‘Cuckoo’ – Keren David

Cuckoo

As a child soap star, Jake is used to everyone knowing his name and following his every move. One day his character goes up to his bedroom and, six months later, still hasn’t been seen or heard from. Nobody is quite sure what is happening, but then real life takes over and becomes far more dramatic than any story-line Jake has been involved in previously.

Told in an interesting format, we are given the script for a project that Jake decides to post on YouTube in order to give his view of events. As the main protagonist in the story, we’re never certain to what extent Jake is biased in his account, and the comments from other characters does suggest strongly that there is more to the story than Jake is telling us.

The novel focuses on Jake’s deteriorating relationship with his family and shows the ease with which somebody can lose their comfortable life. We are shown Jake dealing with life on the streets, but he falls on his feet and ends up becoming friends with an elderly recluse who just happened to be a great actress.

If I’m entirely honest, this felt rather disjointed and like there was too much going on at one time. Though I enjoyed the general idea, I do wish that David had resisted the urge to give Jake the Hollywood-ending.