Cuckoo

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

The cuckoo is a bird that lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. This
may at first seem an odd title for a book of short stories, but the
reason soon becomes clear. All 10 stories that make up this collection
are set in the Israel of at least a generation ago. They take place in a
world where God plays cruel tricks on His people and in a country where
the occupants of the land have been disputing for generations about who
is the rightful owner and who is the cuckoo (hence the title).

Most of the stories are told in the first person, although two are told
through dialogue. The events recounted often seem almost too incredible
to be believed; “Mish Mash” is a good example of this. A factual
mistake, probably the result of a typographical error, occurs in
“Paper Bride”: the British Foreign Secretary responsible for the
White Paper on Palestine was Ernest Bevin, not Bevan.

The author, a prize-winning short-story writer who served in the
Israeli Air Force before moving to Toronto in 1973, is good at creating
complex plots and then using comic devices to solve them. At times, his
use of language seems awkward, reminding us that although he has lived
in North America for more than 30 years, he is not a native English
speaker. His second collection of stories will have special appeal for
those familiar with the laws, history, and traditions of Judaism.