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If you are from the planet Earth, most likely you are one of the record-breaking 89 million viewers of the Netflix exclusive Bird Box. The film stars Academy Award winner Sandra Bullock and was based on Josh Malerman’s 2014 novel of the same name. The story follows a woman and her two young children blindly navigating through a world riddled with creatures that cause insanity after seeing them. Malerman released his follow-up novel on July 21st, 2020, titled Malorie. Having already read Malerman’s Bird Box and Inspection novels, I’m familiar with his work and was excited for Malorie. He did not disappoint.
For most of the book, Malorie takes place sixteen years after the initial apocalyptic events in the first book. Usually a time jump of this magnitude rubs me the wrong way, but it works exceptionally here. When describing long periods of isolation and rise-repeat measures of staying safe, we don’t need every detail. It felt like a well-placed montage, while giving us the important events strewn throughout the time jump, later in the book. As the reader, we don’t know what’s going on in the world. We only know what’s going on with Malorie and her kids, so it makes sense to accelerate a little.
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To accent this, Malorie felt much more intimate and linear than Bird Box. The previous novel had two timelines going on at once, telling us the current and past events from both sides, introducing a ton of characters and all their interactions with one another. This book focused on one straightforward story and narrowed the viewpoints down to Malorie and her kids. By doing this, the characters were given fantastic development, and their interactions with each other and the outside world became more intense for the reader.
Malerman does a phenomenal job capturing the true dissonance between a mother and her teenagers in a world-altering scenario. The story used the age-old base of the mother lion doing everything she can to protect her cubs, but in this case, the cubs were born into this new world, and don’t react to it the way she does. The difference of personal adaptation mixed with your typical teenage growth and hormones set up the constant grinding of characters and adds to the book’s already intense moments. I felt like that awkward third person in the room when a friend fights with their parent. Cautious not to say a thing, but also extremely anxious and invested on what would be said next.
Where I thought the pacing in the first half was excellent, there are issues with the pacing in the second half. It felt like climbing triumphantly to the top of a hill, then laying on the ground and rolling down the other side. It was fun, but felt extremely rushed. I couldn’t stop and enjoy the details I loved about the first half. Before I knew it, the story was over, the obstacles were quickly dealt with, and the book ended. It felt unfair that one of the biggest mental challenges for a character was plowed through in a half-page. I realize sometimes life works like that; it just didn’t match up with the pace I was used to.
Overall, the book was an excellent follow-up to Bird Box. I’m excited to see if Malerman will continue the story with these characters or branch out within the same universe. I would love to read about the experiences of other groups of people after the events of the first book, almost like a World War Z or The Walking Dead type of situation. Regardless, the book works well on its own and continues to make me a fan of Josh Malerman’s writing. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
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