The Bird Is a Raven [Hardcover]

Benjamin Lebert (Author), Peter Constantine (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 24, 2006

From the gifted young author of Crazy (“A marvel of voice, humor and razor-sharp insight” –The San Diego Union-Tribune), an edgy, psychologically riveting novel about sex, love, and secrets.

Henry and Paul — young men still new to adulthood — are strangers when they find themselves sharing a sleeping compartment on a night train from Munich to Berlin. When they begin to talk, their stories appear to be variations on the same theme: kids adrift in the big city, relationships gone awry, young hearts broken. Both are disillusioned by their awkward journey from the innocence of childhood to the responsibilities expected of grown-up life. Henry is running away from a triangle of friendship that was becoming a dangerous ménage à trois. Paul is running away as well, but as the night unwinds and the train speeds north across the German landscape, his story turns ominous: desperate and lost, he has fallen in love with a prostitute who spurned him. What he reveals finally to his unsuspecting traveling companion goes far beyond the boundaries of postadolescent angst and into the darkest sphere of human behavior.

Fast-moving, immediate, shocking — The Bird Is a Raven is the work of a writer at the beginning of what promises to be a stellar career.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lebert became a literary sensation in Germany when his Crazy was published in 2000, when he was 18. This follow-up is, in a word, sophomoric. Two young men meet on a train from Munich to Berlin when they're given adjacent sleeping compartments. Henry asks Paul if he can tell him an involved tale; Paul, in his 20s and more experienced with Berlin and much else, relents out of a kind of restless need for distraction. As Henry drones on about a pathetic love triangle involving an anorexic named Christine, an obese rich kid named Jens and his own problems with his bowels, Paul's attention wanders, and we get bits of his own banal backstory. There's nothing remarkable about Henry's telling—in fact, it's aggressively boring—and Paul's own ruminations are run-of-the-mill dour. The tension fails to rise as Henry narrates the denouement of his problems with Christine and Jens, and a completely unmotivated surprise ending doesn't do anything to redeem the proceedings. This book misses even the club kid readers it's aiming for. (Jan. 25)
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From Booklist

Lebert's debut novel, Crazy (2000), was published when he was only 16, and the follow-up was published in Germany three years after that. Now Lebert's second novel has made its way across the ocean, and those who enjoyed his first will find his second an even moodier, more mature exploration of the plight of young people in contemporary Germany. Twenty-year-old Paul is on his way to Berlin when he meets Henry, the young man who will be sharing his sleeper car with him. Henry isn't interested in sleeping; he wants to tell Paul the story of the tragic love triangle he was drawn into, involving Christine, the beautiful, anorexic young woman he adores, and Jens, the overweight man whom Christine meets at an eating disorder clinic. Henry and Jens, both in love with Christine, grow close until something happens to offset the delicate balance of the group. Paul has a story, too, but readers will have to wait a while to uncover his secret in this involving, tense novel. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition. states edition (January 24, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400042844
• ISBN-13: 978-1400042845
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,881,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)