Bird is killing time, waiting for his wife to give birth. But when the baby is born with a practically-lethal defect, Bird has to come to grips with what he wants to do with his life.

This book was weird reading, it seems like everyone is pretty much an asshole. Bird's wife is lying in the hospital, never having seen her baby, and everyone just wishes to keep her in the dark. Bird goes to see his former girlfriend, and ends up drinking and having sex with her. Nobody cares about Bird's wife at all, but some people care about Bird, trying to make sure he's not a coward.

In fact, the book is mostly about Bird being such a coward, not able to confront life but constantly trying to escape. All of his escapades with his child are just attempts to avoid his future life as a family man, still keeping alive his dream of going to Africa.

I'm not quite sure what to think about the ending. In some ways it feels like a copout, but in others it's something that could happen. Still, some resolutions are kind of forced. I don't think this is even supposed to be a book you'd enjoy, but I couldn't really find anything profound in it either.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Passed onwards.

Thanks VariC for the book! I'll promise to pass it onwards once I'm done :)

My TBR pile has become so ridiculous (now, I wonder how that could have happened?) that I've decided to be ruthless with books that either don't grab me from the very beginning or that for some other reason bother me enough for me to stop reading them altogether. This book fits both categories; I was unable to concentrate on the story and I couldn't stand the characters nor the way they talked about the poor little baby. So, I gave up on page 35.

The book will now travel on to Germany and to ApoloniaX who chose it from her very own East Asian VBB.

Received this in the mail today.
Thanks a lot, Annimanni, for offering it in the VBB.
Looking forward to reading it.

I agree, this is really a book with lots of flawed characters. I liked Oe's writing, how he is able to build up Bird's mindscape, his moral dilemma, his mental turmoil, it's very precise and direct, even brutal. Bird is certainly not a likeable character, but it isn't hard to understand him - and for me the novel got another dimension when I learnt that Oe's son was born brain-damaged. A brilliant, dark, psychological novel.

Released at Slack Space
during the 2012 UK UnConvention
or somewhere else in Colchester