The Bird Room - Softcover

Killen, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061905909 ISBN 13: 9780061905902

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2010

Synopsis

Pub Date: 2010-01-19 Pages: 202 Language: English Publisher:.. HarperCollins US Painfully average and introverted Will finally has a bird Her name is Alice Shes smart. sexy. and much to Wills surprise. she is in love with him . But the course of love never did run smooth. and soon devotion-and its uglier manifestations-lead Will to a dark place within himself. Elsewhere in the city. Helen is an actress-or she will be some day. For now. she finds work as a model-or whatever her online acquaintances need her to be. Her real name is Clair. but she desperately wants to be someone new. someone glamorous and real-someone worth something. A love story with a twist. this exuberant and funny debut novel brings Will and Helens lives together in a tale as tight as a rope and as black as tar. Sharp. playful. and brimming over with wicked comedy. The Bird Room heralds the arrival of a ma...

About this title

Review:

"A postmodern world of troubled comic virtuality. . . . The Bird Room x-rays the souls of young people."--The Guardian

"A darkly stylish black comedy of sexual manners. . . . His odd, downbeat characters engage in the kind of sex that makes you feel as if your soul needs a wash. . . . Taut, sharp prose . . . that gives an edgy, sometimes creepy, and very contemporary sense of beauty to the everyday and banal."--Metro London

"Killen creates something memorable out of his everyday ingredients. Clever time shifts keep the reader on their toes. . . . [with] darkly funny observations about contemporary urban life his spare, powerful prose brilliantly captures the loneliness of cities and the agonies of love."--The London Paper

"An extremely engaging combo of sex, melancholy and killer one-liners--The Bird Room is a beautiful Chinese puzzle of a novel."--Toby Litt, author of Hospital and Ghost Story

"An astonishingly good first novel. I was gripped from the first page."--M.J. Hyland, author of Carry Me Down

"Either disturbingly brilliant or brilliantly disturbing. Whichever, I loved it."--Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts

"The Bird Room is amazing. Beautiful, laconic, and chockablock with uneasy sex--like having a threesome with your girlfriend and Richard Brautigan."--Richard Milward, author of Apples and Ten Storey Love Song

"Chris Killen's writing surprised me sometimes and made me think 'that is funny' sometimes and I never felt bad reading it because I knew (by reading the sentences) that he had worked hard on being sincere, concise, and interesting."--Tao Lin, author of Eeeee Eee Eeee and Bed

"A strangely merry look at the agony of true love."--Dazed & Confused

"Killen has taken a rough stone and polished it into a gem. A book that succeeds in turning daily banality into a thing of great beauty."--Ewan Morrison, author of The Last Book You Read and Swung

Book Description:

A critically acclaimed, dark comedy from a young, hip, boundary-breaking author

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0061905909
• ISBN 13: 9780061905902
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208