Winged Creatures: A Novel [Paperback]

Roy Freirich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2008

Shots ring out in a local fast food restaurant.  Teenager Anne Hagen and her best friend Jimmy hide under a table, watching a suicidal gunman randomly murder her father and others. Winged Creatures tells the stories of the survivors. . .

Struggling to understand her father's death, Anne develops a religious hysteria. Jimmy becomes mute, protecting a secret that he and Anne share until it nearly destroys him and his already fractured family.  Grazed by a bullet, driving instructor Charlie becomes obsessed with pressing his luck at a casino. By dangerous degrees, restaurant cashier Carla loses her ability to care for herself and her infant son.  Dr. Laraby, an ER physician who failed to revive the shooting victims, turns to his wife as someone to “save,” while psychologist Ron Abler tries to counsel the witnesses, but meets suspicion and resistance.

Winged Creatures intimately depicts the inner lives of five people driven by secret torments and dangerous compulsions, in flight from their own memories and dreams, as they struggle to regain their trust in the ordinary world.

 ROY FREIRICH is a screenwriter and songwriter living in Malibu, California. Winged Creatures is his first novel.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The survivors of a gun massacre struggle with the aftermath in Freirich's stark, impressive debut. After a gunman walks into Carby's, a fast food chain restaurant along a Michigan highway, and kills two people before turning the gun on himself, a cross-section of society, including two teenagers, a driving instructor and a single mother emerge as survivors; their stories and viewpoints weave together for a tightly knit ensemble drama. Teenage Anne begins proselytizing religion after witnessing her father's death at Carby's, while her best friend, Jimmy—also a witness to the shooting—becomes mute after Anne makes him swear to not talk about her father. Driving instructor Charlie, wounded but alive, heads off to Vegas to test the luck that saved his life. Carla, a Carby's waitress and mother of an infant son, loses her grip on motherhood as she fixates on Bruce Laraby, an ER doctor who missed the carnage by moments. Bruce, meanwhile, has deep doubts about his abilities to heal, revealed through increasingly macabre actions involving his wife. Psychologist Ron Abler, charged with helping victims of the violence, finds no one wants his help. While emotionally charged, the narrative isn't weighed down with sentiment as the characters search for, but don't necessarily find, closure. (Jan.)
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Review

“This well-crafted debut packs a wallop.”--Booklist

“The survivors of a gun massacre struggle with the aftermath in Freirich's stark, impressive debut. While emotionally charged, the narrative isn't weighed down with sentiment as the characters search for, but don't necessarily find, closure.”--Publisher’s Weekly

“A riveting debut novel about the aftermath of a mass shooting in a fast food restaurant.  The author achieves the amazing feat of following an utterly disparate cast of dramatis personae through the vicissitudes of their lives as they are irrevocably scarred and changed forever.  A sure-fire page-turner and, without question, has great movie written all over it, vividly reminiscent of Atom Egoyan's great The Sweet Hereafter." --Rex Pickett, author of Sideways

“When a life is shattered, what is left is to hold onto? Roy Freirich’s group portrait of the aftermath of a random shooting delves into areas of the psyche rarely explored with such precision and delicacy. A relentlessly suspenseful and mesmerizing novel from a brilliantly original writer. Winged Creatures is an astounding debut.”--David Angsten, author of Dark Gold

“A searing emotional drama of an American random shooting and the profoundly moving struggles of the survivors to regain their wholeness.”
 --R.H. Weber, author of Homeland

“Songwriter and screenwriter Freirich’s debut novel offers an intriguing look at unique yet interrelated patterns of trauma and recovery.” --Kirkus

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 295 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (January 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312378955
• ISBN-13: 978-0312378950
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #389,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in New York and educated at Beloit College in Wisconsin, Roy has been Associate Editor for the nationally renowned Beloit Poetry Journal, and for the national desk of The New York Times.

He later received a Master's Degree in English Literature from the University of Michigan, where he wrote and directed "Persona Non Grata," an Ann Arbor International Film Festival prize winner.

Roy later became been a writer of songs recorded by such multi-platinum artists as Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Smoky Robinson, Gloria Estefan, Alan Jackson and many others, while under exclusive contracts to Warner Brothers and EMI Music. He's had songs in such films and soundtracks as "Top Gun," "Donnie Brascoe," and others. He's received numerous BMI Most Performed Song Awards, Million Performance Awards, and gold and platinum certifications.

More recently, as a screenwriter, Roy has written "City of Silence" for DreamWorks, and "Frontin'," with his wife Debrah, for Fox Searchlight.

Currently, Roy's screenplay adaptation of his own novel "Winged Creatures," has become a dramatic ensemble feature film, starring Academy Award winners Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson, nominee Jackie Earle Haley, Kate Beckinsale, Guy Pearce, Dakota Fanning, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Embeth Davditz and Troy Garity.

"Winged Creatures" explodes the myth of "closure" with an after-the-cameras-go-home look at the real and lasting trauma of gun violence-- ordinary people driven by secret torments and dangerous compulsions, in flight from their own memories and dreams.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fell A Bit Flat For Me, June 10, 2009

By 

Yolanda S. Bean (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Winged Creatures: A Novel (Paperback)

Well, I really didn't love this book - I think my expectations were too high. To have such high reviews here, not to mention how quickly it has been turned into a movie, created a hype that I just didn't think the book lived up to. It wasn't by any means a bad book - it was extremely well-written. It just wasn't all that engaging. The suspense built over the course of the novel fell a bit flat by the end. And while the premise, of following survivors of a random act of violence, was original, the book lacked sympathetic characters.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Randon shooting: after the cameras go home..., January 17, 2008

By 

Shiloh Tarrington - See all my reviews

This review is from: Winged Creatures: A Novel (Paperback)

If you've ever wondered what happens to the survivors of some random shooting after the news cameras go home, you absolutely want to read Winged Creatures. It's about "everyday" people going to some "everyday" place - here, a local fast-food restaurant - and out of nowhere, shots are fired and people lay dead. It's not revenge, not a lover's quarrel, not a robbery - it's just a senseless, random shooting spree, like we've all seen on the news too many times. It touches a nerve.

Freirich puts us right in the second-to-second horrifying beats of the shooting - how raw, surreal, and excruciating it must be. From the shock of the initial shot, to a dead person's cell going off, to the goosh of the soda fountain as the gunman pours himself a coke while deciding who's next.

Teenagers Anne & Jimmy hide under a table (while Anne's dad is shot) - later Anne blackmails Jimmy into muteness about what really happened; waitress and single mom Carla bravely but unsuccessfully tries to call out on her cell, and later uses her baby's health to make a "connection" to the world that she craves; driving instructor Charlie rushes the gunman and survives a head graze, and later takes his "luck" to a casino; ER doctor Laraby desperately tries but fails to save the shooting victims, and later is driven to "heal" his increasingly "sick" wife.

It's in the aftermath of the shooting that we see the character's loneliness, secret hopes, and jealousies: unpopular teen Anne suddenly finds herself being invited to sit with the cool girls at lunch; paintball aficionado Jimmy can't help but compare his actions to his disabled Iraqi war-vet brother; Carla's envious of Anne being interviewed by local press. Heartbreaking delusions take over their lives: Laraby believes he should save every patient; Charlie believes the dice are with him, Annie believes God has chosen her, Carla believes the ER doctor will love her.

Sadly, these random shootings have become something that's part of American culture. And to that end, Freirich's novel is alive with current pop references, idioms, thinking and attitudes, which makes it so real... so right here in our own back yard.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Fantastic, March 3, 2008

By 

D. Willis (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Winged Creatures: A Novel (Paperback)

Really what else is there to say that hasn't already been said in every review on this page. The characters are complete and vivid, the story will take you on an emotional journey very few books get right, and this one really gets it. So stop reading reviews and buy this book, it won't disappoint. FIVE STARS ALL THE WAY.