The Birds and Other Stories (Virago Modern Classics) (Paperback)

These are the stories:

"The Birds"
Suddenly and without warning, flocks of birds start attacking people and buildings. It's December, the weather has snapped from mild to freezing cold with a biting east wind. We observe the events from the perspective of a small family hunkered down in their kitchen in a small Cornish cottage. There's speculation about what has caused the alarming change in the birds. Could it be hunger? Could it be the east wind? How is the ebb and flow of the tide affecting the timing of the attacks? When will it stop?

"Monte Verità"
One of two old friends - amateur mountaineers - marries an extraordinary woman. The two friends' lives follow different paths then, by coincidence the unmarried one discovers his friend reduced to gibbering misery in a nursing home. He has lost his wife under very bizarre circumstances during a climbing holiday. Telling the story of what happened helps his recovery. The friends part company again and then, many years later, they meet once more under conditions that push the boundaries of coincidence to the limit. What did happen to the wife?

"The Apple Tree"
A sad tale about an unloved wife and self-obsessed husband. It's told from the husband's point of view and, at first, all sympathy is focused on him. After the wife dies, his obsessive tendencies take a morbid turn when his attention is drawn to an apple tree growing close the his house. There's something about the tree that makes him think of his wife. Perhaps it's just his imagination .... perhaps.

"The Little Photographer"
A beautiful woman is on holiday with her two children and their governess. The woman is vacuous, vain and callous. To alleviate her boredom she embarks on an affair with an unfortunate young man who falls for her completely. Then she has to deal with the consequences of his infatuation.

"Kiss Me Again, Stranger"
A man meets a girl, forms an almost instant attachment to her, fantasizes a lasting and serious relationship with her and then learns something very disturbing about her.

"The Old Man"
The head of the family is on a short fuse. One of the youngsters is trying his patience when he's already teetering on the outer limits of what he can tolerate. The boy just keeps pushing him and pushing ...

THE BIRDS, the inspiration of Hitchcock's movie version. Although it is different between the book and movie, the dread they caused
is almost the same with their own focus. In the movie, you'll get the visualization of the dread while through book the description of the attack was violent enough that you couldn't see no end.

MONTE VERITA. It's like reading supernatural story about Maya people at first which was followed by friendship between 2 people, their meeting with a very beautiful enigmatic woman until the strange happening in Monte Verita. In the end, it was still the supernatural one but behind it, there was a horror value in it that makes you see what Monte Verita really was.

APPLE TREE. This is my fav story of this book. A creepy tale of a wife that haunted her husband after her death.
What you thought will not be the same with what you would along the way. A very good material for Outer Limit program.

LITTLE PHOTOGRAPHER. Like watching an Agatha Christie's mytery movie but leave the detective part. This is a story of unintentional villain with heart that was numbed because of life.

KISS ME AGAN STRANGER. Hohoho, this one has a horror surprise!! I wouldn't give any detail what kind of surprise less it would spoil the fun.

OLD MAN. This is my second fav because what I thought when this story began is dashed beautifully at the end ;)

These are marvellous, darkly atmospheric tales which I thoroughly enjoyed. The Birds is one of the shorter stories at an economical 40 pages. Hitchcock's film, although set in California instead of Cornwall and featuring a very different set of characters to those in the book, managed to capture the mood of fear, panic and incomprehension marvellously. The reason the birds attack can only be guessed at by the protagonists and the guesses of the film characters are different from those of the book characters. The book and the film both convey the mixture of cold terror and blank astonishment of the people under attack very well. It was a good film but I like the book even better. And the other stories are a bonus I was not expecting when I was given the book as a present.