Author, Book review, Deirdre Madden, Faber and Faber, Fiction, Ireland, literary fiction, Publisher, Setting

‘The Birds of the Innocent Wood’ by Deirdre Madden

kimbofo

Fiction – paperback; Faber & Faber; 164 pages; 2014.

Deirdre Madden’s The Birds of the Innocent Wood, first published in 1988, is a mysterious, opaque tale about dark family secrets and strained relationships spanning two generations.

It reads a bit like a thriller, helped by a few fast-paced early chapters, before settling into an intriguing if downbeat story where nothing is fully spelt out — or resolved. It’s even hard to know what era this book is set in because there is a timeless quality to everything about it, and Madden’s adoption of a third-person omniscient narrator lends the entire novel the feel of a fairy tale or fable.

An orphan’s tale

Set in rural Ireland, it focuses on Jane, who is orphaned as a toddler when her parents die in a house fire. Taken in by an aunt who does not want her, she’s sent to a convent boarding school, where she delights in telling others of her terrible loss to gain sympathy.

Every time she told her story she felt as if she was leading the unsuspecting children to a vast black pit, and when she had taken them right to the edge, she would suddenly draw back and abandon them there. She craved their pity and their sense of horror; and at the same time she utterly despised the other little girls for allowing her to induce these feelings in them. It was her tragedy, and she was never so weak as to cry for the loss of her parents.

When she finishes school, friendless and isolated, she meets James, a local farmer, and marries him to ward off the loneliness. She moves to his farm, where he lives with his widowed father and their farmhand, Gerald, but never feels that she truly belongs. She takes against their neighbour, Ellen, whom she feels is too close to her husband, even though Ellen eventually marries Gerald.

Jane’s story is interleaved with that of her teenage twin daughters, Catherine and Sarah, who are both cold and odd and just as sociopathic as their mother. The twins, however, are vastly different from each other. Catherine desperately wants to become a nun, while Sarah sets her heart on the local boy, Peter, who is Ellen and Gerald’s son.

As the twins plot against each other for reasons that are never fully explained, there are hints of family secrets and untold histories, but again nothing is obvious or clear-cut. Madden grants her readers the intelligence to figure it out for themselves, something her compatriot (and my favourite writer) Jennifer Johnston also does with aplomb.

Carefully controlled prose

Putting aside the plot, and even the characterisation, both of which are excellent, it’s the writing and the mood of the story that makes this novel such an engaging read. Its bleakness and gloomy outlook are only matched by the restrained, carefully controlled prose.

And Madden’s clever use of avian imagery, whether crows being shot out of trees, songbirds announcing the arrival of dawn or nests being discovered in unlikely places, act as metaphors and signifiers of events going on in the characters often sad and troubled lives.

Despite the fact it comes in at under 170 densely written pages, there’s a lot to unpack in this one.

The Birds of the Innocent Wood won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1989. These awards are for writers under the age of 30 and there are normally multiple winners each year.

Simon from Stuck in a Book has also reviewed it.

Deirdre Madden is from County Antrim in Northern Ireland and has eight novels (and a handful of children’s books)  to her name. I’ve read four of her novels and regard her as one of my favourite authors.

I read this book as part of Cathy’s #ReadingIrelandMonth23. You can find out more about this annual blog event at Cathy’s blog 746 Books.

Published by kimbofo

I am a book obsessive who has been charting my reading life online since the early 2000s.

23 thoughts on “‘The Birds of the Innocent Wood’ by Deirdre Madden”

  1. Your review enthused me to find a copy of this book. But it’s not in print, not in the library, so it loos as if hunting down a second hand copy is the way forward.

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  3. Pingback: It’s Reading Ireland Month 2023!

        1. Ah, didn’t realise she was at Trinity. I imagine her workload may not allow her to do any novel writing. But I’d love it if she could squeeze something in for us fans 😊

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  6. Pingback: Reading Ireland Month: Week Three Round-up!

    1. I’m on a bit of a roll at the moment! Feeling energised to write helped by new regime (get up early, go to bed early) and working from home twice a week which frees up more time to read cos I don’t have to do that shitty commute up the Stirling Highway every day.

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  8. Like Bill just stopping in to say as I’m also 2-3 posts behind. This sinus infection has turned my brain to mush! Powering my way through the lighter reads on my TBR, so at least that’s something, though I have nothing intelligent to say about them! The couple of Irish & Welsh books to be reviewed will just have to wait until I can write coherently again.

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    1. Oh no, sinus infections are the WORST! The face aches, the congestion, the lack of energy. Urgh. You have my sympathies.

      I seem to be on a roll with reviews at the moment … normally I’m too knackered to come home from work and write them but now the day job has changed and I’m editing other people’s work (all academic writing which I’m trying to make readable for a lay audience) it’s really nice to come home and write my own stuff! In my previous role I was writing content (press releases, web copy etc) and I think there’s only so much creative stuff one person can generate in a day 🤷🏻‍♀️

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      1. Thanks Kim, it has been a pretty awful week or so – I’m trying a facial massage this afternoon to see if they can help move things along. My neck is also stiff and sore thanks to sleeping on multiple pillows at night atm.

        Work changes can have a huge impact on our ability to blog, so I’m glad yours has changed in such a positive way. We’ve just changed operating systems at work, and I’m the designated super-user (which tells you something about how far along the Ludite spectrum many of my colleagues are)! It would be exhausting without having a sinus infection to battle as well…oh well, this too shall pass.

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  9. Pingback: Quarterly Review: Jan-March 2023 – Reading Matters
  10. Pingback: Deirdre Madden wins prestigious Winham-Campbell prize – Reading Matters

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