A young man in Japan in the 1960s. already shamed by his drinking and self-loathing, must come to terms with his handicapped newborn son.

It is a coming-of-age story, although the protagonist is in his late 20s when the book begins. Nicknamed Bird, he is an instructor in a cram-school and one of the least appealing protagonists I can recall in a modern novel, spending most of the narrative attempting to fly from the crises and failures of his life through a seamy mis-en-scene.

He undergoes a fairly explicit rebirthing journey characteristic of the genre, but it didn't feel cliched to me. The inventive writing evokes Tokyo's unglamorous side, where shame, despair, and anomie are the dominant feelings, to be overcome only with great courage. And the translation by John Nathan is fluid and almost totally without anachronisms.

At the end, I came to like Bird, and recognize his courage and evolution. ( )

A twisted narrative of (emotional and physical) decay, cowardice, and sex, among other things. Wrenching and shocking, but somehow satisfying. The language is beautiful without being ornate. As a novel it simultaneously repulses and attracts. ( )

vBlurb: De zevenentwintigjarige Vogel zocht, als er zich in zijn bestaan moeilijkheden voordeden, steevast zijn toevlucht tot een zee van whisky. Maar als zijn eerste zoon geboren wordt met een zeer ernstige hersenafwijking en een onmetelijk verdriet zich van hem meester maakt, wordt hij gedwongen een ingrijpende beslissing te nemen die zijn leven voorgoed verandert. Kenzaburo Oë (Japan, 1935) werd bekroond met de Nobelprijs voor de Literatuur in 1994. 'Oë heeft een fantasiewereld gecreëerd waarin het leven en de mythe tot een ontzagwekkend beeld van het lot van de mens in de huidige tijd worden gecondenseerd.' - Academie voor de Nobelprijs.
Samenv.: Weergave van de gemoedstoestand van een onevenwichtige jongeman, die geconfronteerd wordt met de geboorte van zijn mismaakte kind. Autobiografisch getint relaas.
Samenv.: Bird, the novel's protagonist, is a young man who who dreams of exploring Africa and attempts to escape the responsibility of having fathered a brain-damaged child. Bird plots with an old girlfriend to murder the child. In the course of the story he grows up but before it he has a marathon sex session and vomits in front of his students.

This is the first time that I read a book and the main character repulsed me so much that I found myself directing some of that repulsion towards the writer… and I really don't like that to happen (only after reading a little about Oe was I able to overcome this transference). The main character’s name is ‘Bird’ and his physical description made me think of a pale vulture (picture Mr Burns from The Simpsons). Bird is likened to a toad, retching cat, puny demon, scuttling crab, sewer rat, softshell crab, sea urchin, and garden slug. How can he be likeable?

His story is about how circumstances can trap or cage you in like, well, a bird. His wife just gave birth to a defective baby and his dreams of going to Africa are threatened. It’s this threat to his freedom that makes him decide whether to keep the baby or kill it and obsess over the consequences of that decision.

Oe can write creepy, disturbing scenes. Even the humor is creepy like with the following conversation Bird had with the father of a liverless baby: "I said babies with no rectum have been fitted out with artificial rectums so you ought to be able to figure out an artificial liver. Besides, I said, you take a liver, it's got a lot more class than an ordinary asshole!" ( )

Dark until the final pages. ( )