Senor Parrot's Perch

“Blame it on the cat, if you like, Boowie. But remember one thing, dear: only dead fish swim with the flow, and I’m not a dead fish yet, not by a long shot.”

Amazing Story Of Adolphus Tips, by Michael Morpurgo, is an unusual love story beginning in England during World War II, and ending many years later. Twelve year old Michael, or Boowie as his grandmother always calls him, has received a package in the mail from his grandmother. Only a short while after her husband of 40 years died, she has left on a trip by herself, telling no one where she is going, and telling no one what she is going to do.

In the package Boowie finds a letter and a typed up manuscript, a cleaned up copy of Boowie’s grandmother’s diary during World War II, when she was also twelve, along with an old, faded photograph of her from that time. In the letter she tells Boowie that she hopes her diary will explain everything to him, or at least that it will help him understand why she had to leave.

The diary begins September 10, 1943, and the story of Boowie’s grandmother growing up on the southern coast of England during World War II unfolds in short entries. Her cat, Adolphus Tips, or just Tips at that time, is the instrument that sews together the events from those days long past.

This book paints an interesting perspective of� rural England during the war. The hardships, the terrible toll of lost loved ones, and the fear of losing others is wrapped into the daily living of the children. Taking place a few months before D-Day, the portion of the coastwhere Boowie’s grandmother lives is evacuated to allow the allies to practice their invasion of France.

Soldiers are everywhere, especially the Yanks. Resentment builds among the villagers and farmers who are being forced from their homes and farms. Even the church is emptied and boarded up. There are new children from the city, sent to the countryside for safety, boarding with families. The new teacher had fled Holland, her husband killed in the war against the Germans. Boowie’s Grandmother’s own father fights far away, side by side with so many other fathers and brothers from the community.

This simple, beautiful prose of the book conveys a sense of unvarnished reality in the journal. The happinesses and regrets, longings and memories, introspections, observations and questions of her daily life flow naturally through her pen in short entries. We meet her family, we hear her last words to her father before he leaves for war, we watch her grow up and take the first steps toward learning to love. We see how events transform into memories that become a bold, bright thread that stretches through from the beginning to the end of tapestry of her life, pulling together the �events of her life and giving it meanings that no one would have guessed at years before.

Not every hing is resolved in this book. It’s meant to be a picture of life and in life, not everything is resolved. Some things that we say and do just hang in space of memory before us, reminding us of the things of which sent us on our courses.

There is nothing really heroic in Boowie’s Grandmother’s life. No escapes, no daring ventures, no supernatural intimations that raise her life above the ordinary. Love is what raises her life to a worthy subject, love in all its forms, as a daughter, friend, and later, as a wife. The author’s story focuses on these ordinary things and gives them a beautiful meaning and creates a truly fine story.