synopsis:

Birdy, a book about dreams, war, futures, obsession, and friendship, revolves around "Birdy", a world war II veteran who resides in an isolated room within a US Army hospital's psychiatric ward. To escape an irrational world, Birdy sits in an almost catatonic state in this hospital where he has come to believe he is one of the feathered creatures of his boyhood dreams. For some time, he has been sitting in various bird-like positions and this leads the appropriate officers to decide to bring in anyone they can find who might know Birdy, in an effort to unlock the secrets buried in his mind. As luck would have it, they manage to find a close friend in the shape of Al Columbato, who has known Birdy since their adolescence in Philadelphia. Al has suffered major injuries to his face as a result of his efforts in the war. Al attempts to bring Birdy out of his catatonic shell to rejoin the rest of the world, but the secret to this lies in their youth, where Birdy first donned wings and Al helped him to fly.

on this book:

This book, about escapism and alienation, was, like Greene's ‘I never promised you a rose garden' highly influenced by the anti-psychiatry movement, which taught that psychiatric diseases ar not diseases, but just labels given to people who are different than the rest. Because of the topics discussed in this novel and because of the style, a rumour was going round that William Wharton is a pseudonym of J.

D. Salinger, which was not true of course.

In 1985 a film directed by Alan Parker based on this novel but set in the vietnam-war came out.