Book Review: Bird Box, by Josh Malerman

 

I really enjoyed Bird Box.  At first glance, this book has many of the traditional post-apocalyptic trappings: the havoc-inducing creatures, the mass hysteria, the scrappy band of survivors, that one guy who just has to fuck everyone over, etc.  But even with all this, the story kept my interest (I finished in a little over a day), and I was a little more nervous than usual when walking home from work (in the dark - thank you, Daylight Savings Time).

 

Bird Box, by Josh Malerman, starts out with a strange series of murder/suicides.  We soon find out that there is something out there that cause whoever sees it to go mad, kill everyone in the near vicinity, and then kill themselves.  To survive, it’s necessary to cover all of your windows and never leave the house without a blindfold.  Right off the bat, I liked this “twist.”  To protect yourself from the creatures, you have to be blindfolded, which leaves you open to attack from the crazies (among other things).  To protect yourself from the crazies, you leave yourself vulnerable to the creatures.  This hellish duo ensures that no character is ever truly protected or truly safe.  Add to that the guy that just has to fuck everyone over, and I thought that the suspense was pretty well sustained throughout the novel.

The writing itself was nothing to write home about.  It was written in the present tense, which is jarring at first, but something you can get used to.  Weirdly, the flashback chapters were also written in the present tense, which doesn’t make a lot of sense because they clearly happened in the past. The style was choppy and repetitive.  Since it’s third person limited for most of the novel, and our heroine is not exactly having a good day, sometimes this style is wonderfully reflective of her harried thought process.  A panicked mind may very well keep returning to the same thoughts over and over again.  But sometimes, it got to be a little much.  Such as this passage:

“She paddles.  What else can she do?  What else can she do but paddle?”

The italics were not added by me.  Which brings me to another issue I had: weird formatting choices.  Italics were used very liberally throughout the novel, sometimes for emphasis, sometimes to denote internal monologues, and sometimes it was not clear.  The author also used all caps, sometimes combined with italics and double punctuation:

“Can the wolves GET IN THE BOAT??”

I know that there are no hard and fast rules about writing, but all caps and double punctuation (not to mention both at the same time) is just overkill.  Although these sorts of passages do stand out in a discordant kind of way, the story itself makes up for it.  I rolled my eyes a few time, particularly at the two passages above, but I was never tempted to stop reading.

At the end of the day, though, the most important thing I can say about this book is that it kind of creeped me out.  And I am not easily creeped out.  Some of the reviewers wrote that the book’s pacing was too slow, but I thought this was part of the fun.  There are not a lot of big fight scenes - much of the book is just showing how people live in this new world.  For me, it’s the quotidian, this-is-what-your-life-is-now aspect of the book that made it so unnerving.  There’s no going back to the old world here, and there’s really no hope of ever doing so.

 

*VAGUE SPOILERS AHEAD*

The fact that the creatures cause madness and what exactly that means is, I think, dealt with very well.  Questions that may have become loose threads, like what happens if the person is already insane or what happens to animals, are dealt with organically (as opposed to the information just being dropped in or completely ignored).  One thing I will note, though: if you’re anxious to find out what these things are and what they’re doing, you’re going to be disappointed.  We never find out.  Personally, I don’t have a problem with this.  With all the build-up, I think any full explanation wouldn’t be able to live up to the hype.  And, considering the extensive limitations on studying these creatures and the fact that there’s no way to communicate across long distances, I don’t know if there would be a realistic way to find out more about them.  There aren’t always answers in the real world, and I don’t have a problem with novels that acknowledge that.

* VAGUE SPOILERS END*

TL;DR: This book is like the first part of The Stand meets World War Z, written in the style of The Hunger Games.  Overall, I recommend it.