Cuckoo
By S.D. Breen
()
About this ebook
Cuckoos are parasites; they can't help themselves. It's their nature, and their fate. Slyly abandoned in another birds nest, the cuckoo chick is an outrageous impostor. Its survival depends on the ruthless elimination of its siblings, frequently - and heedlessly - working its unsuspecting foster-parents to death.
Growing up in Highbury in the early 90s, Pat feels monstrous and out of place. A decade earlier, three-year-old nephew Liam drowned in the bath. No one knows exactly what happened. Pat, a few months older than Liam, was in the bath with him but cant remember a thing. Indeed, when you carry on playing with your nephew long after the incident, its hard to believe they are even dead until someone points to the gravestone. And when you find out that your parents werent who you thought they were, the connection to the cuckoo seems complete. But theres worse to come: villainy, prostitution, murder, madness and moving to Spurs turf.
CUCKOO is the dark and funny story of a young person coming to terms with a truly terrible legacy.
S.D. Breen
S.D. Breen grew up in Highbury, North London, left home and school at 16 and moved to Stoke Newington. During and after a lukewarm dabble in further education, Breen did a number of jobs including working in a teabag factory, house-cleaning, counting pools-coupons, posing for art-classes, office-temping and youth-work; for the bargain fee of a cheese and onion sandwich and a cup of tea, Breen appeared fleetingly in a Derek Jarman film. Having moved deeper into Hackney, Breen spent three years as a physiotherapy assistant before working as an illustrator, feature-writer and film-reviewer for Nursing Mirror. A period working in animation followed: first for the Oscar-winning Richard Williams studio, then on a French TV series in Paris and finally on the Pink Floyd film The Wall. Breen left Hackney for rural Devon, keeping chickens, making hay and milking goats, also running a modest catering business interspersed with the occasional stint as purveyor of second-hand tat and vintage clothing. After studying as a mature student, Breen obtained a starred first-class degree and went on to qualify to teach English language and literature to adults. This led to a post in a prison and involvement in many fascinating projects, which included teaching on a successful university Access course, participating in various creative-writing projects with the inmates and in an innovative literature-based course designed to help reduce re-offending. Breen was also the prisons acting writer-in-residence, the supervisor of the inmates magazine and manager of the Media Centre which housed the prison radio-station. In 2003 Breen moved into a decrepit hovel-by-the-sea in south-west Ireland, surviving the first Atlantic winter despite the absence of plumbing, drainage or mains electricity, and a water-supply in the form of one outdoor tap. The hovel is now habitable, with views of heartbreaking beauty. cuckoo is S.D. Breens first novel; there are at least two more in production.
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