The Sterile Cuckoo

The Sterile Cuckoo, is a 1965 novel by John Nichols. It tells the story of a quirky young couple -- eccentric, imaginative Pookie Adams and conventional, unimaginative Jerry Payne -- whose relationship deepens despite their differences, but eventually falls apart. It is largely set at an eastern college in the early 1960s. The title comes from a nonsense poem that Pookie writes near the end of the novel, after she and Jerry have made a suicide pact: Oh, Hi-ho in the Lavender Woods / A Sterile Cuckoo is crying; Oh, Hi-ho in the Lavender Woods / A Sterile Cuckoo is dying; Cuckoo! Cuckoo! / Cuckoo! Cuckoo! In the real dark night of the soul it’s always three o’clock in the morning. (F. S. Fitz[gerald] – P. Adams)