Bird Box

It's better to face madness with a plan than to sit still and let it take you in pieces.

The line between life and death, sanity and madness, depends on what you can and cannot see. In the beginning the incidents were isolated and sporadic. Then it was everywhere. The reports came in fast and furious and the horrors piled one on top of the other. Malorie and the group of survivors she seeks out must adapt to this new world with their eyes closed. Something is out there and they must keep it out. Don't. Open. Your. Eyes.

This is probably one of the creepiest books I've read in the long time. Still my mind is churning with all the possibilities of what happened, how it happened, and more importantly, why? Malerman does not give us all the show more answers, but rather each reader will probably finish the book with their own theories and explanations of what unfolded. A part of me thinks that is one heck of a brilliant ploy and the other part is just frustrated because one way or another, I want the answers to the questions raised. Regardless, Bird Box definitely is an attention grabber of a book and will keep you turning the pages. Like a good horror movie, you want cover your eyes, and yet you can't help but peek through the spaces between your fingers because you want to know what happens next, even though you're pretty darn sure you're one good scare away from crapping in your pants. Recommended if suspenseful and ominous books pushes your buttons. show less

An apocalyptic horror novel about the inexplicable arrival of creatures, that when viewed by humans, cause madness and almost instant suicidality. The only way to survive is to remain indoors and cover all windows. If going outside is unavoidable, blindfolds must be worn. Mallory, this book's protagonist, quarantines with her sister until her sister catches a glimpse of the creatures through a parted curtain. Alone, and as luck would have it, pregnant, Mallory decides to answer an ad that promises a safe house.

There she meets Tom, a man she falls in love with. She also meets Olympia, another young pregnant woman who finds refuge in the house. Eventually, the house is betrayed by a newcomer. He's seen the creatures, and is among the rare show more few to survive. However, he is still mad, and now is trying to get everyone to see the creatures. He springs a trap while the women are in labor and as a result, Mallory and the two newborns are the only survivors.

She raises them by herself for four years before setting out a harrowing journey down a river blindfolded to another settlement where she hopes she will have a better life with her children.

Wow, this book hits different after 2020. The tight quarters, the isolation, the unhinged people hell-bent on exposing themselves to danger as if it's some sort of religious rite. This book honestly disturbed me but not in an enjoyable way.

Also, the scene where Mallory is in labor is just frankly excruciatingly boring. It's supposed to be the climax of the book, but it goes on way too long and most of it is just Mallory whining and begging in an extremely repetitive way. Also, I don't believe a woman could hang herself to death by her umbilical cord. There's just no way. show less

"Something is out there. Something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse and a person is driven to deadly violence. Four years into the madness, Malorie dreams of a safer place for her and her two children. But when an opportunity presents itself, it means a terrifying journey twenty miles downriver —blindfolded."

Some reviews have complained about the story's "tunnel vision" style narrative, but I thought it was utilized perfectly. In the beginning, it's meant to show how much we take for granted every day. The third person narration doesn't describe the neighborhood or the house she shares with her sister Shannon, because it's already settled in Malorie's mind. But as the terror spreads, and she and Shannon are forced to take show more precautions, Malorie realizes those seemingly unnecessary details are our brains most valuable tool for visual recall. Once the blindfolds are on, the narrative becomes even more claustrophobic. While there are some major differences between the film and the book, as expected, I don't regret seeing the film first. It fills in those little extra visual gaps that the book purposefully skims over.

Tom, Felix, Jules, Cheryl and Don are a motley group of survivors who take in a pregnant Malorie and later an equally pregnant Olympia. The house that they're in is not meant for that many, but everyone has a role. Since the reader is meant to follow Malorie's narrow POV, some characters are painted more favorably than others, especially Tom. Yet humans weren't meant for long-term monotony and enclosure. As events unfold, the reader can't help but question his judgement, his leadership, and his curiosity.

When Malorie is finally forced to leave the house, with two children, the river becomes a culmination of everything they've endured. Along the way, she reflects on what she has been forced to do to guarantee the children's safety. It's a tense, fast paced story of formidable choices, shocking violence, and resilience in the face of an indescribable horror. show less

Josh Malerman knows where our fear lives.

It's not in the gushing splatter of arterial blood or in staring into the eyes of a predator ready to pounce or in fighting for your life with something monstrous. These spike our adrenalin, call on us to fight or flee and then they are gone.

Real fear, the kind that eats at you with the slow relentlessness of rust, comes from living with a threat you cannot fight or run away from. Real fear, the kind that hunkers down in your mind and stays there, comes from being vulnerable and helpless for long periods of time, from knowing the threat is there but not when it will strike, from understanding that surviving the last hour doesn't lessen the threat of the next.

In "Bird Box" Josh Mallerman has show more created the perfect situation for extended exposure to deep, corrosive fear. He creates a world were seeing something, no one knows what, will make you kill others and then yourself. Where sight, the sense we all depend on most, becomes a threat, not a defence. Where anyone, including you, can become an enemy in an instant. Then he locks a group of people house that at first seems like a haven but slowly becomes a cage, and lets the fear fester and the tension build until threat is a constant unwelcome companion.

Early in the book, there's a scene with one of the men from the house fetching water from the well. He's blindfold but he's done this many times before. He's has a rope around his waist, held by a housemate. There are sticks to mark his path. He tells himself that if he follows the routine, he'll be safe. Then he thinks he hears... what? who? how close?

Malerman turns that walk to the well into a scene more heart-thumping than a face-to-face confrontation with the nightmare creature of your choice.

This goes straight for where our fears live.

I won't reveal the plot but I will say that I stayed up late to finish "Bird Box" because I couldn't go to sleep without knowing how the book ended.

If you haven't read it already, I recommend it to you. It's as close to perfect as a horror book can get. The tension is almost unbearable. The fear is visceral. The people are real. The events, well they're a perfect mix of heartbreak and hope. show less

I was gripped from the first pages and the psychological terror held on to me to the end. But it was terrifying because I have sight, something I take for granted. The world is run by people with sight but the blind live in this world every day of their lives, yet not so bleakly. Perhaps that's the point here, not to take anything for granted because it could all come crumbling down upon us with one simple change. Malerman has penned a page turner and a story that makes you think, all without ever knowing, or seeing, what the true enemy is. That is an impressive feat.

What is more scary than a sighted person going blind? Ask 100 people what their most feared disability would be and I bet this would top paralysis, amputation or even deafness. That’s why I think it’s such irresistible fodder for novelists and almost always, it becomes a dystopian novel by default. Without the ability to see, we instantly become giant bundles of fear and helplessness and you can’t have a functioning society with scared people who can’t see and thus, can’t function. Bird Box takes this concept that, in the end, inverts the adage “in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”. Humans don’t lose the ability to see, but the act of doing so is incredibly dangerous and if you want to survive, you live show more blindfolded.

Something is causing people around the world to become volatile maniacs who commit savage murders and then suicide. Something they see is making them crazy. Because no one who has seen this phenomenon survives, no one knows what it is and the author chooses a first-person perspective to keep you in the dark (ha! see what I did there? Sorry.) Our narrator, Malorie, is determined to take her two four-year-old children down a dangerous river journey for reasons we at first cannot fathom. Alternating with this nightmare quest, Malorie tells us her story and how she came to make this decision to leave the relative safety of her fortified house.

The effect is sufficiently narrow to keep you as a reader off balance. It’s horrifying and soothing by turns. A group of reasonable people have come together as a result of a newspaper ad (before people figured out that seeing something was the problem), and these people bond together in a family of necessity. Despite the harsh conditions, they’re making a go of it and Tom, their leader, is especially sympathetic. As that situation collapses, you feel sorrow and dread, knowing that Malorie becomes desperate enough to take an unsighted journey in a canoe down a river. Just getting to the frigging banks is an ordeal. And there’s a bit about a dog that was, for me, the most gut-wrenching scene in the whole book. It isn’t overly grisly though.

The ending, well, it’s ok, but I felt was a bit to sunshiney for what came before. Sure, there has to be hope, but the setting was a bit utopian and preciously ironic. I won’t give it away, but that’s my opinion. Overall its a decent apocalyptic/dystopian novel in a similar vein to Blindness and The Day of the Triffids where losing our sight is the scariest thing in the world. show less

If you came because of the Neflix movie (I did; loved it), you're going to find a story that's a bit different logistically but similar in spirit. Events unfold differently, but the canvas they reveal is similar. The similarity that is most notable is how effectively Malerman created a tension based on vision and the unknown, and in a truly amazing sense, it's a tension I experienced here in this book because I couldn't see and didn't know in the same way Malorie couldn't see and didn't know. It works here in the book in a way I didn't expect coming from the film where it worked in another way.

It's a horrible, heart-wrenching story. But it's also a beautiful, loving tribute to motherhood. That paradox is so often the spine of great show more horror stories. Yeah, BIRD BOX is frightening. Yeah, it has an unsettling atmosphere. That's what you expect from a horror tale, right? That's what you expect when you pay the doorman. The horror that stands out goes beyond that and into the realm of meaning and satisfaction. At it's core, BIRD BOX is a tale of a woman who is not ready to be a mother but finds the strength and leadership within her to become one. It's a tale of understanding motherhood that is stern and strict out of a desire to protect life. Malorie is both a soft, sensitive person, but she also is a fierce juggernaut. She is what her children need her to be.

Another testament to Malerman is this story could easily have become mired in itself, but it reads easily and quickly. Much of that is due to his razor-sharp prose. The story is focused in a way most aren't. It keeps pressing forward, and every chapter, every word, is necessary. This isn't THE ROAD minimalism. It's just damn good writing.

As a writer, I learned from this novel. As a reader, I grew as a person. As a lover of stories, I was thoroughly engrossed in this one. I really can't ask a novel to do much more than that. show less