Book Review: The Cuckoo Tree

[osprey_archer]

In The Cuckoo Tree, Dido Twite at long last returns to England! Her adventures on the voyage over were actually written post-Cuckoo Tree, so we are not going to be hearing anything here about how Dido helped the reincarnation of King Arthur regain his throne in New Cumbria (South America) or how she helped restore Dr. Talisman to her rightful place as heir of Aratu.

We do, however, hear that Dido and company fought in the China Tea Wars and captured a French frigate, neither of which were detailed in those earlier/later books came to be written. Joan Aiken, never change.

Anyway! Dido is back in England with Captain Hughes, who carries an urgent dispatch related to the upcoming coronation of King Richard IV, a.k.a. King Davie Jamie Charlie Neddie Geordie Harry Dick Tudor-Stuart, NO we will not be explaining which Tudor married which Stuart. Unfortunately, on the road back to London, their carriage overturns, leaving Captain Hughes wounded and forcing Dido to go for help.

The nearest source of aid proves to be Tegleaze Manor, an almost abandoned and generally gothic place in the hands of an eccentric old lady who has gambled away much of the family fortune. She has a cousin Wilfrid who has made a doll-size copy of Tegleaze Manor and a grandson Tobit who is obsessed with peashooters, but not as obsessed as Lady Tegleaze herself is with contagion. The moment she hears Captain Hughes is not well, she banishes Dido and the captain to Dogkennel Cottages (despite Dido’s remonstrances that carriage accidents are not catching), where Dido finds herself in company of a kindly blind shepherd and a not at all kindly witch…

This book also includes such Aiken favorites as lost heirs, girls dressed as boys, alcohol used as medicine (Dido is at one point revived by a porridge made of wine), and animals who thrive on the dubious diet of hot buttered buns and marmalade pie. The animal in question this time is an elephant, Rachel, who perhaps is not quite as amazing as the pink whale in Nightbirds on Nantucket, but listen, who could compete with the pink whale/whaling captain love story?

Also Dido is reunited with her father, who tells her that most of her family is dead, which Dido accepts with equanimity, as they were never good to her and anyway she’s got adventures to be getting on with. He also leaves her tied to a post by the baddies. Still the worst father. Fascinated how he and Dido will rub along together in the next book, Dido and Pa.

More important, who will Dido put on a throne in the next book? Always a kingmaker, never a king. Will Dido someday manage to crown herself?

Comments

[littlerhymes]

I love that Aiken is consistent in her weird wildness. YES we will get lost heirs AND elephants eating pies!

[osprey_archer]

Yes she is SO wild but at least consistent in her wildness! Lost heirs, large mammals eating things they probably should not eat and thriving on the regime, medicinal alcohol, deadly animals.

[thisbluespirit]

The one thing I always think of with The Cuckoo Tree is that it is the other really OTT ridiculous Hanoverian plot, with an equally wild solution (as opposed to the slightly less ridiculous wild Hanoverian plots, or the wild plots that don't involve Hanoverians.) Put St Paul's on wheels and roll it down to the Thames! Dido rides in on an elephant to pull it back! Why not? Honestly, everything else is almost superfluous.

Fascinated how he and Dido will rub along together in the next book, Dido and Pa.

:D

Also you are very lucky it exists, because some of us had to stop at the end with Simon and Dido walking towards each other NOT QUITE MEETING for years before she published it, heh. I grew into an early teen and pined for them in the meantime.

[osprey_archer]

They tie St. Paul's down like it's a circus tent! How does this work? How does any of this work? Do they get it off the rollers afterward? "No time for that," Aiken says briskly, "on to our next adventure."

I was just thinking today how maddening it must have been for readers at the time to end with Simon and Dido not quite meeting, especially as Aiken wrote The Stolen Lake before she swung back around and let Simon and Dido meet after all! Was it maddening when The Stolen Lake came out and you realized it was set during Dido's sea voyage so you were STILL in suspense about Dido and Simon's meeting?

[thisbluespirit]

Was it maddening when The Stolen Lake came out and you realized it was set during Dido's sea voyage so you were STILL in suspense about Dido and Simon's meeting?

I had no idea The Stolen Lake was published out of order until now! By the time I read them, Wolves to Cuckoo Tree (minus the much later Limbo Lodge, of course) were all in print, and as far as I knew or cared, had been for some ages, whereas Dido and Pa came out, idk, about two or three years after I'd gone through the rest, I think? I bought it myself in the one bookshop in our town, which was always a memorable event. I think I may have read Is first, from the library and then discovered the paperback of Dido and Pa, but I refuse to swear to anything this many decades later.

[osprey_archer]

Is was published six years after Dido and Pa, so it seems quite possible you read it later. But it's so hard to remember the order in which one read anything as a child. A few years ago I rediscovered a book I made as a child of my favorite books at the time, plus the approximate dates when I read them, and it was fascinating how patchily the dates from that list matched up with when I would have said I read those books if you asked me now. X was that early? Y was that late?

[thisbluespirit]

I just checked the dates, and as I was reading them in the late 80s/early 90s, I'm pretty sure I'm right, in that I did read Is first from the library - up until that one was published I had no idea there were any more because the library copies of the others weren't new enough to list them - they had indeed been published for a decade before I read them all. I remember that some things in Is were explained when I finally got my hands on Dido and Pa in a bookshop. I thought that it was the newest, but it wasn't, I realised later, when I started reading the dates inside the covers - just that the library didn't have it, and there was no internet to check on; all I had was the lists inside the books. (The bookshop I mentioned didn't open until I was about 13 or 14, and until then my only bookshop experiences were limited to sales at school and the odd trip to a nearby seaside town and they just had what they had. The notion I could order books that I wanted (if I knew they existed) was not yet something that I'd come across and I would no doubt have been too shy to try it anyway until I was much older.)

[osprey_archer]

Yeah, the difficulty of finding out how many books were in a series pre-internet! Or how many books an author had written generally, because sometimes the book list in the book would only list the ones by the same publisher, which could leave some pretty significant gaps.

I was in college before I realized Interlibrary Loan was a thing, too. There were definitely some books that I knew existed but thought were simply beyond my reach forever because my own library didn't have them. The end of the trilogy will always be a mystery, alas alas.

[nnozomi]

The Cuckoo Tree is fun to read but always gives me the creeps even more than some of the others--I think it's the mind-altered state from the joobie nuts and Cris and Tobit's otherworldliness, it's very unsettling. But Rachel the elephant is wonderful!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, Cris and Tobit do feel otherworldly, especially with Cris's ghost friend Aswell who might be their triplet who died at birth... but once Cris meets Tobit, she forgets Aswell almost at once. It's very strange and unsettling.

I do love Rachel the elephant. My copy had an elephant on the cover and I spent most of the book going WHERE is my ELEPHANT and then Rachel showed up and was entirely worth the wait.

[skygiants]

I had forgotten EVERYTHING that happens in this book except St. Paul's On Roller Skates.

[osprey_archer]

St. Paul's On Roller Skates is VERY memorable to be fair. Simply going to slide into the Thames mid-coronation and drown all the worthies in the land! And also the entire audience, and it will presumably crush a bunch of people while rolling into the Thames, but eh, the Hanoverians are not fussed.

[asakiyume]

Imagine if you could catch carriage accidents! ... I guess that's kind of a very specific example of being afraid someone's bad luck will rub off on you.

Who will be the next large animal to need hot buttered buns and marmalade pie?: We've had whales, we've had elephants... perhaps rhinos, or anacondas, or whale sharks? Or maybe a man-o-war jellyfish?

[osprey_archer]

I feel anacondas and whale sharks and man-o-war jellyfish are more likely to fall in the category of "terrifying animal that is trying to eat YOU" than "animal that eats hot buttered buns and marmalade pies," but rhino might perhaps fall into the second category? Although Dido met a friendly tiger in The Cuckoo Tree so honestly who can say.