Title: Bird Box
Author: Josh Malerman
Publication Date: May 13, 2014
Publisher: Ecco
Pages: 262
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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.
Bird Box is a book I’ve had my eye on for years but never got around to reading until now. As a lover of dystopian fiction, I anticipated that it would be right up my alley, and I wasn’t far off. This book was unique and suspenseful and creepy enough to keep me intrigued.
Malorie is the MC of this story. She lives with her two children, known as Boy and Girl, five years after the world changed. She doesn’t know what it is that’s out there threatening her every moment, but she knows that she can’t look at it and she’s raised her children never to open their eyes outside and to listen always. I found Malorie to be an interesting character. She was certainly strong and sympathetic, but I never quite liked her.
The story is told in two parts, present day and flashbacks to how it all started. The past scenes include a cast of characters that Malorie found herself tied to for survival and I didn’t particularly care about any of them either. Honestly, I didn’t care about any of the characters at all, but that was really okay. This isn’t a book about characters, in my opinion. It’s a book about survival and those are my favorite kinds.
I love to be creeped out and Bird Box had no shortage of scary moments. The scariest thing is not knowing what the evil was. It was always there lurking and always hidden because the characters who see it weren’t sane enough to tell the tale. I would have definitely prefered at least some answers about them, though. I do love books that leave some questions unanswered, but I also prefer to have an idea of what went on when the book has ended.
There isn’t much more I can say about Bird Box without giving away spoilers, but I did enjoy it a lot. It wasn’t a perfect book. The characters didn’t resonate with me and I would have loved more answers, but I definitely would recommend it to fans of dystopian fiction and I can’t wait to see the movie!
