Bird Box - Josh Malerman
May. 22nd, 2019 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yuuagoFinished Bird Box by Josh Malerman today. I haven't seen the film; decided to read the novel instead, and found it pretty hard to put down.
It's a breezy horror read; quick and creepy. It's the kind of story where the source of the horror isn't really revealed, and I like that; the less you see of the monster, the better. In this case, actually seeing it is fatal, which I found a bit different. And the deaths are not visible, or take place in another room, which adds to the horror because awful things are happening and the characters can't see it, so we're left with what their thoughts allude to, and what our own minds can come up with.
I liked the central character - she's resourceful, but she's also terrified, and I appreciate how she manages to take care of everything when things get really horrible even though she's completely scared.
I've heard people say that it is very weird in the way it deals with motherhood... This is not the vibe that I get from the book, so I wonder if it's more of a film thing - the discussion I was looking at did not specify which medium they were talking about. In the book, Malorie does care very much for her kids, but the narrative doesn't seem preachy about it. I have heard that the movie has a different feel to it in comparison to the book, and that people who read the book first were kind of disappointed, but I don't know if that is just the typical "adaptation vs original" feeling or something else.
The film had me curious when it was released, but when I heard that it included footage from the Lac-Mégantic train disaster*, I decided not to watch it. In March, Netflix agreed to remove the footage. But I'm still deeply unimpressed that Netflix took so long to agree to remove the footage from the film. So, when I heard that the film was based on Malerman's novel, I decided to take a look at that instead.
Anyway - I enjoyed the novel, no regrets for the time it took to read it. Have any of you read it? What did you think?
It's a breezy horror read; quick and creepy. It's the kind of story where the source of the horror isn't really revealed, and I like that; the less you see of the monster, the better. In this case, actually seeing it is fatal, which I found a bit different. And the deaths are not visible, or take place in another room, which adds to the horror because awful things are happening and the characters can't see it, so we're left with what their thoughts allude to, and what our own minds can come up with.
I liked the central character - she's resourceful, but she's also terrified, and I appreciate how she manages to take care of everything when things get really horrible even though she's completely scared.
I've heard people say that it is very weird in the way it deals with motherhood... This is not the vibe that I get from the book, so I wonder if it's more of a film thing - the discussion I was looking at did not specify which medium they were talking about. In the book, Malorie does care very much for her kids, but the narrative doesn't seem preachy about it. I have heard that the movie has a different feel to it in comparison to the book, and that people who read the book first were kind of disappointed, but I don't know if that is just the typical "adaptation vs original" feeling or something else.
The film had me curious when it was released, but when I heard that it included footage from the Lac-Mégantic train disaster*, I decided not to watch it. In March, Netflix agreed to remove the footage. But I'm still deeply unimpressed that Netflix took so long to agree to remove the footage from the film. So, when I heard that the film was based on Malerman's novel, I decided to take a look at that instead.
Anyway - I enjoyed the novel, no regrets for the time it took to read it. Have any of you read it? What did you think?
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.