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The Birds
Those who are old enough to remember still speak of the days “before the birds came.” For the birds did come, descending on London by the thousands or even millions, inexplicably and seemingly out of nowhere. At first, the birds did little but watch, and Londoners found them amusing, if perhaps a bit odd.
But then the birds began to show their sinister side: attacking, maiming, and even killing in incidents of tremendous brutality and violence. Were they a force of nature, or a supernatural manifestation? No one knew: the only thing that was clear was that the birds had only one aim: the destruction of mankind, and no one had any idea how to stop them...
The Birds (1936) went largely unnoticed when originally published, but after the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s popular film in 1963, Frank Baker (1908-1983) threatened to sue, believing his book had inspired the film. The Birds was last reprinted in 1964, in a “revised” edition that in fact failed to incorporate hundreds of additions, deletions, and corrections Baker had made. This new edition is based on Baker’s personal copy of the book and includes his numerous handwritten and typewritten revisions, making this definitive text available for the first time. This edition also features a new introduction by Hitchcock scholar Ken Mogg.
But then the birds began to show their sinister side: attacking, maiming, and even killing in incidents of tremendous brutality and violence. Were they a force of nature, or a supernatural manifestation? No one knew: the only thing that was clear was that the birds had only one aim: the destruction of mankind, and no one had any idea how to stop them...
The Birds (1936) went largely unnoticed when originally published, but after the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s popular film in 1963, Frank Baker (1908-1983) threatened to sue, believing his book had inspired the film. The Birds was last reprinted in 1964, in a “revised” edition that in fact failed to incorporate hundreds of additions, deletions, and corrections Baker had made. This new edition is based on Baker’s personal copy of the book and includes his numerous handwritten and typewritten revisions, making this definitive text available for the first time. This edition also features a new introduction by Hitchcock scholar Ken Mogg.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1936
About the author
Frank Baker
133 books13 followersFrank Baker was born in Hornsey, London in 1908. He was educated at Winchester Cathedral School, where he enjoyed singing in Cathedral choir. He seems to have inherited a love of music from his grandfather who played the organ at Alexandra Palace. As a young man Frank went into his father's business of marine insurance in the City of London, before leaving after five years to spend a year working at the School of Church Music. With £20 and a small piano he moved from London to Cornwall, and settled in a cottage at St. Just-in-Penwith, earning £1 a week as an organist. There he began to write. His first novel, 'The Twisted Tree' was published in 1935.
Over his life Frank Baker published a series of novels and short stories as well as articles in journals such as the Guardian, Radio Times and Life and Letters. Frank's second novel was 'The Birds' published in 1936. This novel was published before the short story of the same name by Daphne Du Maurier, and before the 1963 movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Although Frank's book had a similar premise and story, Frank was advised not to pursue costly litigation against Universal Studios. The affair led to an interesting correspondence with Du Maurier, and eventually to publication of a popular paperback edition of Frank's novel.
In addition to writing, Frank Baker continued to play both piano and organ, and especially enjoyed playing at the parish church at St Hilary in West Cornwall, where he developed a close friendship with Father Bernard Walke, author of the celebrated biography 'Twenty Years At St Hilary'. Here Frank and Bernard produced the first religious plays to be performed live on BBC Radio.
Frank's third novel, 'Miss Hargreaves', was the most successful. It was republished several times and was also produced as a play in 1952 at the Royal Court Theatre Club in London, with Dame Margaret Rutherford in the starring role. Frank wrote a radio adaptation of the novel which was broadcast in the 1950s, and much later a second adaptation was written by Brian Sibley and broadcast in 1989, six years after Frank's death. For a while Frank became a professional actor. During the Second World War Frank he toured with Dame Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson (whom he understudied) and Paul Scofield, and they played throughout the UK. At this time he met Kathleen Lloyd whom he married in 1943. They were to have three children together, Jonathan, Llewellyn and Jospehine. After they first met, they lived together in Hampstead, and for 18 months Frank worked as the pianst for the Player's Theatre with performers Leonard Sachs, Hattie Jaques and others.
After the Player's Theatre the family returned to live in Mevagissey in Cornwall, for around 5 years. Frank later lived in Surrey before returning to Cornwall, and a home near the village of Goldsithney. Later he moved to Cardiff. During these years he edited scripts and wrote plays for the BBC, and continued to publish fiction. In 1969-1970 he spent some time in the USA and was Artist-in-Residence at the University in Oklahoma.
Frank was drawn back to Cornwall again and again, and eventually he and Kathleen finally settled in Porthleven. Both Frank's daughters, and many of his nine grand children, were born in Cornwall, a county which inspired him throughout his life.
Frank died of cancer in 1983 at the family home, 'Bay Ridge', in Porthleven.
Over his life Frank Baker published a series of novels and short stories as well as articles in journals such as the Guardian, Radio Times and Life and Letters. Frank's second novel was 'The Birds' published in 1936. This novel was published before the short story of the same name by Daphne Du Maurier, and before the 1963 movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Although Frank's book had a similar premise and story, Frank was advised not to pursue costly litigation against Universal Studios. The affair led to an interesting correspondence with Du Maurier, and eventually to publication of a popular paperback edition of Frank's novel.
In addition to writing, Frank Baker continued to play both piano and organ, and especially enjoyed playing at the parish church at St Hilary in West Cornwall, where he developed a close friendship with Father Bernard Walke, author of the celebrated biography 'Twenty Years At St Hilary'. Here Frank and Bernard produced the first religious plays to be performed live on BBC Radio.
Frank's third novel, 'Miss Hargreaves', was the most successful. It was republished several times and was also produced as a play in 1952 at the Royal Court Theatre Club in London, with Dame Margaret Rutherford in the starring role. Frank wrote a radio adaptation of the novel which was broadcast in the 1950s, and much later a second adaptation was written by Brian Sibley and broadcast in 1989, six years after Frank's death. For a while Frank became a professional actor. During the Second World War Frank he toured with Dame Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson (whom he understudied) and Paul Scofield, and they played throughout the UK. At this time he met Kathleen Lloyd whom he married in 1943. They were to have three children together, Jonathan, Llewellyn and Jospehine. After they first met, they lived together in Hampstead, and for 18 months Frank worked as the pianst for the Player's Theatre with performers Leonard Sachs, Hattie Jaques and others.
After the Player's Theatre the family returned to live in Mevagissey in Cornwall, for around 5 years. Frank later lived in Surrey before returning to Cornwall, and a home near the village of Goldsithney. Later he moved to Cardiff. During these years he edited scripts and wrote plays for the BBC, and continued to publish fiction. In 1969-1970 he spent some time in the USA and was Artist-in-Residence at the University in Oklahoma.
Frank was drawn back to Cornwall again and again, and eventually he and Kathleen finally settled in Porthleven. Both Frank's daughters, and many of his nine grand children, were born in Cornwall, a county which inspired him throughout his life.
Frank died of cancer in 1983 at the family home, 'Bay Ridge', in Porthleven.
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August 30, 2019
synopsis: birds of a feather flock together, which spells trouble for the human race. humans are mainly the same under their skins, which also means trouble for the human race, at least when these birds of prey come a'cawing.
Question: what is the Holy Spirit? one of The Trinity? a conduit between man and God? a sacred path towards revelation for tragic humankind, always running up that hill of their own making? per Isaiah 11:1-2, is the Holy Spirit a bringer of the following spiritual gifts: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord? is the Holy Spirit a reckoning for humanity - Nemesis? is the Holy Spirit a flock of birds that will bring destruction to most but true self-awareness to the brave few; pigeons from hell that shall leave all cities in dust in their wake, and humanity reborn?
Answer: all of the above!
this book is certainly not what I expected it to be. Frank Baker wrote this striking renunciation of modern society over 80 years ago and it somehow remains relevant. the fear of the dehumanizing effects of technology and office life; the inability to recognize the spectrum of sexuality and the hypocrisy of adult prurience; the willingness of arms manufacturers to sell to any bidder, no matter how dangerous that bidder may be or how unaligned that bidder is with the manufacturer's home country; the stultifying insistence on proscribed gender roles; the frequent hypocrisy of organized religion; the ability of government to look the other way; the refusal to see how humanity destroys its own environment; the challenge that humans have in connecting with each other and in seeing themselves for who they truly are... it's all there, in 1936 when this was first written and of course right now in 2019. this is a strangely timeless novel. how soon is now?
the tale is told as a rumination on The Times Before the Fall, from an elderly man who survived that Fall, recounting it to his descendants in a post-apocalyptic but apparently idyllic pastoral future. it is intellectual and emotional, dry and passionate, dreamy and nightmarish, prosaic and completely surreal. an odd and unique book, and certainly deserving of a much wider readership. EXTRA BONUS POINTS: bi hero.
Question: what is the Holy Spirit? one of The Trinity? a conduit between man and God? a sacred path towards revelation for tragic humankind, always running up that hill of their own making? per Isaiah 11:1-2, is the Holy Spirit a bringer of the following spiritual gifts: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord? is the Holy Spirit a reckoning for humanity - Nemesis? is the Holy Spirit a flock of birds that will bring destruction to most but true self-awareness to the brave few; pigeons from hell that shall leave all cities in dust in their wake, and humanity reborn?
Answer: all of the above!
this book is certainly not what I expected it to be. Frank Baker wrote this striking renunciation of modern society over 80 years ago and it somehow remains relevant. the fear of the dehumanizing effects of technology and office life; the inability to recognize the spectrum of sexuality and the hypocrisy of adult prurience; the willingness of arms manufacturers to sell to any bidder, no matter how dangerous that bidder may be or how unaligned that bidder is with the manufacturer's home country; the stultifying insistence on proscribed gender roles; the frequent hypocrisy of organized religion; the ability of government to look the other way; the refusal to see how humanity destroys its own environment; the challenge that humans have in connecting with each other and in seeing themselves for who they truly are... it's all there, in 1936 when this was first written and of course right now in 2019. this is a strangely timeless novel. how soon is now?
the tale is told as a rumination on The Times Before the Fall, from an elderly man who survived that Fall, recounting it to his descendants in a post-apocalyptic but apparently idyllic pastoral future. it is intellectual and emotional, dry and passionate, dreamy and nightmarish, prosaic and completely surreal. an odd and unique book, and certainly deserving of a much wider readership. EXTRA BONUS POINTS: bi hero.
March 16, 2015
Originally published in 1936, Frank Baker's novel, THE BIRDS, predated Alfred Hitchcock's movie by 27 years. Whether or not this was the inspiration behind the famous 1963 film remains under debate.
This literary novel begins with an elderly Father who decides to finally tell his daughter, Anna, of what life was like "before the birds came". The writing in THE BIRDS is simply beautiful--in parts, almost poetic in nature. Baker details society in London that is not all that different in theory from our modern day society. Many of the themes and attitudes remain the same, and I found it quite riveting to compare the similarities between human behavior in 1936, and the present time.
The narrator goes into great detail describing things such as the "aggressive nationalism" of Londoners, and the "absence of trust between individuals". In the midst of all this commentary, we learn of an unidentified species of bird that suddenly begins plaguing people of all nationalities. The lack of more "concrete" details--as the narrator can merely speculate as to the reason for this phenomenon--really intensifies the apprehension that the reader feels each time the winged-emmissaries appear.
Gradually the menace builds up, culminating in the mass extinguishing of human lives in different manners. The narrator describes his own "saving" and that of select others in a way that gives us much thought and introspection as to the arrival and intentions of the birds.
A fantastic, historical, literary, and unsettling novel that I highly recommend!
*I received an e-version of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*
This literary novel begins with an elderly Father who decides to finally tell his daughter, Anna, of what life was like "before the birds came". The writing in THE BIRDS is simply beautiful--in parts, almost poetic in nature. Baker details society in London that is not all that different in theory from our modern day society. Many of the themes and attitudes remain the same, and I found it quite riveting to compare the similarities between human behavior in 1936, and the present time.
The narrator goes into great detail describing things such as the "aggressive nationalism" of Londoners, and the "absence of trust between individuals". In the midst of all this commentary, we learn of an unidentified species of bird that suddenly begins plaguing people of all nationalities. The lack of more "concrete" details--as the narrator can merely speculate as to the reason for this phenomenon--really intensifies the apprehension that the reader feels each time the winged-emmissaries appear.
Gradually the menace builds up, culminating in the mass extinguishing of human lives in different manners. The narrator describes his own "saving" and that of select others in a way that gives us much thought and introspection as to the arrival and intentions of the birds.
A fantastic, historical, literary, and unsettling novel that I highly recommend!
*I received an e-version of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*
November 10, 2018
Are you good to birds? You better be!
Strange they are, these birds in Frank Baker’s novel. I bought the book after I read the novella of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. I became curious because there were rumours flying that du Maurier copied from Baker, and consequently Hitchcock did so as well when he released his film which is attributed to du Maurier, although the film’s plot is pretty far from du Maurier’s narrative, but contains some elements from Baker too... or whatever. Things get even more confused when you look at the timeline, because there’s also an extended edition which was published after the film:
1936 – Original novel by Baker
1952 – Novella by du Maurier
1963 – Film by Hitchcock
1964 – Extended/corrected edition by Baker (the one I read)
Apart from the overall premise, the notion of birds attacking humans, there are certainly some overlapping details in the books and the film, but, frankly, I don’t care much about who copied from whom, or if there is a case a plagiarism or not. Each of the three works have their unique voice. Each deserve their own place and one can enjoy all three of them without even getting bored.
The story is told by an old man, a father who is telling his adult daughter, Anna, about the time when he was a young man, the time “before the birds came”. Actually it’s the time before, during and shortly after the “pests of the air”, as the birds were later called, started haunting humanity. The world has changed a lot since then and the narrator, who is now 85 years old, is one of very few people left who witnessed the events first hand. The present world, the one of Anna and her own children, is depicted as some kind of utopia, whereas the old world seems more like a dystopia. At least the old man finds a lot to criticize of the pre-bird-society. Most of the book is set in the then contemporary London, that is the mid 1930s, before the war.
But before the narrator reports about the old times, he first tells Anna about a more recent journey to London. The reader is presented with a picture of the destroyed city that really made me shudder. I was internally attuned to a post-apocalyptic story and hoped it would not become too sensational. My concerns were unfounded.
It starts out quite harmless. On a hot summer day in a London suburb, not too far from Alexandra Palace. The narrator is living there with his mother, but works in the city as an employee of an insurance company that mainly handles claims arising from accidents at sea. Quite boring, for the young man, who has other ambitions like writing poems for example.
Until the birds came. The appearance of the birds obviously represents a watershed. But where did the strange creatures come from and what do they symbolize? Were they sent by the devil so that he has fun watching people perish? Or from God, as a kind of second deluge, that only the righteous can survive? There are hints in both directions, but the author essentially leaves the answer to the readers. The text remains vague and secretive enough so that it can be considered “real literature”. Kitsch always ends with an explanation, or a moral, or some kind of instruction to change things for the better. This novel doesn’t. Perhaps some social criticism is applied a little too liberally in some places but since I essentially share it, I didn’t mind and I found the phrasing extraordinary. Quite a few topics are discussed directly or indirectly, there’s a love story of some kind, some mysticism, spiritual/religious overtones, naturalism and much more. The Climax is a masterpiece of its own for me, just because of the location where it happens.
An all around excellent book that contains more than you might expect at first. But I have to issue a warning: Skip the introduction written by Ken Mogg. It contains what I would consider major spoilers! Better start with the Preface, which was written by the daughter Anna, and belongs to the actual novel and which— Sorry you have to excuse me for a moment. There’s a tapping on the window and I have to take care of it. BRB...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Strange they are, these birds in Frank Baker’s novel. I bought the book after I read the novella of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. I became curious because there were rumours flying that du Maurier copied from Baker, and consequently Hitchcock did so as well when he released his film which is attributed to du Maurier, although the film’s plot is pretty far from du Maurier’s narrative, but contains some elements from Baker too... or whatever. Things get even more confused when you look at the timeline, because there’s also an extended edition which was published after the film:
1936 – Original novel by Baker
1952 – Novella by du Maurier
1963 – Film by Hitchcock
1964 – Extended/corrected edition by Baker (the one I read)
Apart from the overall premise, the notion of birds attacking humans, there are certainly some overlapping details in the books and the film, but, frankly, I don’t care much about who copied from whom, or if there is a case a plagiarism or not. Each of the three works have their unique voice. Each deserve their own place and one can enjoy all three of them without even getting bored.
The story is told by an old man, a father who is telling his adult daughter, Anna, about the time when he was a young man, the time “before the birds came”. Actually it’s the time before, during and shortly after the “pests of the air”, as the birds were later called, started haunting humanity. The world has changed a lot since then and the narrator, who is now 85 years old, is one of very few people left who witnessed the events first hand. The present world, the one of Anna and her own children, is depicted as some kind of utopia, whereas the old world seems more like a dystopia. At least the old man finds a lot to criticize of the pre-bird-society. Most of the book is set in the then contemporary London, that is the mid 1930s, before the war.
But before the narrator reports about the old times, he first tells Anna about a more recent journey to London. The reader is presented with a picture of the destroyed city that really made me shudder. I was internally attuned to a post-apocalyptic story and hoped it would not become too sensational. My concerns were unfounded.
It starts out quite harmless. On a hot summer day in a London suburb, not too far from Alexandra Palace. The narrator is living there with his mother, but works in the city as an employee of an insurance company that mainly handles claims arising from accidents at sea. Quite boring, for the young man, who has other ambitions like writing poems for example.
Until the birds came. The appearance of the birds obviously represents a watershed. But where did the strange creatures come from and what do they symbolize? Were they sent by the devil so that he has fun watching people perish? Or from God, as a kind of second deluge, that only the righteous can survive? There are hints in both directions, but the author essentially leaves the answer to the readers. The text remains vague and secretive enough so that it can be considered “real literature”. Kitsch always ends with an explanation, or a moral, or some kind of instruction to change things for the better. This novel doesn’t. Perhaps some social criticism is applied a little too liberally in some places but since I essentially share it, I didn’t mind and I found the phrasing extraordinary. Quite a few topics are discussed directly or indirectly, there’s a love story of some kind, some mysticism, spiritual/religious overtones, naturalism and much more. The Climax is a masterpiece of its own for me, just because of the location where it happens.
An all around excellent book that contains more than you might expect at first. But I have to issue a warning: Skip the introduction written by Ken Mogg. It contains what I would consider major spoilers! Better start with the Preface, which was written by the daughter Anna, and belongs to the actual novel and which— Sorry you have to excuse me for a moment. There’s a tapping on the window and I have to take care of it. BRB...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
January 5, 2023
Month of October 2022 - Spooky Classics
The Birds by Frank Baker (1936; 2021 Kindle Edition) 186 pages.
Setting: Mid-1930’s London
2.5 stars rounded up. I actually found the story a little confusing. It seemed to have gone in two directions. In the first 1/2 of the book, the author strongly lead you to believe there was something symbolic regarding the birds and an impending war, such as World War II, that was looming over London. He even mentions a small man in Germany, one who was known to prosecute Jews, spewing his propaganda to the masses when suddenly one of “the birds” flew over and pooped on his head. The people wanted to laugh, they lightly started snickering, when the soldiers hollered and warned them to be quiet. The man was too proud to even wipe off the bird poop dripping from his head and just kept rattling on.
The last half of the book read as if God had let loose the birds, along with Satan, upon, practically, the whole world. The storyteller was telling his story from his point-of-view while in London, the "City". There was a bird for every person; therefore, there were millions of birds. Each person had to face their own Demons inside themselves, or else the bird…the demon…would attack and kill them. The second wave of birds actually attacked a filled Cathedral full of people praying inside, killing even the clergies who had demons of their own that they could not face. Only two men, the storyteller, who was a young man at the time, and, presumably, Satan, made it out alive. He had faced his demons a few days earlier, and was free from any bird following him around or attacking him again. Satan even converses with him right outside the church doors as hundreds are dead, dying and fighting off the bird of their demons.
Now, in my opinion, if the author had focused on events that lead up to this second part, instead of just talking, talking, talking about his miserable life as a youth in an unsure world, and leading me astray to believe something else is going on, the story would have been 100% better.
An 89 year old man is telling his granddaughter the story of how London used to be before “the birds” arrived, which seemed very dystopian. But, bits and pieces of this story are, in fact, based on Frank Baker’s real life. His father really was a Marine Insurance Agent, and Frank, himself, did live with his parents as he commuted back and forth to work for five years as a clerk in marine insurance. And he really did write poetry and was into the arts. The Preface to this eBook lets you in on a lot of what is true to Frank’s real life. There's a lot more.
What’s interesting, is the fact that Frank Baker’s rendition of The Birds, although the first to be published, was, apparently, scarcely known. This was his second book to be published. The first one wasn't very successful either. He only sold 300, or 350, copies of The Birds. It depends on which source you read.
Then, Alfred Hitchcock produced the movie “The Birds” based on Daphne du Maurier’s rendition written in 1952. Frank wanted to sue Universal Studios, but was advised against it by his lawyer because he couldn’t really prove it since the stories were quite different. One source claims that Frank confronted Daphne about her story, and she claimed to have never even read his story. But, later did read it and told him that his story ran much deeper than her own. Whether true or not, who can say for sure.
In any case, here are the different publications of “The Birds”:
1936 - Frank Baker, original (published by Peter Davies)
1952 - Daphne Du Maurier (happens to be a cousin to Peter Davies……Hmmm!)
1963 - Alfred Hitchcock’s movie: The Birds (based on Daphne’s novel…which some sources say she literally detested the movie)
1964 - Frank Baker, 2nd publishing (Panther), was SUPPOSE to include all his corrections and changes and was labeled “revised edition”, but the publishers did not include any of the revisions.
2021 - Frank Baker, 3rd publishing (Little, Brown & Co), with all corrections and changes*. This eBook contains all the changes that were made, which were provided digitally from Frank Baker’s grandson, Gabriel Hughes.
*NOTE: These changes did not change the story. They were basic changes, eliminating repetitive sentences and grammatical errors, resulting in just a little shorter story.
Frank’s story was alright. I think I found it more interesting to read when I found out that some of this was based on his real life, probably more than we suspect, but pawned off as fiction...especially some of the inner turmoils inside of his own mind.
Next, I’ll read Daphne’s short story to see which one I like better, and to see if there are any similarities. Then, I’ll watch Alfred Hitchcock’s movie. 🎥 🍿
The Birds by Frank Baker (1936; 2021 Kindle Edition) 186 pages.
Setting: Mid-1930’s London
2.5 stars rounded up. I actually found the story a little confusing. It seemed to have gone in two directions. In the first 1/2 of the book, the author strongly lead you to believe there was something symbolic regarding the birds and an impending war, such as World War II, that was looming over London. He even mentions a small man in Germany, one who was known to prosecute Jews, spewing his propaganda to the masses when suddenly one of “the birds” flew over and pooped on his head. The people wanted to laugh, they lightly started snickering, when the soldiers hollered and warned them to be quiet. The man was too proud to even wipe off the bird poop dripping from his head and just kept rattling on.
The last half of the book read as if God had let loose the birds, along with Satan, upon, practically, the whole world. The storyteller was telling his story from his point-of-view while in London, the "City". There was a bird for every person; therefore, there were millions of birds. Each person had to face their own Demons inside themselves, or else the bird…the demon…would attack and kill them. The second wave of birds actually attacked a filled Cathedral full of people praying inside, killing even the clergies who had demons of their own that they could not face. Only two men, the storyteller, who was a young man at the time, and, presumably, Satan, made it out alive. He had faced his demons a few days earlier, and was free from any bird following him around or attacking him again. Satan even converses with him right outside the church doors as hundreds are dead, dying and fighting off the bird of their demons.
Now, in my opinion, if the author had focused on events that lead up to this second part, instead of just talking, talking, talking about his miserable life as a youth in an unsure world, and leading me astray to believe something else is going on, the story would have been 100% better.
An 89 year old man is telling his granddaughter the story of how London used to be before “the birds” arrived, which seemed very dystopian. But, bits and pieces of this story are, in fact, based on Frank Baker’s real life. His father really was a Marine Insurance Agent, and Frank, himself, did live with his parents as he commuted back and forth to work for five years as a clerk in marine insurance. And he really did write poetry and was into the arts. The Preface to this eBook lets you in on a lot of what is true to Frank’s real life. There's a lot more.
What’s interesting, is the fact that Frank Baker’s rendition of The Birds, although the first to be published, was, apparently, scarcely known. This was his second book to be published. The first one wasn't very successful either. He only sold 300, or 350, copies of The Birds. It depends on which source you read.
Then, Alfred Hitchcock produced the movie “The Birds” based on Daphne du Maurier’s rendition written in 1952. Frank wanted to sue Universal Studios, but was advised against it by his lawyer because he couldn’t really prove it since the stories were quite different. One source claims that Frank confronted Daphne about her story, and she claimed to have never even read his story. But, later did read it and told him that his story ran much deeper than her own. Whether true or not, who can say for sure.
In any case, here are the different publications of “The Birds”:
1936 - Frank Baker, original (published by Peter Davies)
1952 - Daphne Du Maurier (happens to be a cousin to Peter Davies……Hmmm!)
1963 - Alfred Hitchcock’s movie: The Birds (based on Daphne’s novel…which some sources say she literally detested the movie)
1964 - Frank Baker, 2nd publishing (Panther), was SUPPOSE to include all his corrections and changes and was labeled “revised edition”, but the publishers did not include any of the revisions.
2021 - Frank Baker, 3rd publishing (Little, Brown & Co), with all corrections and changes*. This eBook contains all the changes that were made, which were provided digitally from Frank Baker’s grandson, Gabriel Hughes.
*NOTE: These changes did not change the story. They were basic changes, eliminating repetitive sentences and grammatical errors, resulting in just a little shorter story.
Frank’s story was alright. I think I found it more interesting to read when I found out that some of this was based on his real life, probably more than we suspect, but pawned off as fiction...especially some of the inner turmoils inside of his own mind.
Next, I’ll read Daphne’s short story to see which one I like better, and to see if there are any similarities. Then, I’ll watch Alfred Hitchcock’s movie. 🎥 🍿
Want to read
March 13, 2015Though I much prefer this cover edition:
...the edition I chose on GR is the one to get because of what it says here:
...the edition I chose on GR is the one to get because of what it says here:
May 5, 2020
Por mais que eu entenda a grande maioria das notas baixas que foram dadas pra esse livro (pq realmente reconheço que as descrições longas e as divagações filosóficas do protagonista devem ser monótonas pra algumas pessoas), os questionamentos, metáforas e mensagens proporcionadas por essa história são tao incriveis que eu simplesmente fico impossibilitada de não amar e dar cinco estrelas pra isso aqui. Acho que o grande problema desse livro é que a maioria das pessoas decide ler com a expectativa de ser um suspense/terror sobre pássaros matando pessoas, quando na verdade ele é muito mais do que isso. Por isso recomendo: só se aventure por essa história se vc tiver disposto a ler diversas descrições sobre a londres de 1935 e tiver paciência e interesse pra acompanhar os inúmeros monólogos do protagonista sobre temas não necessariamente relacionados aos pássaros.
December 28, 2013
Originally published in 1936, this novel is a satisfying missing link between H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds and the novels of John Wyndham in the British end-of-the-world science fiction subgenre. While I was expecting a pleasantly silly diversion (like another 1930s British sci-fi novel I recently read: Vampires Overhead, by Alan Hyder), this actually turned out to be a surprisingly thoughtful novel. Save the overall premise of birds turning on humanity, the novel is completely unrelated to Alfred Hitchcock's film (though the author did threaten to sue Universal). Here the focus is less on bird attack thrills and more on what the hovering and stalking (but rarely overtly violent) birds represent philosophically in the context of pre-World War II England. At times, especially early in the book, the author tends to be a bit heavy-handed in his observations, and not a lot happens for a long stretch, but it's worth being patient. By the end, when the action does pick up, the quiet dread that has been building throughout pays off wonderfully. Not 100% satisfying, but well worth a read, especially if you like some thoughtfulness mixed in with your genre fiction.
August 6, 2014
This is one of those future-of-the-past books that give you a historical perspective on our current apocalyptic malaise. Published in 1936, it was allegedly an inspiration for Hitchcock's movie (I always thought it was Daphne du Maurier's story of the same title but apparently there was some controversy about it). In any case, in Baker's novel strange birds attack London, civilization crumbles, but the protagonist ends up living happily in the countryside without such unnecessary technological frills as flush toilets and medicine. The classic apocalypse/utopia pattern! What is interesting, though, is the grim portrayal on England in the inter-war years, with shell-shocked vets, unemployment, sexual frustration, and the rising menace in Europe. As a historical document, the book is fascinating; as summer reading - not so much.
September 23, 2023
This was not at all what I expected. An overheated romantic youth in a soul-destroying job comes to terms with absolutely everything as the world is destroyed by mysterious birds. This edition was completely revised and updated by the author to say what he had wanted it to say all along. Well written and thought-provoking.
February 7, 2020
muito pika. lembro de momentos específicos até hoje
June 3, 2023
A proposta é muito boa. Tinha tudo para ser uma leitura digna de 5 estrelas, porém a narrativa é muito arrastada e acaba não prendendo.
É uma história legal, mas a leitura é chatinha.
É uma história legal, mas a leitura é chatinha.
November 5, 2023
In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock, following the cinematic marvels "Vertigo" (1958), "North by Northwest" (1959) and "Psycho" (1960), brought to the screen his fourth masterpiece in a row, "The Birds." That latter film, I had long believed, was based on a short story from 1952 by London-born author Daphne du Maurier, also called "The Birds," and indeed, at the very beginning of the 1963 film a title card does tell us "From the story by Daphne du Maurier." It is only recently, however, that I have learned that an instance of bird attacks in Capitola, CA in August 1961 had given Hitch the germ of an idea for his next film, and, more to the point, that he had instructed screenwriter Evan Hunter to throw out du Maurier's story line and only retain the concept of bird attacks for the film. And in truth, the resultant film, set in Bodega Bay, CA, would seem to have little in common with du Maurier's Cornwall-set original that centered on a farmer and his family. But then, more recently, I learned that there is still another work of fiction called "The Birds," by another London-born author, one Frank Baker. Could this earlier work have served as source material for the famous film? Baker apparently thought so, and was even on the brink of taking the case to court. However, my recent experience with Baker's truly wonderful, apocalyptic tale of avian horror reveals a book that, most likely--and despite its uncanny similarities with Sir Alfred's masterwork--was completely unknown to the filmmaker. A quick look at the book's history may give a clue as to why.
Baker's novel was originally released by the British publishing house Peter Davies as a hardcover in June 1936. Only 300 copies were sold, all 300 of which are virtually unobtainable today. The book would then go OOPs (out of prints) for 28 years, until, following the success of Hitchcock's 1963 movie, the British publisher Panther revived it in 1964, featuring a sensationalistic front cover and the completely misleading tagline "Un-born babies were torn from their mothers' wombs" on its back cover. The novel would then go OOPs again for almost 50 years, until the fine folks at Valancourt Books opted to resurrect it in 2013, and including a highly erudite introduction by Hitchcock authority Ken Mogg, who tells us that there is no evidence to indicate that the director was ever aware of Baker's novel. So that would seem to be that. As for this 2013 Valancourt edition, the icing on the cake is that it includes all the many changes to the text that Baker had tried unsuccessfully to have incorporated into the Panther release; it is the definitive version of this novel.
Before detailing some of the uncanny similarities and unsurprising differences between book and film, a quick word on the author himself. Frank Baker was born in London in 1908 and worked in an insurance office and as a church organist before starting his writing career. His first novel, "The Twisted Tree," was released in 1935; "The Birds" would be his sophomore effort. Baker eventually came out with 15 novels, three books of nonfiction, and a posthumous short-story collection, "Stories of the Strange and Sinister," before passing away in 1982.
Now, as to "The Birds" itself, the book takes the form of a narrative by an 84-year-old man whose name we never learn. He is dictating the book to his daughter Anna in an effort to make her and his other descendants understand the events that transpired "before the birds came" and ended civilization as we know it. Thus, the bulk of the novel takes place in the London of some 60 years earlier; that is to say, the 1930s. Our narrator, we learn, had lived with his widowed mother in the suburb of Stroud Green, in northern London, and commuted daily to his miserable job as a clerk in a marine insurance company in the City. And then, one oppressively hot August, during a prolonged drought, the birds had begun to arrive; birds unlike any that the townsfolk had ever seen, and that soon completely superseded the common pigeons, sparrows and so on. At first, the massed assemblages of these birds was only deemed a nuisance, and the birds had seemed to want to do little more than defecate on the town's landmarks, swim in its pools, and drink from its reservoirs. (Oh...and disrupt a papal procession, and poop on the noggin of a Hitler-like figure during a ranting speech!) Later efforts to remove the birds by force, however, invariably led to death for the attackers...and with not a single avian casualty! It was only when folks began to notice that each and every one of them was being shadowed by a bird of his or her own that the populace began to grow truly nervous.
As his tale progresses, we learn about our narrator's thoughts on the London of his age, and witness the warm and loving relationship that he enjoyed with his mother. We also get to see how truly lousy his job situation had been, and rejoice with him when he is able to take a spiritually reawakening vacation in the Welsh countryside. And we sympathize with his efforts to meet the beautiful brunette whom he'd once spotted in a London café, and are made happy when the two eventually do go on a date, and when we learn that the woman, Olga, would eventually become his wife, and Anna's mother. But as the awful drought and summer heat had continued unabated, the incidents with the birds proliferated, and the millions of bird "attendants" remained unexplained, the Londoners had understandably grown increasingly tense. And then, during a packed service at St. Paul's Cathedral, at which our narrator had been in attendance, all heck had broken loose, resulting in the death of the old world order....
As you might have noticed, other than the fact that Baker's book and Hitchcock's film both deal with an avian apocalypse, the differences between them far outweigh the similarities. The book, again, is set in Britain; the film in coastal California. The book gives us a young man living with his mother; the film, a more mature man (Rod Taylor's Mitch Brenner) living with his mother and sister (Jessica Tandy and Veronica Cartwright). In the book, our protagonist becomes involved with a Russian brunette; in the film, Mitch becomes involved with an icy-blonde playgirl (Tippi Hedren, in a star-making role). The book showcases bird attacks at famous locales (Trafalgar Sq., St. Paul's Cathedral); the film, in everyday locations such as a school, gas station, and private home. The book's birds are shown to be of a heretofore unknown species; the film's birds are ordinary crows and gulls. The birds in Baker's book are initially shown to be merely an inconvenient nuisance; in the film, they are belligerent from the get. And most importantly, the birds that Frank Baker gives us are clearly meant to be reflections of mankind's inner demons. Mankind's refusal to acknowledge those demons seems to be the root cause of the birds' advent, and each person's bird attendant seems to have been specially designated to each Londoner, even to the point of aping his or her mannerisms! In the film, the birds do not seem to be symbols, but rather concrete; the cause of their arrival is suggested to be mankind's ill treatment of them (as typified by a diner customer's ordering of a chicken dinner); and the birds would appear to attack one and all indiscriminately. And one more thing...there is no character in the Hitchcock film who forcibly impresses us as being the living Devil, as in the novel.
Baker also uses his story to issue some fairly cutting indictments on the age in which he (and his narrator) lived. Thus, we get digs at the Bible ("a book of poetic folk-tales from which we extracted a great deal of false moralizing"), advertising ("people were induced to buy things which they did not really require"), the subway...excuse me...I mean "the tube" ("It is too hot to try to remember something a thousand times hotter and more airless"), the insurance company at which he once worked ("all the arduous work I thus executed was of little or no advantage"), team sports ("this predilection for athletics possessed the English temperament to a remarkable degree and was probably the only part of their lives which many people considered with any real seriousness"), the religious ("There was something so appallingly self-conscious and complacent about this crowd of people in their approach to their God; something so essentially weak and faithless masquerading as strong and faithful"), happiness ("if a natural smile broke upon the mouth of any one of us, we were in danger of being labelled eccentric"), nationalism ("great armies of fighting men were reared at the expense of poor and ill-nourished people who, in taxes, were forced to support these entirely unnecessary bodies of soldiers"), sex education ("if we dared to show the smallest amount of open interest in our genitals we were, even at a very young age, most severely rebuked"), radio ("There was something essentially impure about the music thus sent out"), and the cinema ("with all its spurious emotion, its travesty of life, its meretricious sentiment"). Conversely, in a lovely four-page segment, the author lists all the many things that the narrator loved--and misses--about the London of pre-apocalypse days. In all, Baker's novel gives us an excellent overview of pre-War London; one of the finest that I've ever come across.
His novel also evinces a great degree of prescience, and not just in his prediction of another world war in the offing (forestalled, in his book, by the avian apocalypse). Baker also predicts the coming of television in all homes, as well as porn ("the 'act of sex,' as we called it, was not shown in detail on the screen, though there were signs that it probably would soon be considered quite proper to do so"). And his novel functions very well in the Romance Dept., as well, as our narrator and his future wife initially meet and fall in love. Baker treats his readers to any number of beautifully written and wonderfully executed scenes. Among them: the initial, disastrous attempt to eliminate the birds infesting Hyde Park, and its Japanese parallel, as a group of kamikaze pilots (more prescience?) tries to slay the birds in the Far East (one of the indications here that the problem of the birds is worldwide in scope); our narrator's two-week vacation in Wales, during which he realizes some almost metaphysical truths about life; our narrator and Olga's warmly depicted first date; our narrator facing down his bird attendant by looking his own inner demons squarely in the face; and, of course, that mind-boggling finale at St. Paul's, as spectacular, violent and apocalyptic a sequence as any disaster fan could ever hope to experience.
The book was clearly close to the author's heart, and several autobiographical elements are to be found therein. Like the narrator, Baker also lived for a time in Stroud Green and worked in an insurance office. Baker's experience as a choir singer and church organist are reflected in the St. Paul's sequence, and the fact that his grandfather was an organist at the Alexandra Palace is transformed into our narrator's frequent visits to that remarkably imposing structure. And as to our narrator himself, he surely is a wholly likeable chap: considerate of his Mum, nonmuscular, a poetic sort, not at all into sports, moral, and entirely decent. After all the horrors that he witnesses, we are glad that he has attained to a nice long life, and that he is able to compare himself to a Biblical patriarch in the book's opening. Our narrator tells his story simply but beautifully to a grown daughter who cannot understand most of his references (thus, Trafalgar Sq. needs to be described as "a great open square, across which sprawled the massive column of an old memorial to a sea-lord, an illustrious hero of this island"). At the same time, he is quite capable of making up some words of his own (or is "embrous" actually a word?).
All told, Baker's novel incorporates elements of horror, predictive sci-fi, apocalyptic fiction, and the supernatural (not just those unusual, death-defying birds, but their satanic overseer, as well). Truly, something for just about everyone in this stunningly well-crafted book. For those readers, however, who are looking for definitive answers, Baker's "The Birds"--similar in this regard to Hitchcock's "The Birds"--may prove a disappointment. As Anna tells us in the book's afterword, "What was the meaning of the Birds? I have tormented myself with this question." But as her father had mentioned earlier, 'when you are dealing with supernatural happenings, what explanation will ever suffice?" The bottom line remains, however, that all fans of Alfred Hitchcock's film--surely one of the great motion pictures of the 1960s--should find Frank Baker's book a fascinating read...whether it was inspirational for the filmmakers or not. Personally, I look forward now to exploring some of Baker's other work, such as "The Twisted Tree" and that posthumous collection of creepy stories, both of which are also part of Valancourt Books' very impressive catalog. And if you're wondering how I ever discovered the Valancourt website to begin with, well, let's just say that a little birdie told me....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of vintage horror and supernatural fare....)
Baker's novel was originally released by the British publishing house Peter Davies as a hardcover in June 1936. Only 300 copies were sold, all 300 of which are virtually unobtainable today. The book would then go OOPs (out of prints) for 28 years, until, following the success of Hitchcock's 1963 movie, the British publisher Panther revived it in 1964, featuring a sensationalistic front cover and the completely misleading tagline "Un-born babies were torn from their mothers' wombs" on its back cover. The novel would then go OOPs again for almost 50 years, until the fine folks at Valancourt Books opted to resurrect it in 2013, and including a highly erudite introduction by Hitchcock authority Ken Mogg, who tells us that there is no evidence to indicate that the director was ever aware of Baker's novel. So that would seem to be that. As for this 2013 Valancourt edition, the icing on the cake is that it includes all the many changes to the text that Baker had tried unsuccessfully to have incorporated into the Panther release; it is the definitive version of this novel.
Before detailing some of the uncanny similarities and unsurprising differences between book and film, a quick word on the author himself. Frank Baker was born in London in 1908 and worked in an insurance office and as a church organist before starting his writing career. His first novel, "The Twisted Tree," was released in 1935; "The Birds" would be his sophomore effort. Baker eventually came out with 15 novels, three books of nonfiction, and a posthumous short-story collection, "Stories of the Strange and Sinister," before passing away in 1982.
Now, as to "The Birds" itself, the book takes the form of a narrative by an 84-year-old man whose name we never learn. He is dictating the book to his daughter Anna in an effort to make her and his other descendants understand the events that transpired "before the birds came" and ended civilization as we know it. Thus, the bulk of the novel takes place in the London of some 60 years earlier; that is to say, the 1930s. Our narrator, we learn, had lived with his widowed mother in the suburb of Stroud Green, in northern London, and commuted daily to his miserable job as a clerk in a marine insurance company in the City. And then, one oppressively hot August, during a prolonged drought, the birds had begun to arrive; birds unlike any that the townsfolk had ever seen, and that soon completely superseded the common pigeons, sparrows and so on. At first, the massed assemblages of these birds was only deemed a nuisance, and the birds had seemed to want to do little more than defecate on the town's landmarks, swim in its pools, and drink from its reservoirs. (Oh...and disrupt a papal procession, and poop on the noggin of a Hitler-like figure during a ranting speech!) Later efforts to remove the birds by force, however, invariably led to death for the attackers...and with not a single avian casualty! It was only when folks began to notice that each and every one of them was being shadowed by a bird of his or her own that the populace began to grow truly nervous.
As his tale progresses, we learn about our narrator's thoughts on the London of his age, and witness the warm and loving relationship that he enjoyed with his mother. We also get to see how truly lousy his job situation had been, and rejoice with him when he is able to take a spiritually reawakening vacation in the Welsh countryside. And we sympathize with his efforts to meet the beautiful brunette whom he'd once spotted in a London café, and are made happy when the two eventually do go on a date, and when we learn that the woman, Olga, would eventually become his wife, and Anna's mother. But as the awful drought and summer heat had continued unabated, the incidents with the birds proliferated, and the millions of bird "attendants" remained unexplained, the Londoners had understandably grown increasingly tense. And then, during a packed service at St. Paul's Cathedral, at which our narrator had been in attendance, all heck had broken loose, resulting in the death of the old world order....
As you might have noticed, other than the fact that Baker's book and Hitchcock's film both deal with an avian apocalypse, the differences between them far outweigh the similarities. The book, again, is set in Britain; the film in coastal California. The book gives us a young man living with his mother; the film, a more mature man (Rod Taylor's Mitch Brenner) living with his mother and sister (Jessica Tandy and Veronica Cartwright). In the book, our protagonist becomes involved with a Russian brunette; in the film, Mitch becomes involved with an icy-blonde playgirl (Tippi Hedren, in a star-making role). The book showcases bird attacks at famous locales (Trafalgar Sq., St. Paul's Cathedral); the film, in everyday locations such as a school, gas station, and private home. The book's birds are shown to be of a heretofore unknown species; the film's birds are ordinary crows and gulls. The birds in Baker's book are initially shown to be merely an inconvenient nuisance; in the film, they are belligerent from the get. And most importantly, the birds that Frank Baker gives us are clearly meant to be reflections of mankind's inner demons. Mankind's refusal to acknowledge those demons seems to be the root cause of the birds' advent, and each person's bird attendant seems to have been specially designated to each Londoner, even to the point of aping his or her mannerisms! In the film, the birds do not seem to be symbols, but rather concrete; the cause of their arrival is suggested to be mankind's ill treatment of them (as typified by a diner customer's ordering of a chicken dinner); and the birds would appear to attack one and all indiscriminately. And one more thing...there is no character in the Hitchcock film who forcibly impresses us as being the living Devil, as in the novel.
Baker also uses his story to issue some fairly cutting indictments on the age in which he (and his narrator) lived. Thus, we get digs at the Bible ("a book of poetic folk-tales from which we extracted a great deal of false moralizing"), advertising ("people were induced to buy things which they did not really require"), the subway...excuse me...I mean "the tube" ("It is too hot to try to remember something a thousand times hotter and more airless"), the insurance company at which he once worked ("all the arduous work I thus executed was of little or no advantage"), team sports ("this predilection for athletics possessed the English temperament to a remarkable degree and was probably the only part of their lives which many people considered with any real seriousness"), the religious ("There was something so appallingly self-conscious and complacent about this crowd of people in their approach to their God; something so essentially weak and faithless masquerading as strong and faithful"), happiness ("if a natural smile broke upon the mouth of any one of us, we were in danger of being labelled eccentric"), nationalism ("great armies of fighting men were reared at the expense of poor and ill-nourished people who, in taxes, were forced to support these entirely unnecessary bodies of soldiers"), sex education ("if we dared to show the smallest amount of open interest in our genitals we were, even at a very young age, most severely rebuked"), radio ("There was something essentially impure about the music thus sent out"), and the cinema ("with all its spurious emotion, its travesty of life, its meretricious sentiment"). Conversely, in a lovely four-page segment, the author lists all the many things that the narrator loved--and misses--about the London of pre-apocalypse days. In all, Baker's novel gives us an excellent overview of pre-War London; one of the finest that I've ever come across.
His novel also evinces a great degree of prescience, and not just in his prediction of another world war in the offing (forestalled, in his book, by the avian apocalypse). Baker also predicts the coming of television in all homes, as well as porn ("the 'act of sex,' as we called it, was not shown in detail on the screen, though there were signs that it probably would soon be considered quite proper to do so"). And his novel functions very well in the Romance Dept., as well, as our narrator and his future wife initially meet and fall in love. Baker treats his readers to any number of beautifully written and wonderfully executed scenes. Among them: the initial, disastrous attempt to eliminate the birds infesting Hyde Park, and its Japanese parallel, as a group of kamikaze pilots (more prescience?) tries to slay the birds in the Far East (one of the indications here that the problem of the birds is worldwide in scope); our narrator's two-week vacation in Wales, during which he realizes some almost metaphysical truths about life; our narrator and Olga's warmly depicted first date; our narrator facing down his bird attendant by looking his own inner demons squarely in the face; and, of course, that mind-boggling finale at St. Paul's, as spectacular, violent and apocalyptic a sequence as any disaster fan could ever hope to experience.
The book was clearly close to the author's heart, and several autobiographical elements are to be found therein. Like the narrator, Baker also lived for a time in Stroud Green and worked in an insurance office. Baker's experience as a choir singer and church organist are reflected in the St. Paul's sequence, and the fact that his grandfather was an organist at the Alexandra Palace is transformed into our narrator's frequent visits to that remarkably imposing structure. And as to our narrator himself, he surely is a wholly likeable chap: considerate of his Mum, nonmuscular, a poetic sort, not at all into sports, moral, and entirely decent. After all the horrors that he witnesses, we are glad that he has attained to a nice long life, and that he is able to compare himself to a Biblical patriarch in the book's opening. Our narrator tells his story simply but beautifully to a grown daughter who cannot understand most of his references (thus, Trafalgar Sq. needs to be described as "a great open square, across which sprawled the massive column of an old memorial to a sea-lord, an illustrious hero of this island"). At the same time, he is quite capable of making up some words of his own (or is "embrous" actually a word?).
All told, Baker's novel incorporates elements of horror, predictive sci-fi, apocalyptic fiction, and the supernatural (not just those unusual, death-defying birds, but their satanic overseer, as well). Truly, something for just about everyone in this stunningly well-crafted book. For those readers, however, who are looking for definitive answers, Baker's "The Birds"--similar in this regard to Hitchcock's "The Birds"--may prove a disappointment. As Anna tells us in the book's afterword, "What was the meaning of the Birds? I have tormented myself with this question." But as her father had mentioned earlier, 'when you are dealing with supernatural happenings, what explanation will ever suffice?" The bottom line remains, however, that all fans of Alfred Hitchcock's film--surely one of the great motion pictures of the 1960s--should find Frank Baker's book a fascinating read...whether it was inspirational for the filmmakers or not. Personally, I look forward now to exploring some of Baker's other work, such as "The Twisted Tree" and that posthumous collection of creepy stories, both of which are also part of Valancourt Books' very impressive catalog. And if you're wondering how I ever discovered the Valancourt website to begin with, well, let's just say that a little birdie told me....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of vintage horror and supernatural fare....)
September 27, 2019
I was excited to read this book, thinking it a thriller similar to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. But it was not thrilling at all. Hard to get through. More a cynical account of mankind and his end. It was slow, did not entice me to keep turning pages. I had to force myself to keep going.
December 14, 2019
The secret book behind both Daphne DuMaurier's short story and Hitchcock's film is a strange creature, half Kafka, half H. G. Wells. It's a tad slow in places but the payoff is great: an unforgettable ending.
November 4, 2017
This was a good story but I had to keep pushing myself to finish it.
February 16, 2018
A Londres de 1935 é uma cidade cosmopolita e moderna até onde sua antiga e charmosa arquitetura lhe permite ser. Pessoas vem e vão todos os dias nos metrôs e bondes vivendo a vida um dia de cada vez sem se preocupar com o futuro, tão somente levando os esportes a sério. Até que, em mais um dia comum desses, seres emplumados voadores aparecem inesperadamente pela cidade.
Os pássaros, um número muito maior do que até então costumavam ser vistos, a princípio apenas observam a cidade e sua população, que os acha bonitinhos e graciosos. Eles, porém, adoram sujar tudo com seus excrementos e até mesmo incomodam mais do que seria aceitável.
Até que uma mulher, em uma cabine telefônica, inesperadamente morre de causas não reveladas.
Pelo menos até um jovem nos seus vinte e cinco anos e com uma vida regrada e trabalhadora descobrir, tarde demais, que o objetivo dos pássaros é muito mais sinistro do que o princípio sugeria e agora ele tem de descobrir o que há por trás disso. Contando com a ajuda da soviética Olga, que será uma peça chave para o que virá.
Se ele vai descobrir, o único modo de saber é embarcando na aterrorizante jornada criada por Frank Baker em um livro que se tornou por merecimento um clássico do terror. “E o cinema?
Essa provavelmente era a diversão mais influente oferecida aos homens e mulheres. Como o rádio, poderia ser usufruído a quase todas as horas do dia, embora, diferentemente do rádio, não ficasse dentro de casa. (Tenho certeza de que logo estaria. No meu tempo, eles estavam encaminhando nessa direção.) Um homem tinha que ir a teatros especiais para conseguir este tipo particular de fuga da realidade.
Eu sei que o meu post dessa semana deveria novamente vir da Argentina. Porém, escrevendo um novo livro, um terror com vampiros já todo formado na minha cabeça, me veio a vontade falar de um dos melhores, porém mais incômodos, livros que li em 2017.
Antigo? Sim. Atual? Igualmente. A construção da minha fala, pelo menos no ponto de vista de um purista da língua portuguesa, soa contraditória e até sem sentido. Garanto, entretanto, que faz muito. Muito mesmo, ainda mais quando o autor descreve, com uma minúcia que muito bem poderia ser a nossa realidade em 2018, a vida real da Londres de 1935.
O pior de tudo, porém, é que, desde o começo do livro, sabemos que o protagonista e narrador, nessa ocasião um homem nos seus oitenta e cinco anos, há sessenta vive em um mundo completamente arruinado cujas profundezas nunca chegamos realmente a desvendar. O que sabemos, porém, é suficiente para nos perguntar como o mundo se reergueu depois do “advento dos pássaros”, ainda mais quando fica implícito que a maioria das coisas que conhecemos como o básico não mais existe. Como uma distopia daquelas que hoje são livros tão comuns. Considerando que isso fica claro desde o início do livro, não considero spoiler, porém, como tudo aconteceu é sim, por isso não posso detalhar como eu gostaria. Posso comentar, entretanto, que a cena é aterradora, digna de um filme de terror. Bem pior que no filme de Hitchcock.
O mais aterrorizante, porém, é bem mais que só a ameaça dos pássaros. É a capacidade das pessoas de não levarem a vida a sério quando realmente precisa. A falta de iniciativa da maioria em mudar o que está errado. Não assumir o que realmente sentem. Serem capazes de se permitir declinar pelo ritmo da falta de moral do mundo. Tudo isso, somado a uma narrativa em primeira pessoa que intercala passado e presente, torna a leitura uma excelente experiência, mas também incômoda até não poder mais. Inclusive eu demorei a terminar o livro porque me identifiquei muitas vezes com o narrador e identifiquei várias situações da vida real que não raras vezes me alteram o humor. Fica difícil pensar sem sentir mal e assustado em como as pessoas no livro simplesmente não se davam conta do perigo em volta delas e só tarde mais é que elas foram notar.
Outros, e certamente os mais aterrorizantes, pontos da trama são: de onde vem os pássaros e o que eles realmente são? Durante boa parte da história o autor apenas diz que tentaram capturar, espantar ou matar os animais, mas que não fizeram sequer um arranhão. No entanto, duas cenas do livro dão uma séria pista, ou esclarecem, sobre do que realmente se tratam os pássaros e isso é o que mais realmente assusta o leitor, pois ninguém teria pensado em uma (quase) solução tão inacreditável, mas ao mesmo tempo tão cheia de sentido. De tal forma que você fica pensando no livro um bom tempo depois de ler.
Não apenas fica pensando na leitura, mas também apreciando a edição caprichadíssima da Darkside Books, com sua lombada em preto e branco e o corte das folhas pretas. Isso sem contar as folhas amareladas e o excelente espaçamento da fonte que está em muito bom tamanho e igualmente confortável para a leitura.
Sei que o texto ficou mais curto do que geralmente faço, de novo, mas apesar de Os Pássaros ter me marcado bastante, falar dele não dá nem um terço do que realmente vocês podem esperar do livro. Mas posso deixar um aviso: se avistar um pássaro estranho, não abra a janela.
Os pássaros, um número muito maior do que até então costumavam ser vistos, a princípio apenas observam a cidade e sua população, que os acha bonitinhos e graciosos. Eles, porém, adoram sujar tudo com seus excrementos e até mesmo incomodam mais do que seria aceitável.
Até que uma mulher, em uma cabine telefônica, inesperadamente morre de causas não reveladas.
Pelo menos até um jovem nos seus vinte e cinco anos e com uma vida regrada e trabalhadora descobrir, tarde demais, que o objetivo dos pássaros é muito mais sinistro do que o princípio sugeria e agora ele tem de descobrir o que há por trás disso. Contando com a ajuda da soviética Olga, que será uma peça chave para o que virá.
Se ele vai descobrir, o único modo de saber é embarcando na aterrorizante jornada criada por Frank Baker em um livro que se tornou por merecimento um clássico do terror. “E o cinema?
Essa provavelmente era a diversão mais influente oferecida aos homens e mulheres. Como o rádio, poderia ser usufruído a quase todas as horas do dia, embora, diferentemente do rádio, não ficasse dentro de casa. (Tenho certeza de que logo estaria. No meu tempo, eles estavam encaminhando nessa direção.) Um homem tinha que ir a teatros especiais para conseguir este tipo particular de fuga da realidade.
Eu sei que o meu post dessa semana deveria novamente vir da Argentina. Porém, escrevendo um novo livro, um terror com vampiros já todo formado na minha cabeça, me veio a vontade falar de um dos melhores, porém mais incômodos, livros que li em 2017.
Antigo? Sim. Atual? Igualmente. A construção da minha fala, pelo menos no ponto de vista de um purista da língua portuguesa, soa contraditória e até sem sentido. Garanto, entretanto, que faz muito. Muito mesmo, ainda mais quando o autor descreve, com uma minúcia que muito bem poderia ser a nossa realidade em 2018, a vida real da Londres de 1935.
O pior de tudo, porém, é que, desde o começo do livro, sabemos que o protagonista e narrador, nessa ocasião um homem nos seus oitenta e cinco anos, há sessenta vive em um mundo completamente arruinado cujas profundezas nunca chegamos realmente a desvendar. O que sabemos, porém, é suficiente para nos perguntar como o mundo se reergueu depois do “advento dos pássaros”, ainda mais quando fica implícito que a maioria das coisas que conhecemos como o básico não mais existe. Como uma distopia daquelas que hoje são livros tão comuns. Considerando que isso fica claro desde o início do livro, não considero spoiler, porém, como tudo aconteceu é sim, por isso não posso detalhar como eu gostaria. Posso comentar, entretanto, que a cena é aterradora, digna de um filme de terror. Bem pior que no filme de Hitchcock.
O mais aterrorizante, porém, é bem mais que só a ameaça dos pássaros. É a capacidade das pessoas de não levarem a vida a sério quando realmente precisa. A falta de iniciativa da maioria em mudar o que está errado. Não assumir o que realmente sentem. Serem capazes de se permitir declinar pelo ritmo da falta de moral do mundo. Tudo isso, somado a uma narrativa em primeira pessoa que intercala passado e presente, torna a leitura uma excelente experiência, mas também incômoda até não poder mais. Inclusive eu demorei a terminar o livro porque me identifiquei muitas vezes com o narrador e identifiquei várias situações da vida real que não raras vezes me alteram o humor. Fica difícil pensar sem sentir mal e assustado em como as pessoas no livro simplesmente não se davam conta do perigo em volta delas e só tarde mais é que elas foram notar.
Outros, e certamente os mais aterrorizantes, pontos da trama são: de onde vem os pássaros e o que eles realmente são? Durante boa parte da história o autor apenas diz que tentaram capturar, espantar ou matar os animais, mas que não fizeram sequer um arranhão. No entanto, duas cenas do livro dão uma séria pista, ou esclarecem, sobre do que realmente se tratam os pássaros e isso é o que mais realmente assusta o leitor, pois ninguém teria pensado em uma (quase) solução tão inacreditável, mas ao mesmo tempo tão cheia de sentido. De tal forma que você fica pensando no livro um bom tempo depois de ler.
Não apenas fica pensando na leitura, mas também apreciando a edição caprichadíssima da Darkside Books, com sua lombada em preto e branco e o corte das folhas pretas. Isso sem contar as folhas amareladas e o excelente espaçamento da fonte que está em muito bom tamanho e igualmente confortável para a leitura.
Sei que o texto ficou mais curto do que geralmente faço, de novo, mas apesar de Os Pássaros ter me marcado bastante, falar dele não dá nem um terço do que realmente vocês podem esperar do livro. Mas posso deixar um aviso: se avistar um pássaro estranho, não abra a janela.
August 29, 2022
At least 3.5 stars.
Despite a few slow spots, this was an entertaining, gripping read, and only 186 pages, so not too long.
The book is set in the London of 1935, and the country, unusually for Britain, is plagued by drought and heatwaves.
The narrator of the story is a young man who works at an insurance company, and lives with his widowed mother. He is just one of many people whose life will be changed forever during this hot summer, with the arrival of the Birds, who initially are small creatures arriving in big packs, attacking those who are in their sight. As the weeks go by, the returning Birds are larger creatures, and each Bird will select their individual prey, stalking and harassing an individual wherever they go, even tapping on their windows at night. On a hot stifling night, no one will dare to leave their windows open!
Our narrator gives us an account of his life. This includes his meeting the Russian-born girl Olga, who is to give him some crucial advice on how to cope with the onslaught of the Birds, and how to achieve some form of happiness and contentment within himself in this new world of turmoil.
Overall, this is a good book. It's not just a thriller, but also a look at life in the London of 1935, of one man's assessment of the culture that he lives in; its attitudes on sexuality, religion's hold on the nation's people and their behaviors and so on.
It's fast moving and gripping, but with a few cases of meandering here and there; the account of a holiday in Wales got a bit heavy handed, one waited for the action to get going again when the narrator returned to London, a place he seemed to love and hate, but where he really belonged.
The book's last section show us another ferocious attack from the Birds, and a volatile, violent change from the hot dry weather to go with it. Is this the final straw? Can London and its people continue to survive, live life as they know it after all this mayhem? Can they bear any more?
What happens to our protagonist, his mother and his girlfriend Olga? Is it a different world, forever changed, they must face? If they can escape the ruined city they once called home.
I could go on, but that would be entering spoiler territory. The book was published in 1936, and the author years later made some changes, revisions to the text that were not published in his lifetime but are incorporated into this reprint. One can sometimes feel that Hitchcock knew something about this book, and used the idea of attacking birds as a story for his film, changing a few things, like the setting, etc. But that's only speculation on my part. I don't know for sure. Some people suggest he knew nothing about the book. Most sources say he got the idea from a du Maurier short story, a story I haven't read.
The author did try suing Hitchcock when the film was released, but got nowhere in his pursuit.
A curio that's worthwhile.
Despite a few slow spots, this was an entertaining, gripping read, and only 186 pages, so not too long.
The book is set in the London of 1935, and the country, unusually for Britain, is plagued by drought and heatwaves.
The narrator of the story is a young man who works at an insurance company, and lives with his widowed mother. He is just one of many people whose life will be changed forever during this hot summer, with the arrival of the Birds, who initially are small creatures arriving in big packs, attacking those who are in their sight. As the weeks go by, the returning Birds are larger creatures, and each Bird will select their individual prey, stalking and harassing an individual wherever they go, even tapping on their windows at night. On a hot stifling night, no one will dare to leave their windows open!
Our narrator gives us an account of his life. This includes his meeting the Russian-born girl Olga, who is to give him some crucial advice on how to cope with the onslaught of the Birds, and how to achieve some form of happiness and contentment within himself in this new world of turmoil.
Overall, this is a good book. It's not just a thriller, but also a look at life in the London of 1935, of one man's assessment of the culture that he lives in; its attitudes on sexuality, religion's hold on the nation's people and their behaviors and so on.
It's fast moving and gripping, but with a few cases of meandering here and there; the account of a holiday in Wales got a bit heavy handed, one waited for the action to get going again when the narrator returned to London, a place he seemed to love and hate, but where he really belonged.
The book's last section show us another ferocious attack from the Birds, and a volatile, violent change from the hot dry weather to go with it. Is this the final straw? Can London and its people continue to survive, live life as they know it after all this mayhem? Can they bear any more?
What happens to our protagonist, his mother and his girlfriend Olga? Is it a different world, forever changed, they must face? If they can escape the ruined city they once called home.
I could go on, but that would be entering spoiler territory. The book was published in 1936, and the author years later made some changes, revisions to the text that were not published in his lifetime but are incorporated into this reprint. One can sometimes feel that Hitchcock knew something about this book, and used the idea of attacking birds as a story for his film, changing a few things, like the setting, etc. But that's only speculation on my part. I don't know for sure. Some people suggest he knew nothing about the book. Most sources say he got the idea from a du Maurier short story, a story I haven't read.
The author did try suing Hitchcock when the film was released, but got nowhere in his pursuit.
A curio that's worthwhile.
May 20, 2017
Se você espera encontrar suspense, terror ou algo parecido esqueça!!! O livro os pássaros trás uma abordagem mais reflexiva, num clima pós-guerra mundial, o personagem central um senhor de certa idade narra depois de muita relutância a sua filha, lembranças vividas numa velha Londres obscurecida com a chegada dos pássaros, um marco importante de mudança e reviravolta em sua vida. Os pássaros remetem a um significado mais profundo da verdadeira natureza humana com todos seus demônios internos, por exemplo no trecho que ele finalmente encara a criatura que o persegue e vê nos olhos da criatura "a alma que eu havia expulsado de mim há tanto tempo. E ela era abominável" e como aquele encontro mudou sua perspectiva de vida e como a sua alma havia se enchido de vida novamente. O livro trás várias criticas sociais, religiosas, entre outras questões. Tem vários trechos da leitura que são arrastados e dá um certo desanimo, o próprio narrador se perde em suas lembranças esquecendo da existência dos pássaros, mas no trecho final vários acontecimentos desperta o leitor e no final aquela velha pergunta - Qual será o verdadeiro significado dos pássaros ?!? Pergunta essa que a própria Anna se faz no final.
January 7, 2019
Not sure if this would appeal more to followers of Ted Kaczynski or Ross Douthat but the narrator's voice echoes loudly in the anti-civ rabblerousing of today. The re-emergence of a green and pleasant True Britain after the removal of industrial society is the core of the cozy catastrophes of twenty years later, but it's striking to see it so well-developed this early (if ironic that the German movement dreadfully foreshadowed at some points in the novel had the same imaginary). If only Rob Young had had room to include it in the early chapters of Electric Eden.
January 15, 2019
livro maravilhoso resenha no Instagram @andre199seis
February 9, 2021
Interesting details but preferred Daphne du Maurier's short story.
July 26, 2021
I couldn't decide on 3 stars or 4. Definitely, a strange book.
November 1, 2023
Slow start but I loved the meaning & the ending
May 23, 2024
livro viajante 2024, scifi, horror
April 4, 2021
An excellent book! However, don't expect anything like the movie, which was based loosely on a novella which was in turn was influenced by this story. The movie was pure Hitchcock, a horror story set in modern times. This book, by Frank Baker, is more of an allegory, a look at London in the 30's with all the uncertainty of those times, and a troubled young man seeking to find himself. He is uncertain how to deal with his romance, and his job is definitely not to his liking. The birds, unknown and unidentified, swoop in and out, incidentally at first, but finally attack en masse. He is in the cathedral during the final attack, and makes of point of showing how helpless religion and all the other institutions are at dealing with it. (One can associate the birds as a symbol for the coming war. ) In the end, he survives, leaving London to escape, with his love, to the country and living out his life there.
February 5, 2017
É um livro metafórico e que detalha mais os cenários e os sentimentos do protagonista do que o ataque dos pássaros em si.
Um daqueles casos em que o filme é melhor que o livro (mesmo que sejam totalmente diferentes um do outro).
Um daqueles casos em que o filme é melhor que o livro (mesmo que sejam totalmente diferentes um do outro).
November 24, 2013
Atmospheric and horrific. I was surprised by the tangents of social commentary and how well they fit into the narrative story. Provocative as to its implications to the metaphysical realm as well.
Shelved as 'wish-list'
December 1, 2013
January 19, 2014
Intriguing read that while at times appears to meander, catches up to itself for a compelling read.
Read
January 24, 2019"Levantei-me. Meus tornozelos doíam, meus braços estavam roxos, sangue pingava do meu queixo. Mas havia uma alegria tão delicada no meu corpo que eu não conseguia pensar nessas pequenas dores. O ar estava puro mais uma vez. Percebi que eu não precisava subir em uma montanha para encher meus pulmões com vida. Eu estava revigorado, um novo ser." (p. 228)
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