The Bookgeeks Virtual Reading Group got together (virtually, of course), to talk about Chris Killen’s bijou debut The Bird Room; here are some of the best bits of the discussion, including what we talked about when Chris dropped in to answer some questions…

Do you think the author’s focus on trivial and mundane aspects of his characters’ lives is significant?

Is the life that William ends up with solely a consequence of his own choices? Do others (Alice, Will) have some responsibility?

Do you think The Bird Room is a book about mental illness?

At what point did you work out that the man paying Helen was William (the narrator), rather than Will (the artist)?

Does William inadvertently redeem Helen by offering to pay her for sex?

By telling William that she was once in an amateur porno, does Anna sow the seeds of his subsequent obsession?

How much of what’s in the book actually happened, and how much is in William and Helen’s minds?

Did you get confused between William and Will? Do you think the confusion over the names was necessary to make the story work?

Would you recommend this book to people and what would you say to recommend it?

SA: I do think The Bird Room (‘TBR‘ from now on) is a novel about mental illness – we witness William’s mental deterioration, from slightly obsessive / neurotic behaviour that we can perhaps all relate to, to doing things that are definitely not normal (selling the contents of his house to avoid going out and getting a job, contacting Helen, living in a bare and empty house like a hermit). Perhaps Killen’s point is that the kind of society we live in now is not conducive to this kind of mental deterioration being picked up on by those we come in to contact with – both William and Helen have ‘fallen through the cracks’ of society. Alice certainly doesn’t seem to consider that William might be ill (indeed, I wonder if she isn’t a little bit strange herself, given the speed with which she moves in with him and her secrecy about aspects of her past life).

The interest in the detail of daily life might be seen to support that argument – it could be the author saying that we are obsessed with material goods and trivia at the expense of focusing on bigger issues. I also think it’s hard to see the Internet in a positive light in TBR - it fuels William’s obsession with finding Alice’s amateur video, and is the medium through which Helen is sexually exploited.

I must say, I was pretty slow on the uptake that the man paying Helen was William, rather than Will – Killen very deliberately set us up to think it was Will with his comment about paying a strange woman to come and live with him in the name of art. Personally, I think it could have been made to work even without the William / Will naming confusion – but maybe there were other reasons for doing that too (to make it easier for Alice to switch her affections to Will? To mess with William’s sense of self esteem by making it easier for him to compare himself to Will?). What do people think?

Hedgehog: With the stripping of material goods from the house coupled with the obsession with the Internet where all answers can be found, could it be a comment on aspects of modern life? For example, once we consulted books, encyclopedias, etc., now we turn to the Internet. When I was young I hand-wrote in accounts books with a fountain pen (never a Biro) but now it’s spreadsheets and data bases, etc. We wrote letters now we e-mail. The computer is taking over and it seems to be taking over his life. He may be there looking for specific information but he is there most of his waking day.

Hagelrat: I think focusing on the trivial and mundane shows how limited their lives are and especially William who has no job and no satisfaction out of his relationship because he’s so focused on the unimportant details.

I think William needs to take responsibility for the mess he’s in and I believe that although the other characters may have been unkind or sped his descent to this point they are not responsible for him.

I still don’t think this book is about mental illness, I may be quite wrong though and very when Chris comes along and says categorically that it is. To me there is a difference between the sort of mildly depressive and hopeless behaviour of William and proper mental illness.

I realised as soon as Helen entered the empty flat, up to that point I wasn’t sure. I thought it was superbly done though.

Again, I think Helen would have got their on her own, but William probably made her think about things sooner than she would have done. She started to heal and I believe in due course William will too.

The porn obsession was triggered by the girlfriends comments and William’s own insecurities and the fact that he was sat at home all day with time to pick apart every comment and nuance.

I think most of the book happened, just not necessarily the way it is described. I don’t see Helen and Will as the most reliable witnesses ever. I got confused over the Wills at times, I even wondered if they were both the same person, like Claire/Helen?

I’d recommend the book, in fact I have to my Mum. I said “I don’t know if you’ll like it, but I think you’ll find it interesting”.

Aimee: I think it is to Chris’s credit that he has written a story which is ambiguous in its connection to mental illness. Both having no job and going through a difficult break up are the kind of emotional turmoil, which could really push a person to the brink of his or her own self destruction, and for that reason I found William’s character to be very real and believable. However, there are signs of William’s instability from the very start, his insecurity with Alice, his jealousy and his inability to communicate his feelings or fears. At the beginning of the novel, my pity for the protagonist led me to believe that is was Alice’s actions which was causing the problem in their relationship, and one of the joys of reading The Bird Room for me was the turn around where William’s self destructive nature truly becomes apparent and their relationship breaks down.

This brings me to another one of the topics, the notion of responsibility. I feel that on some part, however marginally, Alice and Will are responsible for William’s state. Alice clearly flirts with Will, perhaps to prompts some reaction in William. This is brought to a head (if you’ll forgive the pun) when Alice stages the date with Will round William’s house. For the following actions, I think Alice and Will do need to share some responsibility for Will’s demise. Why didn’t Alice just have the date at Will’s house, instead of parading in front of William? To hurt him, to prompt some reaction. Alice also has a stubborn resolve to ignore William, even when he acts in ways not too dissimilar to a child to try and get her attention, without trying to push and address the issue one last time.

While both William and Helen can be clearly seen as unreliable narrators, I did find myself believing most of what the story tells to be true, probably because I was enjoying the narrative so much! There are some aspects that did strike me as a little off key, such as how William never really quizzes Alice about her past, but since these parts were told in first person it could be that William was never really satisfied with with she told him, and so feels that he is a victim. I have, and indeed, continue to recommend this book to people, I love the style that it is written in!

SA: Some food for thought in the review of TBR from Saturday’s Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/31/bird-room-review

A strong emphasis on the confusion and ambiguity engendered by the naming of the characters, and a suggestion that perhaps Will and William are the same character – Sad Will (William) and Bad Will (the artist). That interpretation certainly puts a new slant on the scene where Alice and Will apparently have sex with William in the room. What do other people think? Is this a plausible way of looking at it?

Hagelrat: Hmm, like Fight Club, I did wonder briefly at one point in the book, it was nice and ambiguous.

Hedgehog: That would explain how the reader gets muddled trying to envisage two entities where there is only one.

Hagelrat: Do you like your characters? Obviously we have our impressions and reactions to them, but how do you feel about Helen/Claire, the two Wills and Alice?

Chris Killen: I think the only character i didn’t really ‘like’ in the book – i guess meaning the only one I sort of pushed into satire – was Will (the artist).

The plan with the two Wills was to sort of polarise my personality – the insular neurotic elements vs. the outgoing, gregarious ones – and then amplify them both. To this end, it seemed like I ‘knew’ Will (the narrator) a lot more; he felt more real and something worth exploring, whereas other Will (the artist) just seemed like a bit of a twat.

But yeah, I like nearly all the characters, I think, even if they are quite flawed and damaged. And I felt bad, sometimes, putting Will (narrator) and Helen in certain horrible, awkward situations.

Hedgehog: Did you name one Will and the other William on purpose to almost disorientate the reader?

CK: I sort of answered that question in the answer to ‘do you like your characters’. It wasn’t to disorientate, though. I realised it was going to be confusing for the reader, but that also made it a (fun-ish) challenge to write – to keep it at least semi coherent.

My justification for doing it – see that other answer for the explanation why i did it – was that in real life you often meet friends/have people in your ‘social circle’ with the same name. two Tims or Johns or Katys or whatever — but this is never done in fiction or films or anywhere (at least not that I’d seen …).

Here’s a question actually — can anyone think of another novel or film or anything that has two main-ish characters with the same name?

Aimee: What prompted the premise of The Bird Room? And was Helen always part of your original idea?

CK: The ideas for The Bird Room all kind of came about at the same time — the various threads: the obsession with finding the clip on the internet, a relationship where a person asks another person to completely ignore them, the way a couple would meet and how it could go wrong if neither of them told the truth, etc, etc.

It was like getting ideas for a bunch of short stories but they all started to weave together. And once I had a few ideas, more came along. It was a fun process.

So there wasn’t one particular thing that sparked it, except maybe giving up smoking for a couple of months and suddenly having a lot more energy and ideas.

In the original drafts, Helen was only a small ‘subplot’ — maybe 3,000 words in total. Her story was something Canongate asked me to consider in the redraft, and I agreed — I liked the character and there was a lot more to explore. so the Helen parts were maybe the last things written in the book. I think i expanded that section by about 7,000 words.

Hagelrat: Chris, a general question, how have you found the whole experience of getting your book published, what has been especially satisfying or frustrating about it?

CK: The experience of getting a book published has been amazing and not particulary frustrating really. There were small moments – it was a long wait between acceptance and publication.

There was also about a year before the deal with Canongate, where I was sending out chapters to agents, etc., and getting back a lot of cold, stock letters.

But yeah, for the most part, it’s been amazing. the most I was hoping for when I was writing The Bird Room was maybe a very small press publication or something – i didn’t really see it fitting in with a lot of the books that were being sold at Waterstone’s (I worked at the Deansgate branch for a year and a bit, and saw the kind of stuff that people bought).

So it’s very strange to see it on the 3-for-2 tables.

It all feels like a wonderful practical joke.

I’m very pleased.

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