The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Review

Title: The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

Author: Mathias Malzieu

Release Date: 6^th August 2009

Publisher: Chatto and Windus

Edinburgh, 1874. On the coldest night the world has ever seen, Little Jack is born with a frozen heart and immediately undergoes a life-saving operation. But Dr Madeleine is no conventional medic and surgically implants a cuckoo-clock into his chest.

Little Jack grows up different from other children; every day begins with a daily wind-up. At school he is bullied for his ‘ticking’, but Dr Madeleine reminds him he must resist strong emotion; anger is far too dangerous for his cuckoo-clock heart. So when the beautiful young street-singer, Miss Acacia, appears – pursued by Joe the school bully – Jack is in danger of more than just falling in love... he is putting his life on the line.

At birth, Jack is fitted with a cuckoo-clock heart to save his life. As he grows up under the protective wing of Dr Madeleine and her friends he realises he is different to other children. A chance encounter with a pretty girl, Miss Acacia inspires him to start at school.  However, the tick tocking of his clock-work heart means he struggles to make friends and eventually he is driven out by the school bully.  Setting off on a quest to track down Miss Acacia, Jack meets lots of colourful characters and finds himself on the most exciting adventure ever... falling in love!

I picked up this book because I was attracted to its steam punk style front cover and the contents followed this style. Jack is one of a rabble of characters which have been operated on by Dr Madeleine, who many of the townspeople think of as a witch. Her unusual methods of ‘fixing people’ and assisting young ladies with unwanted pregnancies gets her a bad reputation but she cares for little Jack as if he were her own son. It is this caring relationship that makes the ending really distressing and for me, this ruined the entire book.

I don’t want to reveal the ending to anyone who is going to give this book a go but it is rather sad and involves a huge deception which changes your entire perceptions of all the events in the book. The characters are brilliantly constructed and have wonderfully vibrant personalities . The style of the first person narrative (written from the point of view of Jack) is similar to Lemony Snicket’s Unfortunate Events series. Drifting between a black comedy and a fairy-tale, the narrative is more mature that Snicket’s  but still offers some of the dry humour and witty style that Snicket is so good at. This style is also captured in the wonderful chapter titles.

I did enjoy the story and the relationship between Jack and those he cares for,  Dr Madeleine, his surrogate mother, Georges Melies, his best friend and Miss Acacia, his one true love, are beautiful as well as haunting in the way they develop and end.  Set in 1874, Jack the Ripper makes a brief appearance and the beautifully described Edinburgh, Paris and an Extraordinarium in Andalusia really captured my imagination.

4/5 An absolutely lovely book but with a harrowing and disappointing ending.