Apart from its very skillful management of a difficult, complex narrative strategy, "Birdy" works, is a success, chiefly because of the touching, believable ties between [Birdy and Al,] the two temperamentally distinct lower middle-class boys, and because Birdy's crazy fantasies about the bright, darting and melodious careers of canaries are grounded in [William Wharton's] impressive knowledge of and love for this domesticated species.

Even so, there are moments when many readers will feel they are being told more about canaries than anyone except a famished alley cat would want to know….

Comparisons with Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" are inevitable. I should say "Birdy" is more pastoral, less disfigured by misogyny, less witty and more poetical altogether. Perhaps it will become a cult book for the disaffected young. That will do no harm, for its view of life at bottom is fresh, innocent and romantic...