I've just started reading Robert Galbraith's novel The Cuckoo's Calling. (As you've probably heard, "Robert Galbraith" is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling; the book is of course getting a lot of attention now that the secret is out.) My husband, seeing me with the book in hand, said, in mock nervousness, "What are you doing reading a book about adultery?". To this I responded, "Whuh?"
Apparently, for Ross, an English professor, the title The Cuckoo's Calling was a clear literary reference to cuckoldry. In Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, for example, the call of the cuckoo is "unpleasing to a married ear." (For a full explanation, see the entry for cuckoo in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.)
Likely Ross's interpretation will turn out to be relevant at some point in the story -- after all, this is a murder mystery -- but the book begins with the much less potent meaning for the phrase. One of the book's epigraphs is Christina Rossetti's poem "A Dirge," which begins:
In the poem, the call of the cuckoo represents spring, the time of year when male cuckoos call to females (for reasons you can guess). But Rowling, ermm I mean Galbraith, suggests there may be more to it: "The title is taken from the mournful poem by Christina Rossetti called, simply, A Dirge, which is a lament for one who died too young. The title also contains a subtle reference to another aspect of the plot, but as I can’t explain what it is without ruining the story, I’ll let readers work that one out."
If you'd like to hear what a cuckoo's call actually sounds like, the British Library wants to help you.
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