The pacing is good until it’s not, with an ending that seems both abrupt and mismatched from the body of the story. Read at face value, it is a compelling and scary read, not so gross that you can’t take it, but just edgy enough to cause genuine discomfort. The threat of the unseen unknown is effective, as are descriptions of terror and gore. Now, she and the children risk a terrifying blindfolded water journey away from their home and hopefully toward safety, community, and deliverance.īird Box is a horror story. One survivor, Malorie, has lived indoors with only her two children for the full four years of their lives. Those who put on blindfolds live altered, diminished, terrified lives. Those who look at it become murderously violent and suicidal. In Bird Box by Josh Malerman, an existential threat has arrived on earth. But I am a mother, and my job was to survive and care for my babies. They would say those who look away are complicit, allowing threats to grow and prosper unchecked. Some would accuse me of abdicating my civic responsibility and thereby contributing to the lawlessness they foresaw.
I would look later, when the hysteria had passed and the new reality was clear. Better to avert my eyes and wait it out a bit.
I couldn’t risk looking at the threat and falling apart. I had a job, a husband who worked long hours, a domestic ecosystem to maintain. I was a longtime political junkie, and I was concerned about the electoral outcome. The more despair I heard around me, the more amped up anti-Trump doomsday agonizing, the more I refused to look. In the five months since the November 2016 election, I hadn’t looked. Look! It’s all right here.” Blindfolds on He wants to take down our entire democracy. “He wants to destroy us!” he told me at one point. Now and then, he would show his phone screen to people around him. His body radiated agitation as he shook his head, gripped his phone, clenched his teeth, snorted air. In March 2017, I was at a kindergarten birthday party when a fellow parent, a prominent name in the entertainment industry and a friend, was having an aggressive showdown with his twitter feed.
0 kommentar(er)
