Bird Box by Josh Malerman
Synopsis: Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.
Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it’s time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat—blindfolded—with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children’s trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?
Interweaving past and present, Bird Box is a snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.
When I first saw this release on Netflix I was hesitant to watch it. I love most movies that Sandra Bullock has been in – and this gave me the same vibes as her 2007 film ‘Premonition’. And while I enjoyed that movie I wasn’t sure about Bird Box. Maybe it was the hype when it was released or the trailers – whatever it was. I just never got around to watching it. However, after reading ‘Incidents Around the House’ I realized that the author, Josh Malerman, also wrote Bird Box (Go to my review for: ‘Incidents Around the House‘). So I decided to give the book a shot.
Straight off the book met my expectations. The narrative style of “present day” events and then flashbacks to the past, is something I really enjoyed while reading this book. It was almost like revisiting your own memories. Often in my everyday life I’ll do something and it reminds me of something that happened in the past. I can only imagine how much more that occurs when you don’t have any close companions to talk to. I found it compelling as it really pulled me into the story and made me feel like I was a hidden witness.
The book reminded me of the movie ‘The Quiet Place’, just instead of sound it was more about sight. Which presents its own challenge. How do you move and work in a world without seeing things. Granted people who are born without sight or perhaps have an eye disease, etc have to learn to live without it. This is not an impossible feat but when you’re scared to go outside because some creature might be waiting for the time you slip up and lose your blindfold or open your eyes.
There were a couple things that bugged me and I wish got explained more thoroughly.
- Malorie (the main character) calls her children ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’.
While I can understand that possibly she didn’t want to name them and create an attachment. At the same time she had done so many things for these toddlers, a lot of them ways that dug down into attachment and not giving them names really didn’t achieve much.
I also attempted to understand any other reasons she didn’t give them names and came up empty handed.
It just felt lazy to me. She’s going through all these lengths to keep her kids safe and attempt to give them something of a normal life. But naming them was too difficult? Even after finishing the book I’m still confused by her choice. I think it would have been nice to have some reasoning as to why we waited until the end to give them names.
- The creatures.
Okay – this is more of just a personal pet peeve rather than a true criticism. I feel like many times when it’s a creature, entity, alien, etc. it’s the tool of many authors to shroud them in mystery. Which makes sense and in a horror/thriller book it plays into our most basic fears of the unknown. But man I wish we had more of a hint as to what they were. Which is my natural curiosity coming out.
Overall, I enjoyed the whole book start to finish, the group dynamics were similar to other apocalypse stories. You’ve got people with secrets, different agendas, too much kindness, and just plain bad people. We got to see the group working really well together and the way the group slowly fell apart when strangers were added. For me the slow deterioration of the group was laid out really nicely, it didn’t feel rushed at all. It was one of those things where until things really started falling apart you didn’t really notice, but looking back the signs were all there the whole time.
Gary was an intriguing character (I am secretly hoping we might get a book that dives into his point of view). Where he started, had he really seen the creatures, and what happened to him after he left the group. So many questions, and it was such a fantastically written character. I wouldn’t label him as the villian per say, but he was definitely someone who injected chaos just when the group was getting comfortable. One of the crazy questions I wish we got the answer to was “how did he get into the basement?” We may never know, but it definitely kept me up at night thinking about it.
I ordered the sequel, which is called ‘Malorie’, so I’ll be interested to see what happens next. I’ll probably wait until I read that to watch the Bird Box movie on Netflix. I hope we eventually find out if the creatures are actually something we can see and have mass. If we can see them, what do they look like? Is it their appearance that makes people go mad and kill themselves? Or is there some kind of psychological component? If it’s more psychological, are they some kind of alien species?
This book left me with a lot of questions, but overall the writing was fabulous. I read the majority of it in one sitting, took me about three hours because I just couldn’t put it down. Every ending of a chapter made me want to read the next. Which is something that usually makes the best kind of books.
I could write so much more but I won’t give any spoilers away. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend picking it up.
You can view and buy the book on Amazon here.
Overall Rating: 8/10
Re-readability Rating: 9/10
Other Books by Josh Malerman:
Leave a Reply