Winged Creatures

by Roy Freirich

Book Overview

Roy Freirich's novel 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.

The basis for the 2008 film starring Kate Beckinsale and Dakota Fanning.

Shots ring out in a local fast food restaurant. Teenager Anne Hagen and her best friend...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312378955
• ISBN13: 9780312378950
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

real literature

How great is it to read real literature again? Such a breath of fresh air. Freirich has written a rich, completely absorbing, yet totally accessible novel. He digs into the characters and we stay with them on their transcendant journey from hapless bystander to complex, fully realized, emotionally wounded collateral vicitms of random violence. This moment is surely the most indelible moment of their lives and we feel that as they fight and struggle to figure it out themselves. The multiple viewpoints and storylines serve the incident nicely as it forces us to think how different people might process the exact same event in a completely different manner. It's provoking, and thoughtful. And the themes certainly stay with you long after you've finished. It'll be interesting to see what Freirich comes up with next.

Absolutely Fantastic

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.

Randon shooting: after the cameras go home...

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.

blown away

A scary ride with characters who get strange just slowly enough that you're with them and then finally you're shocked at how far off the rails they've gone.. It says it's a movie, but there's so much going on in these people's heads that can't be in a film, I wonder how they're going to do it. There's an idea here of how violence causes more violence, even accidentally, but somehow also inevitably. It makes you think about the next action movie where three dozen guys get blown away in the first five minutes: all the stories these movies leave behind of regular people, trying to cope with death and murder and maybe not so well, and in other ways than just drinking and flashbacks and being jumpy. This is really being in the skins of those people.

Loved the Book...Can't Wait For The Movie

I stayed up half the night to finish this. You don't know what these characters are up to next and finally you don't even know if they're going to live through it. What does happen to them all is surprising but makes total sense. I loved this!!!!