A vivid examination of the contradictions between public performance and private experience, as told through the eyes of a young boy watching his eccentric aunt and uncle move through 1980s London.
Bert, a sharp-witted eighteen-year-old, tries to make sense of the grown-up world around him: a colorful crowd of television personalities, politicians, pop stars, and unconventional relatives. A nephew to the prime minister of England, he spends his days with his Aunt Mavis, an alcoholic often found drinking in the nude, and his Trotskyite girlfriend--all while being followed by his uncle's security men. With the help of a laconic psychoanalyst, Bert questions the relation between exterior and interior reality, and language's ability to convey these connections. Imago Bird is a wildly humorous coming-of-age novel that questions art's ability to communicate.
