The Birds and Other Stories

I have enjoyed Daphne du Maurier's other works and am a huge fan of Hitchcock's movie The Birds so when I found out that the story is based on du Maurier's short story I had to get the book.Be prepared the movie is NOTHING like the book - well, there are lots of birds in both stories but there the resemblance ends. I liked the story as much as I liked the movie. As I mentioned both are very different one is set in the Cornish countryside and one is set on the California Coast. Both are dark but I think the story is darker for what it doesn't have - there is so much that is left to the reader's imagination. My favorite story is probably Monte Verità.These stories showcase why du Maurier should be considered a horror writer. She does a terrific job of making the average appear/could be/possibly horrific.

This is an excellent audiobook contains two short stories by Daphne du Maurier. They are both great stories. "The Birds" is the basis for the Hitchcock movie of the same name. I had never heard of "Don't Look Now". If anything I liked it more than "The Birds". These are the first two works by Daphne du Maurier that I have read. I have been meaning to read some of her work for some time. I have a novel "Rebecca" that I intend to read in the near future.Both of the readings of these audiobooks are very professionally done. The narrators added emphasis and emotion and added to my simultaneous reading. I was completely pleased and have purchased another series of short stories based on these two stories.The short story "The Birds" was identical to my Kindle copy. The reason I mention this is that I found in my study that there may be another version of "The Birds" with a more graphic ending. If there is, I have yet to come across it. Thank You....

I bought this book because I had not read Daphne Du Maurier's The Birds. The original story is way more suspenseful and brilliant than the Hitchcock movie (and I love Hitchcock). Du Maurier wrote my favorite novel Rebecca. However, she is a brilliant storyteller in the genre of short stories as well. Her settings are often by the seaside but are easy to step into, the characters are complex and relatable, and her plots suspenseful. This book is a great beach read, even with seagulls flying overhead while reading The Birds!

I would have given this a five if I loved short stories but I don't. I only read them because it's the only Daphne du Maurier book I haven't read! While she's best known for "Rebecca", all of her books are still worth reading because she was such a good story teller. She never needed to gross me out to get a point across and her books always left me wanting more. You'll never go wrong by reading one of her mysteries. While some writers concentrated on plot and others on characters, she did both and superbly. Read this; you won't be sorry if you move mystery.

This edition is far superior to NYRB w selecteds by McGrath. It has one of DdMs best stories, "The Apple Tree," in which a likeable widower finds that the gnarled tree in his yard has taken on the sagging and great martyr complex of his unlamented wife. He must chop down the tree ! (At what cost?)Another, "The Little Photographer." Dangerous fun. A beautiful & bored wife whose marriage, after 2 tots, lacks passion, indulges in a squash w a disabled younger man who takes the "romance" seriously. When he threatens to tell All to her husby, what's the poor darling to do? Murder ! She'll forever be haunted x the Lost Moment.Why do dimwit editors always include DdMs worst story, "Monte Verita" ?A married woman cannot resist the "call" of a mysterious cult where women are promised agelessness. She vanishes into a mountain. What happens there ? I have no idea but all the dames soon have short boyish hair cuts. Hey, James Hilton, I am reminded of your Tibetan paradise, which I hated, in the Valley of the Blue Moon. This DdM is d'Embarrassment.Jealousy, revenge, hidden desires dominate the startling and, at times, horrific DdM stories that carry the chilled helplessness of life.

DeMaurier wrote my favorite book of all time- REBECCA. But these short stories are all hidden gems~ stories you won't be able to put down until the very last line. How even more of these stories haven't made it to the big screen is a mystery to me. You WON'T be disappointed in this little collection of spine tinglers.

The Birds is right up there with The Road and On the Beach for an end of the world scenario.

The binding was disappointing. The text is totally accurate to the best of my verification. And I have verified the text from multiple sources. However, only one time from each source.

This is an enjoyable collection of slightly macabre tales. The Birds is famous, of course, due to the film. This original version is much better. Written at a time when memories of the Second World War were keen, it's a short, stark tale in which the power of man is baffled by a turn of nature, as seen through the eyes of a Cornish family.Of the other stories, my favourite is The Apple Tree, which can be read either as a ghost story or a psychological tale of a heartless widower who is frustrated by the lingering presence of his wife. Also of note is Monte Verita, a tale of mountain climbing and Shangri-La, in which Du Maurier reflects on the nature and cost of paradise. It may be a direct response to Lost Horizon, by James Hilton, but it achieves a sense of mysticism reminiscent of Arthur Machen.The remaining three stories feature such things as infidelity, lust and casual barbarity. Only the last and shortest of them disappoints, with a cheap and unnecessary twist. Excluding that final paragraph, this is a strong collection shot through with a pleasing vein of cruelty.

I liked "Kiss Me Again, Stranger" a lot. "The Birds" was haunting and well-written but got a little too sci-fi obsessive about the cause and possible remedies where the Hitchcock movie wisely left all that vague. The same OCDish involvement with plot details ruined "Monte Verita", which should have been unreliable, overdetermined and magic realist, but instead came across as Rider Haggard with better prose. "The Old Man" was all right. The other two stories I gave up on; I don't think the author had any plan when she started writing them.

Although, like many people, I have seen Alfred Hitchcock's film 'The Birds' on more than one occasion, I have never actually gone to the source of the film and read Daphne Du Maurier's chilling short story from which the famous director derived his inspiration. Set in Cornwall - and not, as depicted in the film version, in California, and peopled with a cast of ordinary farming folk, instead of Hitchcock's cast of glamorous characters - Du Maurier's short story tells of how when the south westerly wind changes overnight, huge flocks of birds suddenly start attacking the inhabitants of a Cornish village. Nat Hocken, a farmworker, realizing the seriousness of the situation (and mocked by his farmer neighbour for being 'windy') boards up the windows of his cottage, brings down the mattresses from the bedrooms into the kitchen, stokes up the range and settles his wife and their two children down as if for a siege. And Nat was right to take precautions because before long, at the turn of the tide, great flocks of birds swoop down with the intention of maiming and killing all in their path. But how long can Nat and his family ride out the attacks before their supplies of fuel and food run out?In 'Monte Verita' we meet two mountaineers, one of whom marries an unusual, intriguing and very beautiful young woman whom becomes lost to her husband under very strange circumstances during a mountain climbing holiday - but what has really happened to her? Is she actually lost? And what effect does this have on Victor and his friend? In 'The Apple Tree' we read about a man whose long-suffering wife has died and from whom he now begins to feel free. However, when he notices an old apple tree in the garden of his home, which he imagines somehow resembles his wife, he begins to wonder if his wife's spirit could be trying to prevent him from moving on with his life and, more significantly, he starts wondering what he can do about it.In 'The Little Photographer' a very beautiful, spoilt and bored young woman uses her beauty and entitled position to play with the emotions of a young photographer who adores her - but when he wants more from her than she is prepared to give, she realizes that her game has consequences from which it will not be easy to escape. 'Kiss Me Again Stranger', is an unsettling and rather macabre tale, narrated by a young mechanic who meets an usherette at the cinema and with whom he becomes very attracted. But the young woman is no ordinary usherette - there is something rather sinister about her, as the young man soon discovers. In 'The Old Man', the last story in the collection, a man relates an unusual tale about a reclusive family, one of whom may be a murderer.Short story collections can often be rather a mixed bag, but all of these stories from Daphne du Maurier are good examples of the art of short fiction. An imaginative writer who is particularly good at creating unsettling and sinister situations, Ms du Maurier demonstrates her skill at building atmosphere and suspense in each of these dark tales, and if you are looking for some unusual and rather eerie stories for a winter's evening, then this is a collection that I can recommend.4 Stars.

Everyone knows The Birds as the scary film about ornithological terror by the master of suspense film maker, Alfred Hitchcock. Many don't know that the film is based on a novella by Dame Daphne Du Maurier.Daphne Du Maurier was born in London in 1907, and was the daughter of the famous actor Sir Gérard Du Maurier and the granddaughter of author George DuMaurier. The Dame was also the cousin of the four boys befriended by J. M. Barrie, who included them as characters in Peter Pan.The Birds And Other Stories is a collection of six interesting stories which will keep you on the edge of a very uncomfortable seat which are a mix of mystery, tales of the unexpected, and a dash of gothic horror and mystery.The six stories are 1. The Birds 2. Monte Verita 3. The Apple Tree 4. The Little Photographer 5. Kiss Me Again, stranger 6. The Old ManEach story in this collection will have you on tenterhooks and a couple of them will leave you surprised, but all them are memorable and will stay in your psyche for a long time.And in my opinion The Birds although gothic and scary is not my favourite story but I believe it is the lead as it was used to sell more copies. My favourite is '' Kiss Me Again, Stranger'' which evokes certain emotions which are smashed to smithereens by the end twist in the Tale.Du Maurier died in 1989 but this collection demonstrates why her books and stories still sell and are loved by many in 2021I rate this book a five star Read.

We stumbled on Du Maurier's stories by accident. What a writer! Hitchcock took The Birds, and made his own story from Du Maurier's idea. The original is well worth reading. Nat is the one individual who assesses the crisis with realism.The failure of human beings to face reality is the overarching theme of one tale after another. Du Maurier picks situations in which human frailty has dreadful consequences. The tales are the more chilling because they are about ordinary people - not psychopaths. There but for the Grace of God...It goes without saying that the writing is first rate.