Wharton summons up with extraordinary immediacy and professionalism [in Birdy] the mechanics of pigeon and canary breeding, and the physical details of illicit excursions to pools and gasometers where the deluded Birdy is training himself to fly. The narrative has an obsessed brilliance that always hovers on the brink of the absurd, and tips right into it when Birdy begins to dream that he's a canary called Alfonso dreaming he is mating with Perta, an exceptionally desirable female canary: "I have had no babies…. I would like to be your female but you should know this", she explains, rather like Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Despite the excesses and the too-pat ending (victory of eternal, natural, barefoot, American boy against army, parents, analysts) William Wharton's splendidly eccentric vision is a triumphant oddity.

Eric Korn, "Catching Up: 'Birdy'," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd...