Child of the Twilight
Carmel Bird
Child of the Twilight
Carmel Bird
Nineteen-year-old Sydney Peony Kent was a longed-for IVF baby. Her mother, Avila, not only used science to conceive, but also prayed to the Bambinello, a small bejewelled carving of the infant Jesus, housed in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome. Avila’s distant relative Father Roland Bruccoli was conceived conventionally. His mother also prayed to the Bambinello before his birth - and that of his twin sister.
One evening when the adult Roland is visits the church, the Bambinello is stolen. Roland hopes that Father Cosimo, archivist, poet and riddler, can help retrieve it. But when matters of belief are involved, nothing is straightforward, as Sydney discovers, too, when she is caught up in the search.
Deftly weaving together religion, science, pregnancies wanted and unwanted, love, loss and belief, Carmel Bird has created a luminous novel that both questions and celebrates the miraculous.
Review
Edwina Kaye, Readings Carlton
I am a huge fan of Carmel Bird’s novels. I’ve spent a lot of time hunting down her out-of-print titles, so a new novel is very exciting for me.
Child of the Twilight deals with themes of family and religion, as does much of her writing. The novel is narrated by Sydney Peony Kent, who weaves her own story of being an IVF baby into the narrative of the Bambinello, a bejewelled statue of the infant Jesus, believed to have miraculous powers, which went missing from its church in Rome. Sydney’s mother had prayed to the Bambinello for a child, as had Father Roland Bruccoli’s mother in Melbourne. Father Bruccoli was present in the church the evening the Bambinello was stolen, and is later the priest at the Catholic school Corazon Mean attends, unknowingly pregnant.
In her unique style, Bird deftly brings these seemingly disparate narrative threads together into a novel of life, death, miracles and religion.
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