The news reports start coming in from across the world, people are killing themselves in most horrific ways. If you take sight of these “things” then you are doomed to death. Windows must be covered and eyes closed while outside. There are plenty of doubters including Mallorie but when it happens to her own sister she knows it is true. She is pregnant and scared and makes it to a safe house where a group of strangers quickly become her new family. The problem is they can only survive so long without more supplies and that means leaving the house and wearing blindfolds outside.
Years later and the time has finally come for Malorie to leave the safety of the house with her two children and venture down the river. The problem still remains and they have to go the entire way blindfolded. This is a post-apocalyptic world and few survivors remain but she has been training them for this day in hopes of a future.
Something is out there…something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from. When the world began to unravel, Malorie joined a motley group of strangers who banded together against the unseen terror in an effort to create order from the chaos. But when supplies ran low, they were forced to venture outside?and confront the ultimate question: in a world gone mad, who can really be trusted?
Five years later, a handful of scattered survivors remain, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. But the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboatblindfoldedwith nothing to rely on but her instincts and the children’s trained ears. With the threat of someone, or something, following them, one wrong move could lead to a grisly death.
A Juggler in a Dreadful Circus: PW Talks with Josh Malerman
By Lenny PickerIn Bird Box, Malerman, a musician, offers a subtle, if chilling, look at a postapocalyptic America.
Where did the idea for Bird Box come from?
I’d just finished a rough draft of a book, and looking ahead, I saw an open month-nothing planned, no band, nothing happening. Two things came to mind. One was about a group of people forced to face infinity, and the consequences of that encounter. The other was just an image: a woman traveling down a river blindfolded. So I began working on the latter and realized along the way that she was fleeing from the former.What do you think the appeal of end-of-the-world fiction is?
End times are interesting because they suggest your generation (or the generation being represented) is where all of history and civilization has lead up to. This moment. And that’s a hefty responsibility, if not a little egocentric. “We represent all of mankind, since this is the end, so we better make good!”Do you think the book would translate well to film?
Absolutely. It’s hard not to want the movie to be pitch black, a blindfolded audience, crazy sounds and soundtrack. You could do wonders with that. A totally freaky trip to the theater. What self-respecting horror fan wouldn’t want to be blindfolded, sitting in a movie theater, while all this crazy shit is going on around him?
Why are the children of the lead, Malorie, just called Boy and Girl?
By naming the kids Boy and Girl, Malorie must have reached some kind of “essentials” philosophy. What good are names in this world? What’s the difference? Call them Chair and Couch. Shoe and Sock. I think that Malorie knows this: if it doesn’t have anything directly to do with surviving, then it’s a luxury, and she doesn’t have room for it. Names included.
What did alternating between the present and past achieve for you?
Very soon into the rough draft I understood that I could leave story clues in the present that would inform the past, and vice versa. After a while it became something of a Rubik’s Cube. For example, there are events in the past that Malorie must know of in the present, but she doesn’t reveal the fact that she knows of them in the present until they are revealed, for the reader, in the past. At that point, the reader might think, “Oh, I see why she did this or that now!” That’s so fun as an author. Makes you feel like a juggler in a dreadful circus; juggling horror clues backstage, waiting for the werewolf on the tricycle to be done already.
The plot is edge of your seat exciting but the real thrill is the way Malerman switches from past to present throughout the book so you don’t even know where she is trying to go to down the river. You wonder what happen to her new friends? This book was totally worth me staying up late to finish even if I have two little ones to get up early for in the morning. This thriller is certainly one I will not soon forget.
Connect: You can connect with Josh Malerman on Facebook and/or @JoshMalerman on Twitter.
