Reviews for The birds

The average rating for The birds based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-04-14 00:00:00 Thomas Dinges Like a gentle ripple across calming waters, or a songbird taking flight in the early morning sunrise, Tarjei Vesaas writes a delicately structured story of two siblings living a serene existence in rural Norway. Mattis is a sweet natured simpleton who burns the days away drifting off into his own world, whilst older sister Hege knits sweaters in their cottage by the lake. On occasions Mattis wonders around the local farms looking for work, picking crops, or bailing hay, but he finds it difficult to grasp reality and struggles to understand human relations. Firing silly questions at Hege all the time does lead them to bicker, but they tolerate each other, even if they don't really live on the same intellectual level. The Birds captures the frustrations of unfulfilled time in a spare and humane way, it is both a tender and warm look at those on the fringes of a normal life, but it also presents itself with an overpowering sadness, mainly for the reason of Mattis, who completely took hold of me the whole way through, he made me laugh, and almost made me cry, the reader sees the world that Mattis sees but is able to interpret it with more sophistication. there are several moments where we are able to understand the motivations and the actions of the people around Mattis when he is, shall we say, not all there. A woodcock would fly one day over the cottage, having Mattis take off into the clouds believing it's of some important significance, infuriating Hege as he will just not shut up about it. You can feel somewhat sympathetic for Hege, stuck all alone with a simple brother, yearning for some joy or romance in her life. Whether it was intended, there are also moments that are quite tense, Mattis would become a ferryman, carrying people across the lake, the trouble is there is just no one about, but at least he has a reason to face the day with more enthusiasm, he is now an important figure, or so he would believe, leading to a cramped moment on his boat where he tries to show off with two girls he ferries back to land. He would then pick up a lumberjack (Jorgen) who works in the forest and agrees to put him up in the cottage. And it's here that the behaviours of brother and sister would change. As Hege and Jorgen gradually become lovers, Mattis fails to handle this new situation, and just makes the complications of his world even more confusing. And you are never quite sure just what he has up his sleeve to try and get the attention of Hege back. There are many beautiful passages of description, animals, forests, the lake and surrounding area, which had me thinking of Henry David Thoreau's "Walden", also the character of Mattis does bear some resemblance to that of Lennie from Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" (although both books don't really sit with each other). The Birds is ultimately a moving portrait of a simple and despondent life, and thus hoping to break free from a trapped scenario. An incredibly beautiful piece of writing that takes your mind away from the modern world, and even though it appears to end all of a sudden, this is one unforgettable read that's not going away any time soon. 4.5/5

Review # 2 was written on 2014-11-02 00:00:00 Cara Rodriguez The world is a hostile place and, according to Mattis, people don't mean what they say when they speak. A simpleton, a weirdo, a child imprisoned in the body of an adult man, Mattis muses over the factors that separate him from the rest of the small community of the nameless village lost somewhere in a rural area in Norway where he and his sister Hege subsist in a cottage by the lake. Condemned to be permanently out of work due to his slow-witted faculties and lack of social skills, Mattis is bitterly aware of his inadequacy and secretly yearns to possess the wisdom and strength of other townsmen while his sister wastes away the remnants of her youth knitting sweaters that will provide some coins to get by without starving. Unable to keep his job as a hired hand working the fields of a neighboring farm because"his fingers won't do as they are told", Mattis creates a world of his own where time dissolves into thin air as soon as the woodcock flies over the cottage leaving a radiant trail of light, which precludes the thunder of the upcoming storm, before it glides down on the entangled branches of the twin aspens that guard the garden. A world where he can articulate witty remarks to flirt with farmgirls, find a job as a ferryman shuttling people across the lake, meet two playful mermaids trapped in women's limbs and invent a system to read The birds' language. "You are you, a voice inside him seemed to be saying, at least that was what it sounded to him. It was spoken in the language of birds. Written in their writing. You are you, that was what was written." The human need to establish bonds that will break down the barriers between individual isolation and collective belonging is written all over Mattis' actions. What transforms the worn out theme of the stereotyped misfit resisting an unyielding society into a beguiling narration that interweaves menacing natural imagery with occasional outsburts of genial writing is Vesaas' astute tapestry of symbolic and recurrent hints anticipated by an omniscient voice, capable of generating a tension as thick as fog, which is reflected on the aseptic frozen lake where Mattis rows his dreams, longings and fears. Nature is as beautiful as it is lethal, deadly lightening might fulminate the aspens, the wind might whistle lost birdsongs of the ensnared woodcock and Mattis' boat might bring Jørgen, the muscular lumberjack, into Hege's life and destroy the fragile ecosystem that Mattis so assiduously constructed over the years in the blink of an eye, but Vesaas' stark prose and the disturbing blend of tenderness and apprehension that paints the tone of the narration with the colors of a barren landscape will remain long after the last page is turned. And the wind will subside and in the lake, now a becalmed pool, the birds will make a solitary dance and speak through their graceful footprints and you, the reader, will miraculously understand their language because somewhere in-between fable and hapless reality Mattis has become the reader and the reader is now Mattis and when the boat sails the glacial waters of an ominous future, you two will walk, hand in hand, towards the sound of flapping wings and create a cozy nest with sundrenched memories of a long gone but never lost childhood. "The bird came, bringing with it all those things for which there were no words." Perfect Soundtrack for this book