Dove and Cut Throat (176 pages) is one of Fina Casalderrey’s most enduring novels, first published in 2007, and has been translated into several languages. It is divided into twenty-two chapters. A teenager, André, is bullied at school by Raúl Pernas and others, and has difficulties knowing how to present himself in order to avoid problems. To a friend, Halima, he admits he needs help lifting himself off the ground from time to time; to others, he presents himself as more aggressive, someone they shouldn’t mess with. He has another friend he chats with on the Internet. Her chat-name is Dove, and he is Cut Throat.

         To gain extra marks in class, André reads a story Dove has sent him about illegal immigrants arriving in Spain from Morocco. The story tells of a girl who travels with her mother in a rubber dinghy full of people. They spend hours at sea until coming within sight of the Spanish coast, but the coastguard appears and they have to swim. Her mother doesn’t survive, but the girl is adopted by a Spanish family and attempts to live out her dream. Halima likes the story and tells him so. It seems the teacher is also impressed, but André doesn’t dare admit the story was sent him by a friend.

         André has arranged a meeting with Dove in person. While getting ready, he remembers the time before his sixth birthday when his father left home. He didn’t understand what was going on or why his father was taking everything with him, including the Panama hat he used in summer when it was only a few weeks before Christmas. All he saw was that he was allowed to have control of the TV remote and, when his mother took him to the park, to run around under the rain and splash his feet in puddles owing to his mother’s distraction. His mother accused his father of having no aspirations, but for André and his fifteen-year-old sister, Davinia, having a father on the door of the local disco was a bonus envied by their friends.

         After a few weeks, André’s father comes on a visit. He has a beard, and André finally understands why he’s had to go away. He is one of the Three Wise Men who bring presents at Epiphany (the tradition in Spain is for children to receive presents at Epiphany as well as on Christmas Day). André gives him a long list of the presents he wants, but when his mother and sister return, Davinia points out that the reason their father has had to leave home is because he was unfaithful. André spends an increasing amount of time at his grandparents’ restaurant, The Birdhouse, where his grandfather has a hospital for birds in the garden. André’s mother is increasingly irritable; his father talks to him like a man and blames his mother for their troubles. At school, he shows Raúl Pernas and the other bully, Héctor Solla, a cannabis plant he found in his grandfather’s garden, but they force him to eat it and he is ill for two days.

         André’s father buys a new flat in Pontevedra, where André goes to watch a Real Madrid-Barcelona derby, after which they let off bangers to celebrate the goals each team has scored. On an outing with his friend Curro, André discovers a wounded cut-throat finch, which he rescues with his grandfather and names Garuda after a book his father used to read him about the mythological creature. The boy and bird become inseparable, but one day the bird is accidentally killed and André is inconsolable. After an argument with his mother, he goes to his father’s new flat, hoping to live with him. He finds a room with a low bed and a portable computer – exactly what he wanted! But when his father comes home, he discovers the room belongs to Nuria, the daughter of his father’s new girlfriend. At school, Raúl Pernas pushes him around and forces him to smoke a joint and lick his shoes. André is sick and, when that evening his mother tries to warn him about the ill effects of smoking, he lets her think it was his decision to smoke and not because he was made to. André’s mother fails to pass her exam to become a nursing auxiliary while Davinia is caught shoplifting. André decides he has to change his lifestyle and the first thing he can do is get lower marks at school. Maybe then he won’t be bullied so much.

         André is called in by the school counsellor for upsetting the music teacher. Neither the counsellor nor the teacher knows that André is being forced to do cruel things so that Raúl Pernas and Héctor Solla will leave him alone, but somebody in his class informs the teacher and she agrees not to have him disciplined. André practically moves in with his grandparents, who are aware of his problems at school. His grandfather teaches him how to look after the birds and they go to Padrón together to buy a parrot for André from the pet shop. They compare the way birds and humans behave when it comes to nesting and raising their young, with obvious ramifications for André, whose parents are divorced.

         André persuades his grandfather to get a connection to the Internet at home. He and his friend Curro try to show him how the Internet works, all the possibilities it offers, but the only mouse his grandfather understands is the one gnawing away inside him. He has a problem with his stomach and doesn’t feel well. André and Curro start chats with various people (this part of the book is presented as a computer screen and written using chat acronyms) and, when Curro has to leave, André makes contact for the first time with Dove. In four days, he tells her more about himself than he’s told anybody at school. He’s worried about meeting her in person, as nervous as when he was with a Swiss girl at school, Beda. Everybody liked Beda, and André was amazed when she invited him to wait for her in the classroom. They started kissing, but then the teacher came in. They carried on kissing in other places, but then André received a note saying that the relationship with Beda was on account of a bet she had made. Her real boyfriend was Raúl Pernas. André is disillusioned while his grandfather is admitted to hospital. They have to close the restaurant for a time. The only consolation André has is his chats with Dove, who sends him a love poem he can use with Beda if he wants. When he finds out the truth about Beda, he doesn’t want to.

         André goes to visit his grandfather in hospital and explains how to chat on the Internet. André’s father comes to visit, but André doesn’t want to see him. He shows him the drugs Nuria discovered in his bedside table and rebukes him for not visiting his own father in hospital. It is André’s mother who visits him, even though she’s his daughter-in-law. André wants his father to disappear before the same thing happens that happened to his friend Curro, whose father died of a stroke owing to a cocaine addiction. André remembers how, when he found out, the two of them drank a bottle of vodka together, swore eternal friendship and fell asleep next to the estuary. They were woken by the tide coming in. Later, they lost contact and Curro ended up working for a local band, going with them on tour and setting up the lights.

         After the argument with his father, André goes for a walk. When he returns to the house, his grandfather is in bed at home. He has been diagnosed with cancer, and there’s little that can be done. André goes out again and bumps into Halima, but doesn’t think he has the right to be happy with her, to have a good time. He returns home to find preparations are under way for the imminent funeral. He rushes to his grandfather’s room to find him still alive. His mother tries to send him outside, but he remains, holding his grandfather’s hand, sharing things with him, memories of the times the two of them have spent together. He tells him how all the birds in the garden are and pretends he has made it up with his father and has been getting better marks at school. In the end, André tells his grandfather not to suffer any more, to stop breathing. He holds on to his hand as he dies.

         When he goes outside, a magpie is attacking the birds in their cages. André frightens it away and destroys its nest, which is in a tree nearby, but when the nest falls down, he discovers a young magpie and takes it into the house. He then attends his grandfather’s funeral. He is asked to thank everyone for coming, but immediately begins to talk about his grandfather and what he meant to him. At the end, a bird flies into the church, and André dissolves into tears. Outside the church, flocks of starlings dart from side to side. Halima tells him she envies him. André is not sure what she means by this, but he remembers when, in a class of Galician, she went to the front and wrote her classmates’ names on the board in Arabic. She also wrote something in his notebook he was unable to decipher. He gave this message to Curro the last time he saw him to see if he could decipher it himself or as a way of renewing their friendship.

         After the funeral, André’s father tries to patch things up, but André is not interested. He accuses him of being a bad father and son. He then seeks refuge on the computer, in a chat with Dove. When he returns to school, he takes the young magpie with him in a box. The natural sciences teacher is late. The bird escapes and is caught by Héctor Solla. André claims not to know it, so Halima pretends the bird is hers. But seeing the bird caught in Héctor Solla’s hand, André loses his temper, threatens to do all sorts of things to anyone who gets in his way and manages to gain the respect of the class.

         Finally, André arrives late for his meeting with Dove. She has waited half an hour and then gone home. Back at his grandmother’s house, he connects to the Internet and apologizes for being late. He tells her he likes a girl at school, Halima, and suggests they carry on in the same way, without actually meeting each other. Dove asks if he’s afraid of meeting her. He says he might be. On the last day of the school year, André goes to get his marks and waits to see if Halima will turn up. She arrives with her father, and they arrange to meet at his grandmother’s house in the afternoon. André shows her all the birds in their cages, and Halima talks to the birds, telling them about herself, how she is from Morocco. André receives a phone call from Curro, who has deciphered the message Halima wrote in his notebook. It says ‘Dove and Cut Throat’ in Arabic. André understands that Dove and Halima are one and the same and the story she gave him about a girl who travelled from Morocco to Spain is about herself. André has already confessed how much he likes her.

         This book deals with some of the harsh realities faced by teenagers as they grow up, from parents who divorce to the death of close relatives, from bullying at school to temptations of drugs and alcohol. Underlying all this is the narrative of a boy who struggles to cope with his fluctuating surroundings, but still manages to show tenderness towards an old friend like Curro, towards the birds his grandfather taught him to tend in the garden, and finally towards the girl of his dreams, Halima. Especially effective is the way we do not know Dove and Halima are one and the same person until the last chapter. André, who feels let down by most of the people around him, is able to trust somebody again.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne