Through the Budgerigar

Synopsis

From The Sydney Morning Herald, August 22, 1970 via newspapers.com article text (some punctuation is clearly missing): "Through the Budgerigar, Margaret Jones' second novel, tells of a family who here it comes cannot communicate except through the budgerigar. The bird in its cage represents for each of them his own position the mother, ill with a stroke which has paralysed her and left her temporarily speechless; the father, a compulsive gambler, lusting after his step-daughter, who is pregnant to a married man and desperate for an abortion; the son in the midst of an unsatisfactory homosexual relationship; Aunt Annie, the albino ugly sister who is eaten up with envy of her sister and niece. All without exception are weak, jealous, mean, trivial, without a flash anywhere of courage, generosity, affection or imagination. Not all Miss Jones' sharp observation, skill and polish can make them any less dreary in the book than they would be in real life. Only at the end when the father achieves a genuine but still squalid wickedness does the situation produce a kind of horror which retrieves it from mediocrity."