The Strange Bird: A Borne Story

Jeff VanderMeer’s new novella, The Strange Bird, is ingenious, provocative, and deeply moving. At times, it’s almost too painful and too beautiful. Out of the futuristic world of his latest novel, Borne, VanderMeer conjures a totem for the Anthropocene. A hybrid spirit strange and familiar enough to wake us from our dogmatic stupor, Strange Bird guides us into unexplored regions of literature and the psyche. While we have excluded the secret life of animals from consciousness, on some level we understand their suffering because we suffer together. Nested in Borne, adjacent to VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, The Strange Bird brings us to the intersection of animals and the Anthropocene. We’ve been here all along, but now, slowly, we’re becoming aware.The Strange Bird is as much urban odyssey as fantasy. At the beginning of the narrative Strange Bird, a biotech marvel, escapes the confines of a lab. In flight, she navigates an unfamiliar and frightening world, and begins to understand herself in new contexts and from different perspectives. Before long she is captured by a solitary old man who admires her, but who also imprisons her. He is attached and attentive, seems to want to commune with her, but he can’t appreciate her suffering. Like other humans in the novella, he rationalizes his cruelty even as he is haunted by it.Eventually Strange Bird lands squarely into the narrative of Borne, where she is captured by The Magician, a sadistic genius who transforms her into a cloaking device. Somehow she survives the radical transformation and enters a kind of bardo, where she communes with other animals, alive and dead.The Strange Bird traces the terrible beauty of animal trauma in the Anthropocene, not as a surrogate for human trauma, but as a creaturely condition that directs our attention to the ubiquitous effects of climate change. If trauma can be communicated through non-verbal behavior, it may be an appeal to all animals. Artists like VanderMeer seem to hear that call, but are they uniquely aware of animal suffering, or uniquely responsive? I imagine that many of us are more aware of our collective suffering than we know. VanderMeer may not speak for non-human animals, but he surely gives voice to the unconscious.Christine Skolnik, Environmental Critique

Very strange littl book - about a bird - a biotech bird At the very beginning the bird escapes the confines of a lab. In flight, she navigates an unfamiliar and frightening world, and begins to understand herself in new contexts and from different perspectives. Before long she is captured by a solitary old man who admires her, but who also imprisons her.I believe what I liked most about this novella is the humanity that the author brings to this biotechnological bird. It thinks and reasons in a way that is far from what we would do.It is not a happy story - it is a very unpleasant look at a future gone awry

Listened to this three-hour digital original Amazon single with audible narration over the past couple of days. I don't know what they are calling the stuff that Jeff VanderMeer is writing, but I have decided to label it "Cryptofiction." Apparently this is a riff on a novel entitled Borne. This 86 page novella takes certain elements and characters from the periphery of that larger work and spins them out into their own wildly evocative, surreal and for me at least profoundly compelling narrative. I'll definitely listen to it again in the next few days. It takes place in a nightmarish post-apocalyptic world. Dreamlike. A bit like Tim Burton channeled through Michael Crichton. That is, audacious and strange but not too flowery or fantastic. It's hard to explain, but you'll see what I mean. Reminded me a little teeny bit of an old story called Rachel in Love. But that was really just one tiny string in a ball of yarn with countless strands. I also believe VanderMeer was intentionally angling for a parallel with The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski. The stories share impossibly bleak and relentlessly cruel landscapes. In the case of The Painted Bird, a strangely primeval and hateful post-World War II Poland. In this case, a strangely primeval and hateful post-apocalyptic United States. Both are full of monstrously original images. But definitely not to all tastes. If you hated all that southern reach stuff, you had better stay away from this. Still though, I loved it. The ending was really something. Uplifting, actually.

"She sang for joy. Not because she had not suffered or been reduced. But because she was finally free and the world could not be saved, but nor would it be destroyed."I mean, DAMN!I had to actually stop and read this aloud last night as I was finishing the book. VanderMeer's writing conjures up the most powerful imagery; at times throughout the book, it was almost as if I was standing there with the Strange Bird. Observing this crazy world that, try as it might, cannot truly destroy us.The Strange Bird was nothing that I expected going into this experience, but everything that I needed. While it is a novella meant to accompany Borne, I think this book could act as a stand alone novella. However, if you have intentions of reading Borne I would wait and read this last, because there are a few things that could *potentially* be spoilers.My favorite part of this novella, is the humanity that VanderMeer brings to this bird, who as a piece of biotechnology, is so far from what we would believe to be human.There is a sadness and despair to the bird, that one can only relate to as a human, and something about that is very sobering.Five stars, Jeff VanderMeer.FIVE. STARS.*I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Well, this hurts. I am a huge fan of Jeff VanderMeer, but this novela did not do it for me. It was interesting and it filled in some things about the Borne universe but the writing wasn't what I have come to expect from him. He didn't capture the beautiful flow of words and images that I am used to seeing in his work. Also, this is absolutely not standalone. If you have not read Borne, you will simply be confused.

I loved every second of it, seeing the story of the strange bird expanded was awesome.almost as good as borne

I love an author with the skill to just start telling the story as assuming the reader has an IQ. Great book and follow up to Bourne.

More than 5-Stars!Exquisite heart, exquisite prose. A small masterpiece.A small miracle of light and joy and pain and, in the end, of love and life.VanderMeer once again transports us to his dystopian world of "Borne".Notes and quotes:And even then she did not know that the sky was blue or what the sun was, because she had flown out into the cool night air and all her wonder resided in the points of light that blazed through the darkness above. But then the joy of flying overtook her and she went higher and higher and higher, and she did not care who saw or what awaited her in the bliss of the free fall and the glide and the limitless expanse. Oh, for if this was life, then she had not yet been alive!-The Strange Bird had perched for safety on a hook near the ceiling and watched, knowing she might be next. The badger that stared up, wishing for wings. The goat. The monkey. She stared back at them and did not look away, because to look away was to be a coward and she was not cowardly. Because she must offer them some comfort, no matter how useless. Everything added to her and everything taken away had led to that moment and from her perch she had radiated love for every animal she could not help, with nothing left over for any human being. Not even in the parts of her that were human.-In the lab, so many of the scientists had said “forgive me” or “I am so sorry” before doing something irrevocable to the animals in their cages. Because they felt they had the right. Because the situation was extreme and the world was dying. So they had gone on doing the same things that had destroyed the world, to save it.-At true north lay the great bear Mord, [the Magician's] mortal enemy for control of the city. At true south lay the Company building, a place that the Strange Bird knew as a kind of laboratory on a scale far outstripping the one from which she had escaped. To the west, the Magician’s regard for her transformed children, her observatory headquarters, while to the east, forever changing in the intensity with which the Magician regarded them, were a scavenger named Rachel and a competitor of the Magician’s named Wick. Rachel worked with or for Wick and Wick made creatures much as the Magician did, and used them to barter for goods.

It's an extension of the world built with his other novel "Borne" which tells us the events we'd already seen from another point of view, the one of the strange bird, used and misused by the ones that cross it's path.Jeff Vandermeer will never cease to amaze me.

I wanted a follow up to the first book, but this goes off on a wide, wide tangent before bringing all back home in a wonderful, uplifting rush of a finish.