National Network for Equitable Library Service

Cluck is a darkly comic novel about Henry, an only child whose mother has bipolar disorder. As a teen, Henry becomes a radio junkie lost in the world of music. As a young man, he becomes obsessed with a female DJ whose evening show mysteriously beams out of Idaho and into his car while he’s driving over Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge. Henry has to live his life in the shadow cast by his mother, but he never completely gives up hope that he can find his place. Slowly, when he’s in his thirties, his life starts to open in positive directions, including sporadic success with chicken farming, outsider art (he calls himself a knit reactor), and romance. But, it’s not until Henry is in his fifties that his character is finally defined, but not without one final struggle with his own quirkiness.