Bird Box

A Novel

By: Josh Malerman

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Something is out there....

Something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse 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 remain, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, Malorie has long dreamed of fleeing to a place where her family might be safe. But the journey ahead will be terrifying: 20 miles downriver in a rowboat blindfolded with nothing to rely on but Malorie's wits and the children's trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. And something is following them. But is it man, animal, or monster?

Engulfed in darkness, surrounded by sounds both familiar and frightening, Malorie embarks on a harrowing odyssey - a trip that takes her into an unseen world and back into the past, to the companions who once saved her. Under the guidance of the stalwart Tom, a motley group of strangers banded together against the unseen terror, creating order from the chaos. But when supplies ran low, they were forced to venture outside and confront the ultimate question: In a world gone mad, who can really be trusted?

Interweaving past and present, Josh Malerman's breathtaking debut is a horrific and gripping snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.

©2014 Josh Malerman (P)2014 HarperCollinsPublishers

Holy damn WOW!

I can't say enough good things about this story. Its so good.

What to expect:
This is a quiet slow book. Its told both in present tense and via flash backs.
A sense of terror surrounds every word. I haven't read anything so dreadful since Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
Not much in the action department. But you will be on the edge of your seat due to Malerman's excellent delivery.

I'd completely recommend this story. I was expecting less. Thought it could have fallen apart at any time. But it works all the way to the end. Out of the many hundreds of audible books I have listened to, this is up there with the best of them.

Macaroni Guts vis-à-vis Fear, Itself

A 3* novel that entertains like a 5*novel.

Bird Box captures Audrey Hepburn's helpless groping in Wait Until Dark, the gripping uncertainty of Algernon Blackwood's, The Willows, and the gruesome self-mutilation of M. Night Shyamalan's, The Happening; three stories with the shared conceit of the fear from what we can not see. Remember being blindfolded and led through a haunted house -- a bowl of peeled grapes becomes eyeballs, dried apricots are withered ears, and a tub of cold spaghetti in oil passes for guts? The limited senses, the power of suggestion, and Fear, itself at work.

Malerman uses the ancient fight-or-flight response as a tool as much as he does the language, creating a novel that might challenge those two instincts that are the embodiment of fear. With no visual accounts, other than a few before the you-don't-know-what hits the fans and a few seconds of blind folds off in the house, the book is lights-out experiential, dependent on the narrator, Malorie. She tell us what is happening without the What, Why, Where, or How details and processing -- kind of gut reaction narration .There is also little revealed about the characters Malorie lives with for 4 years, so we don't get much about the Who's either. But Malerman keeps the tension relentlessly taut and in the moment, necessitating the remaining senses that feed your *mind's eye* operate in hyper mode.

In 1938, Orson Welles gave one of the best demonstrations of this whole conceit when on the eve of Halloween he presented, via Mercury Theater on the Air, a radio drama, The War of the Worlds. The resulting mass hysteria sent hundreds of national guardsmen reporting for duty at local armories, and possibly as many as a million people fleeing into the night, believing that invaders from Mars had laid waste to New Jersey and were headed west. While this is a great pulse-raising gimmick for a short story, the sensory deprivation of this delivery become evident in the hours it takes for a novel to play out. We never know the origin of the entity, there are no witnesses, there is never a description of a malevolent creature; we can't even build an entity (it's a little like getting hit in the head in the dark). If an author is going to rely on me and my imagination to fill in the big blanks, he also has to work with me and my ruminations -- and mine were thinking increasingly outside Malerman's claustrophobic little box until it burst open. His story trickled down to -- it can't hurt you if you can't see it -- and that kind of squashed the drama. But, just in time, the story comes to an abrupt end, blindfolds off, pulse normalized, imaginations on cruise.

I have to give this a high recommendation. It's Twilight Zone, Outer Limits fun; if that's your genre, don't miss this. Whether you come away with praise or disappointment, you are almost certain to enjoy getting there. Bird Box is a "you just have to be there" kind of read, and it is especially effective listening to the story. (The narration is good, nothing stands out as annoying or noteworthy.) One of those that will keep you ear-bud bound from start to finish.

creepy, lovely

This was wonderfully done. it was creepy, yet not so much that I couldn't sleep at night. Post-apocalyptic in nature, yet unlike anything I've read. Bravo!

What we fear we create.

Do you need to set eyes on something in order to be afraid of it? Do you need to have every question answered? If so, I suggest you keep moving. If, however, you are comfortable seeing with more than your eyes and knowing what is not said- this book is for you. Narration was on point. Sometimes the best enemy is the one you do not know, cannot see and do not understand.

Wonderful book!

Highly recommend-story was great including the narration! The movie is wonderful as well - watch it!

Too many unexplained things.

So many open ends that haven't been closed. Resourceful Ness of characters is terrible. Not a realistic scenario taking into consideration the premise. No flies. No rot. No disease.
The power would not continue.
No light is terrible for health....
Mental health would decline....
Why do. Psychopaths thrive?
So many loopholes. Yikes...

Was expecting a better story

I ordered this book, because of the good reviews of the movie. Therefore, I was expecting the book to really "Pull me In". Unfortunately, the main character Mallory and the woman reading could not engage me enough. The overall story, plot and characters left much to be desired ( with the exception of Tom ) Almost felt like her reading and performance style was a bit elementary. I really wanted to Love this book, but it fell a bit short

Interesting but no much insight

I had hoped to learn a bit more about the phenomenon described in the Netflix production. There was some but not as much as I had hoped. Ms. Campbell as ever is a marvelous narrator.

Unique and scary!!

If you could sum up Bird Box in three words, what would they be?

Unique, terrifying, unpredictable

What was one of the most memorable moments of Bird Box?

If I tell you that I'll spoil the story.

What about Cassandra Campbell’s performance did you like?

I thought she fit what I envisioned the main character to be like with her voice.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

"No matter what....don't open your eyes!"

Any additional comments?

This was a truly amazing horror/ suspense genre story. Let's face it, most stories follow one of a dozen or so general templates: five friends head out for a trip; or, there's a {serial killer, maniac, rapist, evil person with supernatural abilities, etc} on the loose; or, an unusual disease has started spreading and the victims become flesh eaters.... You get the idea. Not so here. This is a completely unique concept. And it is Really. Scary. Seriously scary. The author tells the story in a flashback format, which works really well as far as the timing, and how various tidbits of information are rolled out. But if you like very unpredictable edge of the seat sort of tales, you've found your next book. Very, very hard to put down. I don't know if there are other books available by the author- I haven't had a chance to look-- but I sure hope so!

Pretty good, won't reread

I thought it wasn't bad. Nothing too special. The protagonist was unremarkable. It was interesting to read a post-apocalyptic story told from the perspective of a pregnant woman/mother with young children, but Malorie had no characteristics other than her motherhood. She spends a lot of time thinking about the men in the story. (Minor spoilers) There are three other women with major roles in the story, one of whom dies immediately, another of whom is also pregnant and is constantly worrying, and the last of whom is wholly unremarkable. The men in the story have agency and personalities, but the women fall fairly flat. Overall, it's an interesting concept, and a good suspenseful novel. The plot and pacing are great. However, the protagonist was (at times) annoyingly flat and constantly swooning over Tom.