Down Came a Blackbird

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Nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Nicholas Wilde’s third novel, Down Came a Blackbird, probes deeply into the mind of an unloved boy, whose nightmares fuse with the lost dreams of those who lived in an old dark house long before he was born.

James woke up in pitch darkness. He’d been dreaming. He’d been on his own in a silent black room and a noise had come, scratching its way towards him. He shrank back in his pillow. The noise in his dream was still out there now, outside the window.

The blackbird.

Nightmares. He’d always had them but they were worse here, more real than ever, in this place he’d been sent to - his great-uncle’s house, deep in the country. But one place was the same as any other for thirteen-year-old rejects like him.

And now he’d been pushed around for long enough; he was going to get equal. If life could hurt him, he could hurt it back.He’d show every living thing in this house and garden what hurting was really about.

Maybe his nightmares would stop then. And maybe the blackbird, that came seeking him out in the darkness, would at last go away.

This award-winning, deeply moving and quielty chilling novel was filmed as The Ghost of Greville Lodge, starring George Cole and Prunella Scales.