Archive for the ‘Chuck Wendig’ Category
Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig
Posted on: July 10, 2012
Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig
published in 2012
Where I got it: the library
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Everyone is going crazy for Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds. Action packed and with an engrossing premise, shattered characters, and Richard Kadrey-esque prose, it’s no wonder this little book is getting a lot of attention.
Although a growing number of people are fascinated by her, Miriam Black wishes she could just disappear. As an adolescent, she gained the power to tell people the circumstances of their death. Perhaps the person lives until they are 95 and dies peacefully in their sleep. Perhaps it’s a housefire, or a drug overdose, or suicide. Living alone and on the run, she tries to avoid touching people. But of course it doesn’t work. Once upon a time she tried to save the life of a child whose death she’d foreseen. That didn’t work either.
Miriam comes off fairly crass, but it’s a facade. She’s not a mean person, she’s just really sick of shaking hands and seeing terrible visions in hospitals and bathroom floors. Her diary, nearly out of pages, is the only therapy she has, the only way she can get these feelings and fears and self hatred out of her system.
Miriam isn’t the nicest person in the world, so it’s doubly unfortunate that she’s mostly surrounded by assholes. Frat boys looking to get laid, truckers who might rape her, violent drug addicts, the scum below the bottom crust of society. Miriam doesn’t expect to meet anyone nice. And then she meets Louis, and everything changes. Louis is a completely normal, kind man. And in the moment before his death, he calls Miriam’s name.
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