From: Rob Reid <reidra>
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 13:10:59 -0500

I finished The Cuckoo's Child earlier this week and was waiting for the calendar to get moving along so I can discuss it here while the book is near my front lobal area. I'm jumping the gun by one day just because I'm an antsy guy these days (just got the job teaching YA Lit at University of Wisconsin?u Claire, new puppy dog, first kid in high school, last kid in Kindergarten, etc).

ANYWAYS, I enjoyed the book and think it deserves its glowing reviews. But I didn't care for our protaganist Mia. At first, I felt extremely sorry for her. I can't imagine many worse experiences for a child than to have her parents completely disappear like that. No chance to say goodbye. Always wondering what happened to them. Are they dead? Did they abandon their children? Definitely a hard grieving process. My favorite character turned out to be Kit, her aunt. While Mia and Sinclair were obsessed with saints and saintly qualities, the saint in the book certainly is Kit. Her arms are broken by her niece, her heart is broken by Dan. And she has mixed feelings and a lot of anger toward her sister, Mia's mother. "'Don't stick with just one church,' Kit said,'or one town. Or one life! Just be like the cuckoo bird that flies off and leaves its babies behind...'" and "'somebody's got to run the town. And' - she took a long, deep breath - 'somebody's got to feed the baby cuckoo's abandoned in that nest.'" I'm interested in knowing what the rest of you think about Mia. Is she deserving the empathy usually given to the protaganist? Does she have the right to act as she does because of her circumstances?

Rob Reid Eau Claire, WI reidra at cvfn.org
Received on Wed 04 Sep 1996 01:10:59 PM CDT