The Birds of the Innocent Wood by Deirdre Madden – #NovNov Day 8

Thank you for all the birthday good wishes for yesterday – Colin and I had a lovely time, successfully escaping an escape room with some friends, then seeing fireworks. There are always handy fireworks displays near our birthday, courtesy of Guy Fawkes Night.

Today I was back on my novellas in November challenge, with Deirdre Madden’s second novel, The Birds of the Innocent Wood from 1988, when she was only 28. It starts at quite a pace – rattling through the tragedy of Jane’s childhood, with both parents dying in a house fire and being sent to a convent. We see that she thrives on making others react emotionally to her tale of woe – and it’s something she tries on James, the man she starts dating and whom she will marry.

She had a deep contempt for all those who had known from birth what it was to be loved. She did not believe that they could ever know how strange and wonderful it was to watch another person gradually fall in love with them. She certainly watched James, and watched him with a steady fascination, as a naturalist might watch a butterfly uncrumple itself from a chrysalis, or wiltingly die in a killing jar. She would always make a point of arriving early for their meetings, so that she could conceal herself at a distance and covertly watch him arrive and then pace the street disconsolately, looking at his watch, as he waited for her. Then she would leave her hiding place and approach him, her eye steadily fixed on his, so that she would not miss the moment when he caught sight of her. Because to see that moment was the whole point of the exercise: to see his face change, to see the relief and the tenderness and the love with which the mere sight of her filled him was the highlight of the entire evening. It made her feel dizzy with power.

It did all feel a bit dizzying at the beginning, to whip through so much plot so quickly. I feel like Madden might space it out more, as a more mature writer. But things settle a bit once it’s established that she is in an unsure and discontented marriage to James – living in remote countryside, with the only neighbour being a woman oddly like Jane, with whom she has an instant and lasting antipathy.

And then chapters begin to alternate – half is Jane’s young married life, and the other half are adult twin sisters Sarah and Catherine. They are Jane’s daughters – we learn early that Jane has died, though don’t know how. Madden does well at delineating the twin sisters – what they have in common and what they don’t. And something they do have in common is a hidden secret.

This is the first of my Novellas in November project that I think would have been better if I hadn’t read it one day. Perhaps because it covers so much time, perhaps because her writing is gentle and subtle, The Birds of the Innocent Wood is really a novella to linger over. I wish I’d spent a bit more time in the eerily described landscape, inhabiting these awkward, haunted lives.

I really love Madden’s Molly Fox’s Birthday. This earlier novella is evidently not as mature – the writing is very good, but doesn’t have the same piercing precision. She does manage to weave images of birds well through the novella, deliberately but not disruptively. On its own, The Birds of the Innocent Wood is very good – it’s only because I have read her later work that I see the ingredients are there for the extraordinary novelist she will become.