Tarjei Vesaas
Pushkin Press
7 October 2025
256
eBook - PDF
Modern Classics
ARC via NetGalley
The Birds tells the story of Mattis, a deeply sensitive, intellectually disabled young man living in a small house in the Norwegian countryside with his sister Hege. Eking out a modest living knitting sweaters, Hege encourages her brother to find work to ease their financial burdens, but his attempts come to nothing.
When he finally sets himself up as a ferryman, the only passenger he manages to bring across the lake is a lumberjack, Jørgen. But when Jørgen and Hege become lovers, Mattis finds the safety of his familial life threatened and his jealousy quickly spirals.
In The Birds, Norway’s most celebrated writer of the twentieth century allows us to rediscover the world. By turns frightening, beautiful, confounding, and full of mystery, it is a world we come to see more vividly through Mattis’s eyes.
The Birds was a fascinating read. Its story is simple in some ways, but it takes on additional depth in the way we get to see the world, its people and its happenings, through Mattis' eyes. In this way, some things become more profound than we might otherwise see them, some things more frightening. It was interesting that while the reader feels compassion and understanding for Mattis through his narration, at times I also found it frustrating that he couldn't understand things from Hege's point of view, and I could see how those around him might become exasperated no matter their good and kind intentions towards him. It is certainly a thought-provoking piece, as times inspiring and at times saddening. I am giving it 4 stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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