Bird Box
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4.1 • 16 Ratings
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- €4.49
Publisher Description
Josh Malerman’s debut novel Bird Box is a terrifying, Hitchcockesque psychological horror that is sure to stay with you long after reading.
Most people dismissed the reports on the news. But they became too frequent; they became too real. And soon it was happening to people we knew.
Then the Internet died. The televisions and radios went silent. The phones stopped ringing
And we couldn’t look outside anymore.
Reviews
‘BIRD BOX turns the old Hollywood cliché of facing down the demon inside out – then tears it into little pieces’
Daily Mail
‘A book that demands to be read in a single sitting, and through the cracks between one's fingers'
Hugh Howey
‘A lean, spellbinding thriller that Stephen King fans will relish.’
Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)
‘You wonder whether that brush against your shoulder was some unspeakable horror or merely a falling leaf’
SFX
‘This completely compelling novel contains a thousand subtle touches but no mere flourishes – it is so well, so efficiently, so directly written I read it with real admiration’
Peter Straub
‘Nailbiting … will keep you gripped till the last chapter’
SciFiNow
'Unflagging suspense and ever-present dread’
Adam Nevill
'Uniquely disturbing, exceptionally compelling and beautifully written, I defy anyone not to read it in one sitting'
Sarah Pinborough
‘An unsettling thriller, earns comparisons to Hitchcock's The Birds, as well as the finer efforts of Stephen King and cult sci-fi fantasist Jonathan Carroll.’
– Kirkus (STARRED REVIEW)
About the author
Josh Malerman is the lead singer and songwriter for the rock band The High Strung. He lives in Ferndale, Michigan.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
While touring with his indie rock band, The High Strung, Josh Malerman spent his downtime writing one of the most assured and terrifying debut horror novels we’ve read in years. Bird Box creates a nightmare scenario: a world controlled by a malevolent alien force, where ordinary people must go sightless or risk madness and death. Malerman’s spare prose, pitiless monsters and realistic settings remind us of Stephen King, but Bird Box hurtles forward with a zippy energy all its own. Experience the book’s unique terrors before you see the Sandra Bullock movie.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sight of something unknown drives people to savagely attack others before taking their own lives in Malerman's terrific debut, a sophisticated update of John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids. First reported in Russia, the mysterious plague spreads to the U.S., where it takes a devastating toll on humanity. The only defense against the madness is to avoid looking at the outside world. Four years after the initial outbreak, Malorie lives with her four-year-old twins, known as Boy and Girl, in a suburban Detroit house with sealed windows that has been prepared for long-term survival, stocked with food and other necessary supplies. When Malorie and her children go outside for brief periods, they do so blindfolded. Now Malorie has decided that the time is right for them to flee their refuge. The author uses understatement and allusion to create a lean, spellbinding thriller that Stephen King fans will relish.
Customer Reviews
Unbelievable
I watched the movie with Sandra Bullock and loved it, so I thought I would read the book that inspired it.
What a mistake!
The book is written in present tense, which is annoying as most of the book takes place in flashback where the fate of the characters is already known and negates any urgency the artifice of present tense might supply.
The characters are flat and the total amount of characters could be reduced to three - Malorie, Tom and Gary - without any change in the book.
However, I would be willing to over look these problems if it were not for the sheer lack of knowledge of how ordinary everyday things work. Wolves don’t have long claws that scratch shoulders, nor do they bark. A woman gets hanged from her afterbirth while it’s still inside her??? The power stays on and they have a well but no notion of how plumbing works or how burying bodies and having a latrine beside a well will contaminate it? A character needs a broom to walk upstairs with his eyes closed. The same character is described as so smart because he used to be fascinated by how windows (not the operating system) worked as a child. A major plot point concerns a run for a phone book so they can call all the numbers in it. A news anchor stays locked in a studio transmitting for days - how are they getting the news? They constantly worry about food yet have three dogs that don’t seem to eat anything and then are being fed raw meet which they got from where? There are birds that have survived locked in a box for almost a year?
Worse than all of this is the basic premise of the book, which becomes more upsetting as it is revealed. If you see the creatures, you go insane and obviously if you are mad you want to kill yourself violently. However, if you are ‘old’ insane, you’re fine. I find this depiction of mental illness extremely hateful.
I’m sorry I read this book because it has ruined the film for me.