The Parrot by Elizabeth Bowen, 1925
The magic trick:
Introducing the notion of mysterious neighbors next door and then introducing the reader to those neighbor
I love a story like this – one that sets up a mysterious neighbor in the opening section and subsequently introduces you to the mysterious neighbor, allowing you to pit your assessments of reality against the myth.
Willy Wonka and Boo Radley spring to mind. You might have heard of them.
“The Parrot” doesn’t parlay its mysterious neighbors for the same kind of dramatic reveal. Instead, the myth-busting allows the story to better convey our protagonist’s situation in all its ridiculousness.
And that’s quite a trick on Bowen’s part.
The selection:
Mrs. Willesden loved the parrot, and would sit beside it for hours in the afternoon. It was carried into the dining-room to meals, and its cage was placed beside her at the head of the table, on a butler’s tray. Eleanor hated the parrot, and used to come down and clean its cage early in the morning before breakfast, so as to get that over. Thus it was that the parrot had escaped at a quarter past eight, before Mr.s Willesden was awake, while yellow cotton blinds still unflickeringly sheathed her window.
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