Bird Box, Disappointed After Watching The Netflix Trailer
If you read my last book review/synopsis/thought piece or whatever you would like to call it, then you know I mentioned I would be reading Bird Box next. Mildly ironic is that I said I wasn’t trying to make a habit of only reading books that were about to hit the screen. Well, I should have anticipated it by how much my literary-loving spouse raved about the book. It took me a little over a month to finish this book, but if I am only counting the actual reading time it would be closer to 2 - 3 days.
Why did it take over a month? Simply put, I didn’t want to read the book. I read the first chapter and immediately was “on the edge of my seat” and I knew this would be the pace of the book and I just wasn’t ready to commit to a suspenseful page-turner. I had this same feeling when I picked up The Perfect Nanny earlier this year.
The beautiful thing about reading is that your mind is a big part in the journey. The author's job is to set the scene, and your mind’s job is to make it come to life. You’re catapulted into different worlds every time and it’s pretty magical. When you’re watching something, visual images flood your mind and it sits back letting the story take over. Now when it comes to reading a mystery, I find that my mind is always racing simultaneously reading and trying to predict what the outcome is going to be. This book, in particular, was very interesting. Normally, the stage is set with descriptive language, but the protagonist Malorie is blindfolded or indoors for the majority of the book. Making both the protagonist and the reader blind creating their own world outside. It’s very intense having the fear of the narrator as your own and having your fear imagining what you would be doing/feeling in Malorie’s position.
The book starts out with Malorie deciding to leave this place that she’s been in, with two young kids, blindfolded. It’s like being dropped into the middle of a story with no idea how we got here, but you know you should be alert and afraid. She, the boy, and the girl get out onto the river, through the woods, through the fog, and she’s emphatically telling both kids that they need to listen!
It’s not uncommon for books to flip back and forth between the past and present. With Bird Box, both the past and present are leading to a climax. There’s a reason that Malorie and the kids are out on the river, some event happened in the house she was at that caused everyone else to die, but we don’t know what. Then, Malorie herself is out on the river exposed to the mystery and trying to find rescue. As you continue reading, finding out more about the past, you realize just how dangerous it is for them to be out there. This book was by far the most climatic story that I have read before and just like when I was reading The Woman in The Window, I couldn’t help but read the next page to see the result of the current paragraph. I finished reading the book with a little over half to go on a Saturday night and then stayed up until 3 in the morning.
My Husband and I reading over the Thanksgiving Break
There’s so much more that could be said about this book and the characters, but I don’t ever write too much in these book “reviews” because I don’t want to give anything away. I mostly like to convey the emotion that it made me feel because that is such a big result that comes from reading fiction. We become more emphatic and recommendations are best expressed with emotion. I have seen the trailer for Netflix’s Bird Box, and just like anyone who has read any book that gets a screen adaptation you are always disappointed with the adaptation. I think we all know that changes are inevitable, but we hold onto this hope that nothing in the book will change. I’ve still yet to watch HBO’s Sharp Objects, and The Passage TV show will be coming out soon and I’m curious how that is going to be done as well (I don’t have a blog post on here about The Passage). So much of Bird Box is built in imagination, I’m incredibly curious how Netflix will get the mystery across.
I highly recommend this book and it can definitely be finished before the movie comes out in just a couple of days. I’m currently listening to The Goldfinch on Audible, but I think I’m heading back to Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan series for my next print book.