Well-written, but truly horrible and I hated it. I would give it five stars if I were to be objective and one star for my personal enjoyment, so in the end - three stars. I'm not going to read it ever again. ( )

Just like his lying co-religionist, Elie Weisel "Night", Jerry Kosinski turned out to be a fraud intent on adding his 10 cents to the holocaust myth - 6,000,000 is a wholly unsupported figure - but - real figures for WW2 dead are: 24,000,000++ Russians, 8,800,000 Germans, 20,000,000++- Chinese - Japan 3,100,000, and the USA gave up 420,000 of its boys - in total the war led to 45,000,000 dead civilians, 15,000,000 dead soldiers, and 25,000,000 battle wounded - that totals an astonishing 85,000,000 dead and wounded but all we ever hear about (endlessly) are the so-called 6,000,000. ( )

Not for the faint of heart. ( )

Recommended

I really can’t decide if I thought this was good or not, although it’s certainly not hard to see why it made an impact when it was published in 1965.
On the plus side it’s vivid, compelling and readable. Negatives are that it’s one of those books that feels like it thinks it’s really important. I’m not sure it is, especially given the fact that having originally claimed it was autobiographical, author Jerzy Kosinski later admitted he largely made it up.
For Kozinski’s sake I’m glad, because the book is really fucking horrible. It tells the story of a young boy making his way across war torn Europe in the 1940s and it doesn’t pull a single punch. That mix of self-importance, rambling episodic plot and extreme violence makes it feel a bit like Paulo Coehlo’s ‘The Alchemist’ with added eye gouging. ( )

For over 50 years people have been arguing over whether this book is autobiographical or fiction, original or plagiarized, written by Kosinski or by ghost riders.

I. Do. Not. Care. I couldn't put it down.

Trigger alerts abound so look out. It's non-stop cruelty and brutality. Men, women, children and animals. Beating, torture, rape, murder, incest, bestiality...you name it, it's in here.

If you like imagery, no matter if the picture is beautiful or hideous, and can handle things like GOT, TWD, Stephan King, this book is for you.

Here is an example involving gouged out eyes. Those of you with weak stomachs should look away now.

"And with a rapid movement such as women use to gouge out the rotten spots while peeling potatoes, he plunged the spoon into one of the boy's eyes and twisted it.

"The eye sprang out of his face like a yolk from a broken egg and rolled down the miller's hand onto the floor. The plowboy howled and shrieked, but the miller's hold kept him pinned against the wall. Then the blood-covered spoon plunged into the other eye, which sprang out even faster. For a moment the eye rested on the boy's cheek as if uncertain what to do next; then it finally tumbled down his shirt onto the floor.

"It all had happened in a moment. I could not believe what I had seen. Something like a glimmer of hope crossed my mind that the gouged eyes could be put back where they belonged...

"...The eyeballs lay on the floor. I walked around them, catching their steady stare. The cats timidly moved out into the middle of the room and began to play with the eyes as if they were balls of thread. Their own pupils narrowed to slits from the light of the oil lamp. The cats rolled the eyes around, sniffed them, licked them, and passed them to one another gently with their padded paws. Now it seemed that the eyes were staring at me from every corner of the room, as though they had acquired new life and motion of their own.

"I watched them with fascination. If the miller had not been there I myself would have taken them. Surely they could still see. I would keep them in my pocket and take them out when needed, placing them over my own. Then I would see twice as much, maybe even more. Perhaps I could attach them to the back of my head and they would tell me, thought I was not quite certain how, what went on behind me. Better still, I could leave the eyes somewhere and they would tell me later what happened during my absence."

I mean, come on! That's great stuff from the mind of our narrator, a 6-yo little boy in a rural village in Poland in 1939. ( )

Jerzy Kosinski's book, "The Painted Bird", is not an easy read. I believe it's based on hardships suffered by the author as a young boy in eastern Europe as World War II was about to begin. With war coming, and his parents being either Jewish or Gypsy's, they sent the youngster to live with a foster family, thinking the boy would be safer. However, the foster mother died in a house fire, accidently started by the boy, and for the next four or five years, he wandered from village to village, living for times with other families, seemingly always suffering a new form of abuse.

War time in eastern Europe was hard enough on the civilian populations, but especially so for Jews or gypsies. The villagers didn't want to be caught hiding or protecting someone like that, and those that took in the youngster weren't doing it to help the boy, but to use him as a form of cheap labor until German troops got near.

The hardship the boy was subjected to makes for hard reading. I almost put the book aside several times, unwilling to read more. But eventually I finished it, just wanted to see the some good finally came to him. I can't really say that was true. The book is certainly a good reminder of the horrors of war, to local populations as well as to combatants, and especially to a youngster, alone and unwanted, too young to fend for himself. ( )

The Painted Bird (Kosinski, Jerzy) by Jerzy Kosinski (1995)

This was brutal. It is about a child surviving WWII after being sent to the country to be "safe." But his caretaker died and he was left to fend for himself. There is abuse and exploitation in all its varieties. I don't think any trigger is missed. ( )

Even though the writing is wonderful, especially the author's descriptions of nature as he passed along from place to place, my hatred grew for this book with each passing chapter. The malevolence was palpable. I finally discarded the book at the halfway mark. As another reviewer said, "It is an assault. Followed by an assault. Leading to an assault." and I couldn't stand the blows any longer. ( )

''We are here in the company of death.''

Jewish concentration camp inmate

A young boy finds himself lost, wandering in the countryside of an unnamed Eastern European country during the Second World War. The boy, mute and nameless, faces a world torn apart, a society that doesn't need any kind of war to change. It is a world stripped off all traces of kindness, compassion and humanity, a world that preys upon a child in its most vulnerable moment.

''As these brightly coloured creatures sought the safety of their fellows, the other birds, seeing them as threatening aliens, attacked and tore at the outcasts until they killed them''

According to Kosinski, this novel is a dark fable that follows the path of Aristophanes' The Birds. But ''dark'' doesn't even begin to describe it. I am sure most of you know have heard that The Painted Bird is cruelty personified. But it is a cruelty that needs to be read. Because it exposes every single monstrosity humans are capable of and we don't need war noises playing in the background to acknowledge this. We need to experience a boy's ordeals through birds and snakes and insects. A child who only vaguely recalls the tender moments of life with parents and whose personality is about to change by witnessing the most horrifying acts you can possibly think of.

We need to witness Evil circling above the heads of villagers who, in this world, are the lowest form of life as seen by the young boy. Even the ravens and the vultures are disgusted by the human corpses. We have to experience the enchantment of the huldra, the cruelty against the Different, the mob that cries ''witchcraft'' while praying to a vicious Satan that no Bible could ever mention.

''A rotting crucifix, once painted blue, stood at the crossroads. A holy picture hung at the top, from which a pair of barely visible but seemingly tear-stained eyes gazed into the empty fields and red glow of the rising sun. A gray bird sat on an arm of the cross. On catching sight of me, it spread its wings and vanished.''

''I saw witches hanging from the trees. They stared at me, trying to lead me astray and confuse me. I distinctly heard the shudders of wandering souls which had escaped from the bodies of penitent sinners.''

The boy's life is filled with graves in silent cemeteries and wandering skulls. The wind rages, the dead moan their sorrows, the dogs howl in desperation and madness. The prayers are hypocritical, the shadows are long and Death haunts the child's every step. The wrath of an animalistic mob knows no limits. There is no pity for the innocents who are jammed in the wagons, heading to the gas chambers according to the desires of the German viciousness of Hitler and his squad of monsters. They have no pity for those who try to escape their doom. There is no pity for a lonely child. He is a Jew. An Other. Cursed and vilified. Without a land, or a home, or a family. Without the right to exist. It doesn't matter who fights against the Nazis and the Soviets. The villagers need no pretext to unleash Hell.

Yes, this novel contains every possible trigger warning you can think of. To the absolute extreme. And so does life itself. Do I think this portrayal is accurate? Do I believe that human nature is actually capable of the absolute Evil as portrayed in this novel? Of course, I do. The answer lies in the course of History.

''The urge to survive in inherently unfettered. Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner?''
Jerzy Kosinski

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ ( )

Fantastic master-work. This is what literature should be.

Not for ... not for those who shouldn't be reading books like this. ( )

An interesting read. Perhaps not as shocking today as it was when first published but it still paints some awful imagery. I appreciated Kosinski's use of metaphor. It's a breezy read you can feel cool about having read. There, I said it. ( )

An interesting read. Perhaps not as shocking today as it was when first published but it still paints some awful imagery. I appreciated Kosinski's use of metaphor. It's a breezy read you can feel cool about having read. There, I said it. ( )

Shouldn't review this book, because I could not read it, though it was included in a syllabus of a course that I taught, had taken over after the syllabus designer stepped down (ill, I think, but forty-five years ago, so...) At the time I think the author was teaching at Yale, and I recall being astonished that his unreadable novel was actually valued, and sold very well. I conclude that many who bought it did not read it.* It is an assault. Followed by an assault. Leading to an assault. Maybe it appeals to masochists, serious ones?
I must admit Kosinski wrote one fine line, his Suicide note,"I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity."("Newsweek, May 13, 1991/Wikipedia)
One critic, Pognowski, says Kozinski's novel is an attempt to profiteer from the Holocaust. Other critics have said Kozinski wrote in Polish, and had it translated; moreover, many of the terrible brutalities it recounts, supposedly on known Jewish children in a known Polish family, never happened. JK got around this by insisting it is fiction, but people credited the book as autobiographical.
Also, may I wonder where suicides have become so prominent in modern American literature, from Sylvia Plath to Berryman to the Jerzy boy. Not that I disapprove suicide for the terminally ill--which may in fact have been the case here; indeed, I agree with the Stoics that the mortally ill may take "exitus rationis," reasonable departure. Why should we put animals out of their misery, but not humans--okay, okay, Christianity values suffering. But not me.
Especially the reader's suffering, I do not value. As here.

*I suspect many other books are bought, but not read through: Eco's Name of the Rose, even Walden, which I consider a dipper's book, filled with great essays, but for that reason, a wall after a fence after a hurdle. ( )

The officer surveyed me sharply. I felt like a squashed caterpillar oozing in the dust, a creature that could not harm anyone yet aroused loathing and disgust. In the presence of such a resplendent being, armed in all the symbols of might and majesty, I was genuinely ashamed of my appearance. I had nothing against his killing me.

Much as Nietzsche detonated a shaped charge and blew away all hope of a totalizing meta-narrative, it was books like The Painted Bird which left me ashamed, almost permanently. I don't harbor much hope of a recovery. Kosiński left us a catalog of horror. Hope and Justice appear cheaply broacaded within. I still think about the phone ringing at the end of the novel. ( )

This novel was okay, but I don't really understand why it was included in Time's Top 100 Novels list. I don't believe that it merits that position. The prose is clunky, and I've read that the actual thing is entirely fictionalized rather than based on any truth-- besides the general subject matter of course. The characters felt forced and the dialogue was disjointed and rang untrue. Also, the plot was something dilly-dally and meandering from one story point to the next.

Overall, a disappointing read. ( )

La storia che troviamo narrata da Kosinski non è altro che la realtà del male vissuta da centinaia di bambini e persone durante la seconda guerra mondiale. Violenza e brutalità estreme ma pur sempre purtroppo accadute e vissute in quel periodo. La malvagità raccontata in questa storia mai l' ho incontrata in nessun altro libro letto sino ad ora, dove in un epoca storica il destino della tua vita era dettato dall' appartenenza e fisionomia...
la crudeltà estrema delle antiche credenze popolari nel mondo rurale qui descritta, non è qualche cosa di inventato, ma serpeggiava e conviveva insieme al fede cristiana.
Ciò che scandalizza qui è l' impossibilità e la totale assenza di un bene e tenetezza sana, negato a tutti i cuori della storia....
e io qui però mi blocco e rifiuto l'idea che vuol dare l'autore, in ogni dove del mondo c' è sempre un uomo puro di cuore, di un 'anima che ti ama a prescindere....
mi rifiuto di credere che il cuore dell' uomo nasca sempre timorato e inginocchiato al mondo del male e dell'odio. ( )

The cover of the Mass Market Paperback edition from the 1970s of The Painted Bird features a small section of Hieronymus Bosch hell-landscape -- dressed in sickly green and wearing a white hood, a creature with a man's body and head of a long-beaked bird walks on crutches carrying a large wicker basket on its back, and in the basket a small black devil with spiky fingers touches the shoulder of a wary young boy as he whispers into the boy's ear. This is an apt cover for Jerzy Kosinski's fictionalized autobiographical novel set in Poland during the reign of Nazi terror in World War 11.

I first read this harrowing tale thirty-five years ago. I have read many dark, disturbing novels filled with brutality of every stripe, including such works as Malamud's The Fixer, Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead, and Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, but, in my view, perhaps because the narrator is a ten year old boy, no novel has its main character live through a more painful hell than in The Painted Bird.

Several months after reading this novel, the author himself made a visit to a large bookstore in Philadelphia for a book-signing, so I had an opportunity to actually meet him - a small man with a thin, high pitched voice and sharp, chiseled fine features, a man who struck me as being both sensitive and friendly. He appreciated my words of thanks and told me, when asked, that he was heading to New Orleans and expected to have some exciting times.

Anyway, that was then. Several days ago I saw my local library had a copy of The Painted Bird audio book and immediately checked it out. I started also rereading the printed book as I listened to the audio. The reader, Fred Berman, did his homework - his accent and inflection and manner of speaking is spot-on Jerzy Kosinski.

If you are unfamiliar, this story is of an orphan boy with black eyes and sharp nose, labeled gypsy-Jew, forced to wander from village to village, subjected physically to beatings, rape, tortures, as well as murder attempts, while subjected psychologically to being treated as a messenger of the devil and an evil spirit who casts spells with a glance from his black eyes.

The boy is so traumatized from unrelenting abuse, he completely losses his capacity to speak for many months. The abuse reaches such a pitch, at one point he reflects on the nature of evil: "I tried to visualize the manner in which the evil spirits operated. The minds and souls of people were as open to these forces as a plowed field, and it was on this field that the Evil Ones incessantly scattered their malignant seed. If their seed sprouted to life, if they felt welcomed, they offered all the help which might be needed, on the condition that it would be used for selfish purposes and only to the detriment of others. From the moment of signing a pact with the Devil, the more harm, misery, injury, and bitterness a man could inflict on those around him, the more help he could expect." Quite the musings from a ten year old! Just goes to show how extreme was his direct experience of the forces of evil.

If you are up for an unforgettable experience of terror expressed in the clear, vivid literary language of a fine writer, then you are ready for The Painted Bird.


“There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.”
― Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird ( )

This was brutal. It is about a child surviving WWII after being sent to the country to be "safe." But his caretaker died and he was left to fend for himself. There is abuse and exploitation in all its varieties. I don't think any trigger is missed. ( )

The cover of the Mass Market Paperback edition from the 1970s of The Painted Bird features a small section of Heironomous Bosch hell-landscape -- dressed in sickly green and wearing a white hood, a creature with a man's body and head of a long-beaked bird walks on crutches carrying a large wicker basket on its back, and in the basket a small black devil with spiky fingers touches the shoulder of a wary young boy as he whispers into the boy's ear. This is an apt cover for Jerzy Kosinski's fictionalized autobiographical novel set in Poland during the reign of Nazi terror in World War 11.

I first read this harrowing tale 35 years ago. I have read many dark, disturbing novels filled with brutality of every stripe, including such works as Malamud's The Fixer, Dostoyevsky's House of the Dead, and Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, but, in my view, perhaps because the narrator is a 10 year old boy, no novel has its main character live through a more painful hell than in The Painted Bird.

Several months after reading this novel, the author himself made a visit to a large bookstore in Philadelphia for a book-signing, so I had an opportunity to actually meet him -- a small man with a thin, high pitched voice and sharp, chiseled fine features, a man who struck me as being both sensitive and friendly. He appreciated my words of thanks and told me, when asked, that he was heading to New Orleans and expected to have some exciting times.

Anyway, that was then. Several days ago I saw my local library had a copy of The Painted Bird audiobook and immediately checked it out. I started also rereading the printed book as I listened to the CDs. The reader, Fred Berman, did his homework -- his accent and inflection and manner of speaking is spot-on Jerzy Kosinski.

If you are unfamiliar, this story is of an orphan boy with black eyes and sharp nose, labeled gypsy-Jew, forced to wander from village to village, subjected physically to beatings, rape, tortures, as well as murder attempts, while subjected psychologically to being treated as a messenger of the devil and an evil spirit who casts spells with a glance from his black eyes.

The boy is so traumatized from unrelenting abuse, he completely losses his capacity to speak for many months. The abuse reaches such a pitch, at one point he reflects on the nature of evil: "I tried to visualize the manner in which the evil spirits operated. The minds and souls of people were as open to these forces as a plowed field, and it was on this field that the Evil Ones incessantly scattered their malignant seed. If their seed sprouted to life, if they felt welcomed, they offered all the help which might be needed, on the condition that it would be used for selfish purposes and only to the detriment of others. From the moment of signing a pact with the Devil, the more harm, misery, injury, and bitterness a man could inflict on those around him, the more help he could expect." Quite the musings from a 10 year old! Just goes to show how extreme was his direct experience of the forces of evil.

If you are up for an unforgettable experience of terror expressed in the clear, vivid literary language of a fine writer, then you are ready for The Painted Bird. ( )

It feels weird to like this book. It's the type of book I generally enjoy, but taken a bit further.... Too far, even.

My favorite books are dark, strange, and unpredictable. This book was all of that, but instead of the happy ending to create some cathartic conclusion to the madness, it just sort of... Ended. You realize that this lad is completely, irrevocably, altered from the person he was before the war. There's no going back. Considering the rape, mutilation, murder, torcher, abuse, and unhappiness the central character experiences throughout the story, the end doesn't really balance much of that out.

It's kind of hard to describe this book, but for the most part, each chapter finds the character in a new hell. He's an orphaned boy whose parents tried to shield him from the horrors of the war by handing him off to someone at the beginning of it. He is separated from the guardian,and goes to guardian to guardian for almost every new chapter. But I really do think this is a book many people should read, despite the horrors. It's important to read about what could have happened. I'm not sure if every single one of the things he experiences is a viable thing during that period, but considering the madness and cruelty of man, I wouldn't be surprised if many of these events did occur in some shape or form to someone during the war.

It's a pretty ambitious work, full of so much darkness and sadness. If you're charmed by the title of the story, you should be warned that even that basis is not happy. It refers to a story the character sees in the book, about one of his "guardians" who "watches" after birds in a small village. It's sad, it's bleak, and it's depressing, essentially from start to finish, but I believe that it is still an important book to read to recognize what many people were capable of doing back then, and how some people in today could be capable of doing similar things.

This book is not for the faint of heart, nor for the kind of person looking for a quick, beachside novel while they bask in the sun. It takes the life force out of you, in a way. ( )

Harrowing novel of a young boy's journey though war-torn Europe. full of horrors. It was the book that established him as a major writer, and it'll still curl your hair today. ( )

This was just...horrible. Not the writing but the subject matter. It certainly illustrates how hard the world can be. I wondered, as I read, what the point of this book was other than to show exactly that. There was the "God must be dead" theme and it's easy to understand after reading what people go through in this book. Bottom line - for me, inexorably sad. ( )

The Painted Bird is about a young boy during WWII. His parents, fearing Nazi retaliation for his father's vocal anti-Nazi views, send their son to a foster family in a country village in an unnamed Eastern European country. When his foster mother dies, the boy ends up wandering on his own trying to survive in a cruel world fulll of superstition and fear. He experiences cruelty in many forms as he goes from home to home. Sometimes the cruelty comes from German soldiers, but usually it is simply the cruelty of everyday people. It is a gruesome novel that does not show humanity in a positive light. There were very few characters that showed the lone boy any kindness. The best he could hope for is indifference. Even those that showed him mercy by either not killing him when the had the chance, or by taking him in when consequences of his discovery could mean death or worse allowed their compassion to end with that act. The violence in the book was quite graphic and never ending. It was interesting to see how the boy coped with all the horrors and how he managed to survive with his sanity mostly in tact, but it was not easy to read all of the descriptions of cruelty. But I do think that is the point of the book. It should not be easy to read about war and what it does to people, not only to the soldiers directly involved in the conflict, but also to everyday people living in fear and trying to survive. ( )