over the years where (non-fiction) Care Experienced People have achieved positive outcomes because there are people who believe in them. One example is that of American poet Pat Schneider (1934-2020) who was in an orphanage for a while. Her Year 7 art teacher, Dorothy Dunn, visited at home one day and gave the 13-year-old a book she had written. She told Pat that she too could be a writer. Constance Broughton in Home Bird is like Dorothy Dunn. Known affectionately to students as Nursey B, she shows Jackie a literary magazine in which she, Nursey B, has had 6 poems published.
I had never met a published poet. ‘That’s what Mrs Collingworth meant, then.’
‘She mentioned that we might have something in common?’
‘Obliquely.’
‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘You are a wordsmith.’
‘If you’re a poet,’ I asked her, ‘why are you here, being a nurse?’
‘Only the very lucky get to be full-time poets,’ she said. ‘Not many poets live in mansions.’
‘Damn,’ I said.
Fran Hill has made a point of saying that, as a former foster child and former teacher, she is aware of how tempting it can be to assume the most disadvantaged students are less capable, to inflict on them what Andrew Harvey at La Trobe University has called the “soft bigotry of low expectations”.
With Jackie Chadwick she has countered that tendency and created a former foster child with the strength and capacity to dream high and to achieve those dreams.
What Fran Hill has also done with Home Bird is demonstrate the importance of a support network for young people in the care system. It is an important message and kudos to Fran Hill for conveying it such a compassionate and entertaining way.
PS: Are pickled eggs with fish n’ chips still a thing in England? Ugh!
Thank you to Legend Press and Fran Hill for the review copy.
Follow Fran on Twitter: @franhill123
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