Harper Perennial
The Bird Room : A Novel
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The Bird Room
Author(s): Chris Killen
Review(s):
“A postmodern world of troubled comic virtuality. . . . The Bird Room x-rays the souls of young people.”
“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.”
“Killen has fun playing with identities in a manner that brings to mind David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive.”
“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.”
“A disturbing and uncomfortably bleak comedy full of existential angst, emotional self-destruction, and a lot of deviant and frequently depressing sex....a postmodern take of the traditional love-triangle tale, with a bit of sadomasochism and paranoia thrown in.”
“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.”
“An extremely engaging combo of sex, melancholy and killer one-liners—The Bird Room is a beautiful Chinese puzzle of a novel.”
“The Bird Room is amazing. Beautiful, laconic, and chockablock with uneasy sex—like having a threesome with your girlfriend and Richard Brautigan.”
“An astonishingly good first novel. I was gripped from the first page.”
“A strangely merry look at the agony of true love.”
ISBN: 9780061905902
Author(s): Chris Killen
“A dark and beguiling meditation on the weight of being…so fresh it practically pings with energy…The Bird Room is seamlessly woven into a perfectly formed whole that fizzes with deadpan wit and cutting one-liners.” —The Independent
An audacious and self-assured debut novel, The Bird Room by Chris Killen is sometimes darkly comic, sometimes painfully dramatic, and always entirely engaging. Reminiscent of other up-and-coming authors such as Tao Lin, Richard Milward, and Toby Litt, and with a spare and efficient style that belies the intricacies of the novel’s double narrative, The Bird Room is a dark, edgy tale of sex, love, and obsession.
Review(s):
“A postmodern world of troubled comic virtuality. . . . The Bird Room x-rays the souls of young people.”
“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.”
“Killen has fun playing with identities in a manner that brings to mind David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive.”
“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.”
“A disturbing and uncomfortably bleak comedy full of existential angst, emotional self-destruction, and a lot of deviant and frequently depressing sex....a postmodern take of the traditional love-triangle tale, with a bit of sadomasochism and paranoia thrown in.”
“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.”
“An extremely engaging combo of sex, melancholy and killer one-liners—The Bird Room is a beautiful Chinese puzzle of a novel.”
“The Bird Room is amazing. Beautiful, laconic, and chockablock with uneasy sex—like having a threesome with your girlfriend and Richard Brautigan.”
“An astonishingly good first novel. I was gripped from the first page.”
“A strangely merry look at the agony of true love.”
ISBN: 9780061905902