- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books; Reissue edition (Feb 1992)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679734120
- ISBN-13: 978-0679734123
- Product Dimensions: 13.3 x 1.8 x 20.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 869,256 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Book Description
'A writer's triumph and a reader's delight' Toni Morrison
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Hailed upon its publication as "a classic for readers not yet born" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel about friendship and family, dreaming and surviving, love and war, madness and beauty, and, above all, "birdness." It tells the story of Al, a bold, hot-tempered boy whose goals in life are to life weights and pick up girls, and his strange friend Birdy, the skinny, tongue-tied perhaps genius who only wants to raise canaries and to fly. While fighting in World War II, they find their dreams become all too real—and their lives are changed forever.
In Birdy, William Wharton crafts an unforgettable tale that suggests another notion of sanity in a world that is manifestly insane.
In Birdy, William Wharton crafts an unforgettable tale that suggests another notion of sanity in a world that is manifestly insane.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have read this book many times during the last 20+ years. I came accross it by chance and after I had read it marvelled at my good fortune in finding it. In those days it was not widely known. The Alan Parker movie had not yet been made and the synopsis of the story may not have motivated you to buy it. But once involved in the depths of the story I found myself telling anyone who would listen what a great book it is. On further readings I uncovered other angles to the story that I hadn't thought about at first. There are immensley strange bits eg. when the main character as a bird is inlove with another bird! But this is necessary to understand his obsession/involvement in this part of his life.
Do read this book but be prepared to immerce youself into the events and you will find you cannot put this book down.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Birdie is a canary. Birdy is a man. Birdy's best friend Al is enlisted by the military to visit Birdy in the psychiatric hospital where he sits crouched in the corner flapping his arms like wings. Al is unsure whether Birdy is pretending or not and, in order to elicit a response from him for the baffled authorities, begins to recount their young days together. But Al has a deep and affecting concern for his friend who he is hoping is fooling everyone in a bid to escape from the real madness of the outside world. Al's nostalgic recollections are intercut with increasingly long passages of canary observations related by Birdy, beginning with the delight when he first receives Birdie, the tentative introduction of a male, Al, and the gradual expansion of his canary population which provides a good income for him and his suspicious parents. However, Birdy's hobby turns to obsession and eventually he blurs his life as a boy with dreams of being a bird and becomes totally dislocated from reality.
Birdy is an astonishingly imaginative work and says reams about the fuzzy distinction between perceived normality and insanity. Al and Birdy are war victims and passages describing the horror of Al's war experiences serve merely to show that sanity is in the eye of the beholder. Wharton's book has a rather seventies feel about it and comes out of the same left-field stable as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Catch 22. It is at least the equal of these two iconic novels. If boys who love birds is your thing then Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave (filmed as Kes) should appeal.
Birdy is an astonishingly imaginative work and says reams about the fuzzy distinction between perceived normality and insanity. Al and Birdy are war victims and passages describing the horror of Al's war experiences serve merely to show that sanity is in the eye of the beholder. Wharton's book has a rather seventies feel about it and comes out of the same left-field stable as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Catch 22. It is at least the equal of these two iconic novels. If boys who love birds is your thing then Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave (filmed as Kes) should appeal.
Format:Paperback
Beautifully written, exciting and compelling.I couldnt put the book down when i read it and i went on to read more of Wharton.... A midnight Clear is good also.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Classic Tale of Friendship
"Birdy" has been often compared to such novels as Heller's "Catch-22", the tendency for the book to be read as a war novel was strengthened by the movie based on the novel in 1985,... Read more
Published on 4 Nov 2008 by Ford Ka
Classic Tale of Friendship
"Birdy" has been often compared to such novels as Heller's Catch-22, the tendency for the book to be read as a war novel was strengthened by the movie based on the novel in 1985,... Read more
Published on 26 Jan 2008 by Ford Ka
Disappointing
I had seen the film based on this novel almost 14 years ago and I was so moved by it, I expected a great novel. But I was very disappointed. Read more
Published on 24 Jun 2004 by Ganime B. Akin
Interesting book for those who look beyond the obvious
When you first pick up this novel you will immediately become ingrossed in the content of extraordinary and wishful themes and ideas put forward by the main character Birdy. Read more
Published on 17 July 2001
No wonder it made such a brilliant film!
This book totally blew my mind - both for personal reasons and reasons of pure genius on behalf of the author. Read more
Published on 21 Aug 2000
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