A postmodern world of troubled comic virtuality. . . . The Bird Room x-rays the souls of young people.” — The Guardian
“A darkly stylish black comedy of sexual manners. . . . His odd, downbeat characters engage in the kind of sex that makes you feel as if your soul needs a wash. . . . Taut, sharp prose . . . that gives an edgy, sometimes creepy, and very contemporary sense of beauty to the everyday and banal.” — Metro London
“Killen has fun playing with identities in a manner that brings to mind David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive.” — The Sunday Herald (UK)
“Killen creates something memorable out of his everyday ingredients. Clever time shifts keep the reader on their toes. . . . [with] darkly funny observations about contemporary urban life his spare, powerful prose brilliantly captures the loneliness of cities and the agonies of love.” — The London Paper
“A disturbing and uncomfortably bleak comedy full of existential angst, emotional self-destruction, and a lot of deviant and frequently depressing sex....a postmodern take of the traditional love-triangle tale, with a bit of sadomasochism and paranoia thrown in.” — The Herald (Scotland)
“Chris Killen’s writing surprised me sometimes and made me think ‘that is funny’ sometimes and I never felt bad reading it because I knew (by reading the sentences) that he had worked hard on being sincere, concise, and interesting.” — Tao Lin, author of Eeeee Eee Eeee and Bed
“An extremely engaging combo of sex, melancholy and killer one-liners—The Bird Room is a beautiful Chinese puzzle of a novel.” — Toby Litt, author of Hospital and Ghost Story
“The Bird Room is amazing. Beautiful, laconic, and chockablock with uneasy sex—like having a threesome with your girlfriend and Richard Brautigan.” — Richard Milward, author of Apples and Ten Storey Love Song
“An astonishingly good first novel. I was gripped from the first page.” — M.J. Hyland, author of Carry Me Down
“A strangely merry look at the agony of true love.” — Dazed & Confused
“Either disturbingly brilliant or brilliantly disturbing. Whichever, I loved it.” — Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts
“Killen has taken a rough stone and polished it into a gem. A book that succeeds in turning daily banality into a thing of great beauty.” — Ewan Morrison, author of The Last Book You Read and Swung
A strangely merry look at the agony of true love.
Killen has fun playing with identities in a manner that brings to mind David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive.
Chris Killen’s writing surprised me sometimes and made me think ‘that is funny’ sometimes and I never felt bad reading it because I knew (by reading the sentences) that he had worked hard on being sincere, concise, and interesting.
Killen creates something memorable out of his everyday ingredients. Clever time shifts keep the reader on their toes. . . . [with] darkly funny observations about contemporary urban life his spare, powerful prose brilliantly captures the loneliness of cities and the agonies of love.
An extremely engaging combo of sex, melancholy and killer one-liners—The Bird Room is a beautiful Chinese puzzle of a novel.
An astonishingly good first novel. I was gripped from the first page.
A darkly stylish black comedy of sexual manners. . . . His odd, downbeat characters engage in the kind of sex that makes you feel as if your soul needs a wash. . . . Taut, sharp prose . . . that gives an edgy, sometimes creepy, and very contemporary sense of beauty to the everyday and banal.
A postmodern world of troubled comic virtuality. . . . The Bird Room x-rays the souls of young people.
The Bird Room is amazing. Beautiful, laconic, and chockablock with uneasy sex—like having a threesome with your girlfriend and Richard Brautigan.
A disturbing and uncomfortably bleak comedy full of existential angst, emotional self-destruction, and a lot of deviant and frequently depressing sex....a postmodern take of the traditional love-triangle tale, with a bit of sadomasochism and paranoia thrown in.
Killen has taken a rough stone and polished it into a gem. A book that succeeds in turning daily banality into a thing of great beauty.
Either disturbingly brilliant or brilliantly disturbing. Whichever, I loved it.
Chris Killen's first novel is either disturbingly brilliant or brilliantly disturbing. Whichever, I loved it.
The Bird Room is amazing. Beautiful, laconic and chockablock with uneasy sex - like having a threesome with your girlfriend and Richard Brautigan.
A darkly stylish comedy of sexual manners...Killen evokes a grimy world of sexual tension with unerring, uncomfortable accuracy...Much of The Bird Room's appeal is down to Killen's taut, sharp prose style - not flashy but alternately laconic, melancholy and dryly witty - that gives an edgy, sometimes creepy and very contemporary sense of beauty to the everyday and the banal.
A simple enough story...but Killen creates something memorable out of his everyday ingredients. Clever time shifts keep the reader on their toes, there are many darkly funny observations about contemporary urban life and his spare, powerful prose brilliantly captures the loneliness of cities and the agonies of love.
Killen creates a cast of unlikeable and morally dubious characters yet still makes his book compelling. There are also flashes of linguistic brilliance which suggest greater things to come from the 27-year-old writer.
A strangely merry look at the agony of true love.
Killen has taken a rough stone and polished it into a gem. A book that succeeds in turning daily banality into a thing of great beauty. I loved it.
The Bird Room is an astonishingly good first novel. I was gripped from the first page.
An extremely engaging combo of sex, melancholy and killer one-liners - The Bird Room is a beautiful Chinese puzzle of a novel.
Those who seek something unique in the contemporary British novel will delight in this adroit, snappy debut, a dark and beguiling meditation on the weight of being . . . A novel so fresh it practically pings with energy . . . Fizzes with deadpan wit and cutting one-liners.
Killen has fun playing with identities in a manner that brings to mind David Lynch's film Mulholland Drive.
As fresh and honest a take on twenty-first century relationships as you are likely to find. I was knocked out by the cold, translucent beauty of Killen's prose.
The writing is sharp... The language is punchy...Killen is looking at dark issues of insecurity and identity through a comic lens...[and] has stayed the likeable side of clever in this whacky little book.
The Bird Room is a hall of mirrors...sparely written, cool, jaunty, darkly comic, with a sharp ear for voice and manner...it displays exuberant brio.
