That's because all the other houses have been broken down to make room for a new motorway. The house of the kids is very isolated from the rest of the world. We see everything from his point of view. At the end he has a relationship with his older sister Julie. So he begins to learn about love, sex, relationships and begins to act rebellious. But when his youngest sister tells him that and she tells him that he smells (he hadn't washed himself for a while) he gets a stronger relationship with his brother and sisters. He is fourteen and when his parents are both dead, he is at first very hard and keeps a big distance between him and his brother and sisters. A few minutes later he has warned the police. Then he goes down in the basement to look what is really hidden in the trunk. While Jack and Julie are having actual sexual intercourse Derek catches them in the act and quickly disappears from the room. The four children say that they have buried their dog in the trunk. Derek discovers the crack in the cement (which Jack had already discovered) where the smell was coming from. Julie brings home her boy friend, Derek, who finds out the truth about the mother. His two sisters treat him like that and dress him up like a girl. After their mother's death Tom begins to say that he wants to be a girl. The children put her in a big trunk in the basement, which they fill up with the cement that was left from their father's garden project. Now their mother becomes ill and three days after Jack's birthday she dies too. While he's doing that, he gets a second, fatal heart attack. Therefore he wants to cover his garden with cement. The father is very fond of gardening, but since he was struck by a heart attack, he has decided that gardening is too much work for him. The house is literally isolated from the world. Wolters-Noordhoff BV => the Blackbirds of 1993Īt the beginning of the novel four children (Julie, Jack, Sue and Tom) live with their parents in a large old house.

They try to keep the truth hidden, but at the end, the police finds out. And those bags of cement put the idea into the kids their heads to use that cement to bury their dead mother in, so the world won't notice a thing.

So he decides to cover the garden with cement. He used to like being in the garden, but because of his heart it's too much trouble for him. The father of the house is sick because of heart problems.

The cement garden book review