MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 128 pp.
Published February 27, 2018
DISCLAIMER: I received a free finished copy of this book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in exchange for my honest review.
The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory--she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape.
But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology--satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans--all of them now simply scrambling to survive--who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home.
With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne. He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne--a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world.
In his latest novella, VanderMeer proves that a reader can find pleasure and joy in the unexplained. The grand, overarching questions that lingered throughout Borne remain unanswered. You do not learn much more about the Company or the disaster that turned the world into a desolate wasteland. Nor do you become better acquainted with that story's villain, the Magician, although the Strange Bird does cross paths with her. The Strange Bird is an expansion of that world not outward, but downward, made deeper by the perspective of an engineered creature achingly human...and distant from humanity at the same time.
There is quite a lot to unpack in the Strange Bird's journey. Some of my favorite themes threaded heavily through her odyssey: immortality and free will, in particular. And 'odyssey' is, perhaps, the best descriptor of her travels. For while not as voluminous as the account of Odysseus' adventures, The Strange Bird flits between places and creatures and humans in much the same manner. Each encounter feels like a way-station—an opportunity for education or tribulation that drives her onward to some final destination. The inner compass that provides such drive perhaps alludes to faith. Or destiny. Or God. Or perhaps even the Devil, meddling where he isn't welcome. This despairing landscape, and the denizens that lurk within it, wear heavily on the Strange Bird. Her story is not a happy one, but it is teeming with hope.
Like Annihilation, VanderMeer mixes horror and science-fiction into a bleak picture. For those who relished the haunting image of the grounded astronauts in Borne: you will find plenty more to dread here.
And for those who have not yet read the parent novel Borne, I would highly encourage you to do so before delving into The Strange Bird. VanderMeer built an intricate post-apocalyptic landscape with clearly defined parameters—and enigmas, as well; these details are presented in The Strange Bird without further introduction or explanation. While the narrative itself stands steadily on its own, there is a richness of detail that would be shamefully missed if this novella were treated as a purely stand-alone tale.
The Strange Bird continues in VanderMeer's tradition of haunting and horrific examinations of what comprises humanity. Tempered with hope, no matter how small in scale, it serves as an excellent companion to Borne.
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