The book
Alice is at work. Alice thinks I'm at work. I'm not at work.
I'm trying to guess the password to her email account . . .
When Will meets Alice, he can't believe his luck. She's smart, sexy and, much to Will's surprise, in love with him. Alice brings meaning to his urban existence. But true love never came easy and soon devotion leads Will to something darker. The Bird Room is a candid, funny and joyous portrait of love and desire in the modern age.
The Reviews
Killen has fun playing with identities in a manner that brings to mind David Lynchâs film Mulholland Drive.
Sunday HeraldThose 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.
Independent
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.
Irish TimesChris Killen's first novel is either disturbingly brilliant or brilliantly disturbing. Whichever, I loved it.
STEVEN HALLThe Bird Room is an astonishingly good first novel. I was gripped from the first page.
M.J.HYLANDAn extremely engaging combo of sex, melancholy and killer one-liners - The Bird Room is a beautiful Chinese puzzle of a novel.
TOBY LITTThe Bird Room is amazing. Beautiful, laconic and chockablock with uneasy sex - like having a threesome with your girlfriend and Richard Brautigan.
RICHARD MILWARDA strangely merry look at the agony of true love.
Dazed and ConfusedKillen 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.
EWAN MORRISONAs 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.
MATT HAIG