Chris Killen’s debut novel is a short, punchy, darkly humourous affair that bespeaks great promise. Cleverly interweaving the lives of a lovestruck loser and a damaged young ‘actress’, Killen explores themes of alienation and mental illness with a deft touch.

The lovestruck loser is William – he has a girlfriend, Alice, but he can’t quite believe he’s good enough for her and this insecurity lies at the root of his problems. When he makes the mistake of introducing Alice to his artist friend Will (the scope for confusion of names can only be deliberate on Killen’s part, though I would question whether it’s necessary for the plot), things start go rapidly downhill. Will is everything William is not – cocky, brash, successful and utterly obnoxious.

Helen describes herself as an ‘actress’; in reality she’s a vulnerable young woman who lives a solitary existence, making her living ‘modelling’, which in practice means photo shoots for the dirty mac brigade, and she seems to be on the slippery slope to either pornography or perhaps even prostitution.

As William’s life unravels, we perhaps have to question how much of what he describes has actually happened the way he remembers, but the question of whether he is ill is left unanswered. Killen uses a slew of structural tricks to interlace the stories of William and Helen – the narratives are non-concurrent, and William’s narrative is also a series of flashbacks which means that when their paths finally cross, it may not be in the way the reader expects (it certainly took me by surprise).

The Bird Room is not a laugh-out-loud-funny book, it’s much blacker than that – but it is darkly funny, even absurd in places. The sex that forms a key thematic element is usually devoid of love and affection. Killen explores the relationship between the Internet and pornography, its de-humanising effects (on both producers and consumers) and the loneliness and isolation that it can feed.

This is not a novel of action – it’s interested in the minute details of shabby, imperfect daily lives, in the cages in which people imprison themselves (the bird rooms of the title, perhaps). It’s bleak, more than a little depressing – yet the way that William inadvertendly redeems Helen is at least a positive ending for one character. I enjoyed The Bird Room a lot, and I am sure Chris Killen will be an author to watch in future.

Look out for our Virtual Reading Group discussion of The Bird Room, coming soon.

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