Cuckoo in the Nest
Fran Hill is a 60-year-old retired English teacher and self-employed writer with two previous books: a self-published novella and a memoir. This is her first full-length work of fiction inspired by her time in foster care. She has three grown-up children and two grandchildren and lives in Warwickshire with her gardener husband.
‘Fresh, authentic and darkly funny. I absolutely loved it’ – Ruth Hogan, bestselling author of The Keeper of Lost Things
It’s the heatwave summer of 1976 and 14-year-old would be poet Jackie Chadwick is newly fostered by the Walls. She desperately needs stability, but their insecure, jealous teenage daughter isn’t happy about the cuckoo in the nest and sets about ousting her.
When her attempts to do so lead to near-tragedy – and the Walls’ veneer of middle-class respectability begins to crumble – everyone in the household is forced to reassess what really matters.
Funny and poignant, Cuckoo in the Nest is inspired by Fran Hill’s own experience of being fostered. A glorious coming of age story set in the summer of 1976.
It is an absolute pleasure to welcome Fran to the blog. I’d like to thank Fran for writing about her novel Cuckoo in the Nest – which I am sure will be a fantastic contribution to care experienced literature.
- Tell us of your journey as a writer.
I wrote as a teenager but am 60 now and only just publishing my first full-length novel. (I’m comforted by stories of septuagenarians winning awards.) In 1995, when my youngest child started school, I signed up to a creative writing class. That tutor said when I read my first piece, ‘Well, we know she can write,’ and I felt warm and fuzzy inside. I started publishing pieces in faith-based magazines, then in the Times Educational Supplement as a teacher, then more widely on and offline, submitting poetry, non-fiction and fiction. I self-published a novella in 2014, had a funny teacher-memoir traditionally published in (lockdown) 2020, and now Cuckoo in the Nest is coming via Legend Press. A protracted journey but a fun ride!
- How do you see your role as a writer and what do you like most about it?
I want to make people feel things through my writing, whether that’s joy or laughter, empathy or yearning, regret or realisation. For instance, I want them to feel for Jackie Chadwick in Cuckoo in the Nest and to understand how displaced she feels in a family not her own and how conflicted in terms of loyalties. But I also would like them to laugh with her at what she observes in the Wall family and at her incisiveness. Drawing an emotional reaction from readers is the best thing. I want them to have an experience they’ll remember (at the risk of sounding like a holiday promo).
- What has been your experience of writing about diverse characters?
My memoir Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean? contains a varied cast of characters, drawn from my experiences of real colleagues and pupils encountered during my teaching career. I hope they reflect the diversity found in any school, including looked-after children, those with learning difficulties and children (and teachers) with mental health problems such as addictions. My novel Cuckoo in the Nest focuses on a fostered teenager and I hope I have shown to some extent the effects of traumatic experiences and the resilience and support needed to move on from those.
- If you could be transported instantly, anywhere in the world, where would you most like to spend your time writing? And why?
I’m more of an indoor person than outdoor, so where others might say ‘A house by the beach’ or ‘A wooden hut in the Alps’, I write much better where there is noise, buzz and a coffee machine fussing and huffing. I also love working in libraries. So, when libraries start serving coffee and cake, I will be there before you can say ‘Dewey Decimal system’.
- What is the one book you wish you had written?
I wish I’d written Cuckoo in the Nest but about 20 years ago. Apart from that, I admire anyone who can write historical fiction. If I’d listened better in my history lessons and not been a complete plonker of a student, I could have been one of them. But I also admire people who write science fiction or fantasy; I find it impossible to move out of the real world into those other-worldly stretches of imagination. My stories always seem to take place in kitchens, at dinner tables, in shops and schools, or the seaside if you’re lucky.
- What advice do you have for would be novelists?
Don’t be too precious about your writing. Share it with others more experienced and listen and learn from their feedback. This does not include your mum or dog, unless either is a published writer. Choose people who will be honest, preferably those who don’t love you. Also, ask advice from booky people before signing any contract, especially if a publisher tells you your novel is brilliant.
- Children in care/adults with care experience, often feel stereotyped by their past. How aware of this were you whilst creating your novel?
I deliberately created my character, foster child Jackie, to be less dysfunctional and disruptive than Amanda Wall, the resident teenager. And what if, I asked myself during the writing, Jackie rescues the Wall family when they are meant to be the ones rescuing her?
- What are you currently working on? What can we look forward to reading?
I’m drafting a sequel to Cuckoo in the Nest and am four-fifths of the way to a decent manuscript. I’m enjoying myself, writing about a slightly older Jackie Chadwick, especially now I’m through the worst of draft-writing when you see your novel as the literary equivalent of Kilimanjaro.
- Who is your favourite literary character from childhood and why?
I hoovered up Enid Blyton books as a child. She’s fallen out of favour but Blyton was extremely popular then. I memorised whole pages of one particular book, Hollow Tree House, in which children run away and make a new home in the hollow trunk of a giant tree. Its portrayal of neglectful adults, secret hideaways and children longing for escape rang huge bells for me before I was fostered. So, Susan, one of the children, would count as a favourite.
- What one piece of advice would you give young people leaving the care system today?
My experience was years ago but perhaps what never changes is the lost opportunities because of a disrupted childhood. I should have achieved much more at school than I did but education is a sideshow to the traumatised. So, I’d say, chase those opportunities you missed and hunt them down, taking any support offered to do so. It really is never too late to learn who you are and what you can do.
Thanks to Fran and Legend Press for a review copy of Cuckoo in the Nest due to be published 26th April in paperback and e-book formats. An audiobook will follow very soon from W F Howes.
Follow Fran on Twitter: @franhill123
Orphans & Care Experience in Literature 