Jack narrates the whole story, and from the instant of his birth he’s talking sexually about the breasts of the woman who delivers him. It’s magical, and descriptive, and a little bit dark. People freeze walking the streets, fountains freeze mid-spray, tears freeze as they drop to the ground. There’s a magical description of the coldest day on Earth, where everything freezes. The first thing which startled me about was how strangely sexual the book was from the very beginning. When I found it during a big tidy of my bookshelves the other week, I looked forward to seeing if it lived up to my memories. I recalled it being one of those unusual, slightly fantastic, and romantic books. This book was one of them, he bought it for me about ten years ago, and it was quite a magical discovery. My brother has this maddening ability to always buy really unusual but amazing Christmas presents. So when the beautiful young street-singer, Miss Acacia, appears – pursued by Joe, the school bully – Jack is in danger of more than just falling in love… he is putting his life on the line. At school he is bullied for his ‘ticking’, but Dr Madeleine reminds him he must resist strong emotion: anger is far too dangerous for his cuckoo-clock heart. Little Jack grows up different to other children: every day begins with a daily wind-up. But Dr Madeleine is no conventional medic and surgically implants a cuckoo-clock into his chest. On the coldest night the world has ever seen, Little Jack is born with a frozen heart and immediately undergoes a life-saving operation.
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