The Birds that do not Sing

The Birds that do not Sing: A world on fire, a community in turmoil, a family torn by its principles

Beautifully observed and thought provoking, this unforgettable story of growing up in wartime Britain will appeal to fans of Crooked Heart and Angela's Ashes, with its captivating window into the mind of a young boy searching for meaning and purpose as the bombs are falling.

November 1940 - The Coventry Blitz

That day changes everything for ten-year-old Jim. Coventry smoulders on the horizon, neighbours are missing, and faces are grim all around. It is the day when family and neighbourhood collides, a time of confusion and recrimination, of choices that will echo for a lifetime.



Jimmy Brown plays in the park on Sundays whatever anyone says. His family has a reputation, his father a militant socialist who makes surgical boots in his shed, his sister struggling with polio as she distributes pacifist leaflets, and his brother refusing to fight for his country. When the Luftwaffe comes and public opinion shifts behind the war effort, social expectation and conflicting loyalties send Jimmy down a fateful path.



Present day. 'The past is never still, never silent.'

'Little birds that do not sing... must be made to sing.' That is what old Jim's teacher would say in a classroom where beatings were a daily occurrence, and as threatening than the Luftwaffe passing overhead. Seventy-five years later the words still have their hold on him, and the events of that November day haunt his dreams and waking hours despite the passing of decades. When he hears about a concrete elephant in a nearby garden he wonders if it is the one his father made before the war, the elephant who listened to his troubles when he was young, who heard him when nothing made sense. Will it help him to face what happened that day in 1940 at last, or open up new and more painful wounds?