Review of "The Pilot and the Parrot" by James Allan Krause, PhD

Audiobook Score: 89/100 (8.9 out of 10)
Paperback Score: 88/100 (8.8 out of 10)

This might be the most random book we have ever read!
That's a monumental achievement for a contest that's seen Snoodles in Space by Steven Joseph and The Surreal Adventures of Anthony Zen by Cameron Straughan. Ok, maybe this book is in the conversation for the most random, chaotic, bizarre, overloaded, and overbooked we've read.

However, even with that randomness, we think we actually cracked the nut and figured out what the author was going for.

The Pilot and the Parrot is an extraordinarily unconventional literary family saga featuring three adult siblings, their children, their elderly parents, a Filipino housekeeper, romantic interests, airline employees, marijuana growers, cruise ship passengers, musicians, criminals, and a talkative Alexandrine parakeet named Pock.

So, you can already tell that this isn't a book/audiobook that stays in any one particular lane. It is like one of those enormous multilayered freeway interchanges, with highways stacked on top of highways, ramps shooting off in every direction, and no clear indication of which road is supposed to be the main one. This book is like someone dumped a family saga, an airline drama, a missing-parrot mystery, a marijuana comedy, a musical, and a cruise ship disaster into a blender, then forgot to put the lid on. So, you get splashed with all the fruity, creamy residue.

It is part novel, part stage play, part musical, part family sitcom, part philosophical discussion, part social satire, part mystery, and part disaster story. Sometimes it feels like several completely different books were placed in a blender, poured into one container, and served with ten extremely random, largely-off-beat experimental songs in between chapters.

Even saying that all was a mouthful. And that's one paragraph describing the book. Imagine comprehending the totality of this book!

And yet, buried beneath all this madness, there is a thoughtful and surprisingly relevant central idea.

The story primarily follows three siblings from the Foerster family. Frederick is a highly disciplined, safety-conscious German pilot who approaches almost every situation as if he were completing a preflight checklist. Maria is an outspoken university professor from Vancouver who studies human behavior and develops a theory she calls “mirrorism.” Marcus, the youngest sibling, is an irresponsible, marijuana-smoking troublemaker who works in an illegal grow operation and appears capable of creating chaos almost anywhere.

Every Christmas, the geographically separated Foerster family reunites at their large ancestral home beside the Rhine River in Germany. Their parents, Martin and Sophie, traditionally prepare recorded Christmas messages for Frederick, Maria, and Marcus. These recordings contain memories, observations, advice, and judgments about each child’s personality.
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One Christmas, a group of traveling performers visits the family home. Shortly afterward, Pock disappears from his cage. The Foersters immediately suspect that the visitors stole him, and this assumption is repeated so many times that it gradually becomes accepted as fact.
That mystery provides the closest thing the book has to a continuous plot. However, the story frequently leaves it behind to follow the family members through their separate lives in Canada and Europe.

Frederick navigates his responsibilities as a pilot while developing a romantic relationship with Nicole. Maria examines authority, communication, identity, and the ways people form opinions about themselves and others. Marcus stumbles from one reckless situation to another while creating problems for his family, his employers, and almost everyone unfortunate enough to rely on him.

The younger generation has its own collection of insecurities, romances, arguments, and ambitions. Sarah worries about her weight, Jacob obsesses over his complexion, Jessica questions authority, and Frederick’s children, Lucas and Emma, deal with their father’s rigid expectations. Bee rushes around the Foerster home cooking, cleaning, serving, worrying, and frequently providing some of the book’s most memorable dialogue.

The family eventually boards a cruise that develops into a dangerous ordeal, adding a full-scale disaster sequence to a narrative that had already included aviation emergencies, criminal activity, political debates, romance, prejudice, holiday traditions, family dysfunction, and a missing parrot.
Did this book really need a cruise ship catastrophe too?

Apparently, yes.

Krause deserves considerable credit for his imagination. No one could reasonably accuse The Pilot and the Parrot of being predictable, timid, or indistinguishable from everything else on the market. The author has created an enormous cast, multiple countries, several generations of family history, ten theatrical scenes, ten original songs, philosophical theories, criminal escapades, romantic developments, and a mystery that takes nearly the entire book to resolve.

At this point, readers may understandably wonder whether all this randomness actually serves a purpose. It does, or at least much of it does. Beneath the missing parrot, illegal marijuana operation, academic dispute, Roma stereotypes, smuggled hummingbirds, drunken English cousins, theatrical scenes, original songs, airline emergency, and cruise ship catastrophe, James Allan Krause appears to be exploring a serious philosophical question: How much of what we believe, become, and repeat was truly chosen by us?

The book’s answer seems to be that human beings are shaped by messages. We receive them from parents, teachers, employers, politicians, religious institutions, news organizations, cultural traditions, and other people whose authority we accept. Some messages educate and inspire us. Others condition, frighten, divide, mislead, or confine us. Repeated often enough, even an unsupported message can begin feeling like an unquestionable truth. Once we recognized this philosophical structure, many of the book’s strangest episodes began making more sense.

Krause does not seem interested in storytelling for entertainment alone. Having also reviewed his earlier work, Wetion, we recognize his tendency to use fiction, history, music, dialogue, and unusual situations to explore broader questions about society and human behavior. His academic background may help explain this approach. Krause has completed degree programs in Europe and Canada, earned a PhD in the United States, conducted research, and taught at accredited American and Canadian universities.

Perhaps his books are best understood as educational and philosophical tools presented through metaphor, allegory, historical references, comedy, drama, and fictional case studies. The characters in The Pilot and the Parrot do not merely experience events. They repeatedly become examples within a much larger argument about language, authority, identity, prejudice, and free will.

Maria gives that argument a name: mirrorism. While pursuing university tenure, she writes a controversial academic paper titled “Mirrorism and Semantics.” Her theory proposes that the messages people receive throughout their lives contribute to their character, self-image, behavior, and eventual destiny. Schools do not simply teach facts, according to her reasoning, and parents do not merely offer advice. Authority figures help construct the image that individuals eventually see reflected back at them. The more frequently a trusted or powerful messenger repeats an idea, the more likely the recipient may be to accept it.

That concept is demonstrated through the Foerster family’s annual Christmas recordings. Every year, Martin and Sophie record messages for their children, Frederick, Maria, and Marcus. These tapes contain advice, observations, judgments, family history, and expectations. The parents believe that placing their guidance on recordings gives their words permanence. Their messages can be replayed again and again, unchanged by time.

The 1976 recording is especially revealing. Frederick is described as serious, careful, cautious, and dependable. His parents praise his attention to detail but encourage him to develop a sense of humor and stop treating everything so solemnly. Maria is described as intelligent, brave, determined, and willing to challenge authority. Her parents admire her confidence but warn her against reacting to mistakes made by teachers and others in positions of power.

Marcus, who recently survived being struck by a delivery vehicle, is described as disruptive, emotionally uncontrolled, and difficult. Rather than seriously examining how his injury may have affected him, his parents focus heavily on his misbehavior and demand that he become more obedient.

Decades later, the three siblings strongly resemble those childhood descriptions. Frederick becomes a rigid, safety-conscious airline pilot who approaches daily life like a preflight inspection. Maria becomes an outspoken academic who analyzes power, language, and social behavior, yet remains keenly aware of the risks associated with challenging those who control her professional future. Marcus becomes the irresponsible family troublemaker, repeatedly acting against instructions, expectations, and even his own interests.


Near the end, Martin and Sophie admit that this was not entirely accidental. They intentionally highlighted certain traits, rewarded behavior that matched their preferred descriptions, and largely ignored actions that contradicted the personalities they were trying to reinforce. In effect, they did not merely observe their children’s identities. They participated in constructing them.

That confession provides the strongest support for Maria’s theory. Tell a child repeatedly that he is responsible, and he may organize his identity around responsibility. Tell another that she is intelligent but must be cautious around authority, and she may spend her life balancing intellectual courage against professional fear. Tell a third that he is the family problem, and he may eventually stop imagining himself as anything else.

The recordings become a kind of psychological mirror. The children repeatedly hear descriptions of themselves and gradually reflect those descriptions back to the family. This does not mean the parents possess complete control over their children. Marcus repeatedly resists their efforts and often does the exact opposite of what he is told. Even that resistance, however, can become a form of conditioning. A person who defines himself entirely through rebellion is still allowing authority to determine his direction. He simply travels in the opposite direction from the one commanded.

That idea may help explain why Marcus is not actually free, despite living outside conventional professional and social systems. Maria answers to university administrators who can influence her tenure, while Marcus works outside the law but remains controlled by violent criminals who threaten him and his family. One sibling is pressured through academic authority; the other is pressured through fear and physical intimidation. Marcus may consider himself a rebel, inventor, entrepreneur, or independent thinker, but he has not escaped systems of power. He has merely entered a more dangerous one.

Maria’s conflict with Dr. Clayworth also functions as a practical test of mirrorism. Clayworth pressures her to credit his son Walter as an author of her paper, despite Walter not having participated meaningfully in its creation. He uses Maria’s professional ambitions and vulnerable tenure status as leverage. Maria understands manipulation well enough to write an academic theory about it, but intellectual understanding does not make resistance effortless.

Importantly, Maria does resist. She distributes the paper without naming Walter as a contributor, provoking Clayworth’s anger. Walter later behaves as though the research belongs to him and describes Maria as someone invited to present “their” work. This plotline demonstrates how authority can attempt to manufacture reality through repetition and status. Walter has not earned authorship, but if he, his father, and the institution repeat the claim often enough, the false version may become the professionally accepted one.

The same process occurs on a broader cultural level through Pock’s disappearance. Pock vanishes shortly after a group of traveling performers visits the Foerster home. A window is found open. The family already associates the performers with Roma people and immediately assumes they stole the bird. When a theatrical ransom note arrives demanding money, their suspicion hardens into certainty.

The family does not possess proof. They possess a story that feels plausible because it matches messages they have already heard about a marginalized population. That story is then repeated for nearly a year. The performers stole Pock. The “Gypsies” kidnapped him. The ransom note proves their guilt. Each repetition makes the assumption feel more factual, even though no new evidence has appeared.

The family’s reaction demonstrates how stereotypes save people from the difficult work of uncertainty. Rather than considering every possible explanation, they rely on a familiar cultural narrative about who is supposedly dishonest, dangerous, or criminal. The eventual revelation dismantles almost every part of that narrative.

Bee confesses that she opened one window to clear smoke from the home. The change in air pressure caused another improperly secured window to open, allowing Pock to fly away. The family then concludes that Marcus probably created the ransom note to exploit the situation. Most significantly, the supposedly Roma performers are later revealed to have been international writers posing as “Gypsies” as part of their own research.

The family therefore blamed Roma people for a kidnapping that never happened, based on the actions of performers who were not Roma. This is probably the book’s most successful philosophical construction. An assumption becomes a message, the message becomes a repeated story, the repeated story becomes a belief, and the belief becomes prejudice disguised as knowledge.

Pock himself is the perfect symbol for this process. Throughout the production, the parrot repeats words and phrases that attract attention, laughter, praise, or food. The family members frequently wonder whether Pock understands what he is saying or merely recognizes which combinations of sounds produce the most favorable reaction.

Human beings often do the same. We repeat political slogans without investigating them, family beliefs because questioning them feels disloyal, stereotypes because they simplify complicated situations, and professional language because it makes us sound informed. We also repeat traditions long after their original meanings have been forgotten.

This interest in language appears throughout the book. The characters debate the meaning of an epiphany, discuss the origins and contradictions of Good Friday, compare the English name with the more sorrowful meaning conveyed by the German Karfreitag, and perform a song titled “Semantics.” Krause repeatedly asks whether words still communicate what we think they do.

A respected title does not guarantee respectable conduct. A person with the surname Good may behave terribly. An authority figure may act dishonestly, a rebel may remain controlled, a group described as criminal may be innocent, and a message described as guidance may actually be conditioning.

The Good brothers provide one of the book’s most blunt examples. Tom and Harry possess a respectable family name and work for the Council of Europe, yet they become intoxicated, insult a French waiter, mock cultural differences, and behave disgracefully around traveling musicians. The supposedly respectable men act like destructive fools, while the people vulnerable to social suspicion are simply trying to perform music and earn money. The label and the reality do not match.

Even the hummingbird-smuggling plot can be read through this philosophical lens. Members of the Strasbourg Dancers of 1518 believe the hummingbird’s diet may contain the secret to extraordinary energy. They study nectar, insects, sap, pollen, and ashes in hopes of creating a formula that will allow them to “dance their way through life.”

This is one of the book’s most bizarre developments, but it may also represent the seductiveness of miraculous solutions. People are often drawn to messages promising effortless energy, liberation, health, wealth, unity, or happiness. Once a group accepts such a belief, its members may pursue it far beyond reason.

Mr. Vogel’s attempt to smuggle hummingbirds onto an aircraft contributes to a chain of events that results in a dangerous in-flight incident. A seemingly hopeful or eccentric belief therefore creates consequences for innocent people who never accepted it. We would be cautious about claiming that every detail of this plotline forms a perfectly calculated metaphor. Nevertheless, it fits Krause’s wider concern with what happens when people allow questionable messages to direct their behavior.

All these ideas finally converge in the title. Near the conclusion, Maria observes that when words do not cause people to think, they are no different from parrots. Frederick responds that people who take control of how messages are delivered and received can become captains of their own indoctrination and masters of their own destiny.

The parrot repeats, while the pilot chooses a direction. Human beings can accept every message placed before them, or they can examine the source, question the meaning, and decide whether that message deserves to guide them.

Once we reached this point, we understood what Krause was trying to accomplish. We get it. The problem is that the production makes readers work extraordinarily hard to get there.

These philosophical connections are meaningful, but they are buried beneath an enormous number of characters, locations, arguments, meals, romances, jokes, criminal activities, historical references, cultural observations, theatrical scenes, songs, emergencies, and unrelated-seeming detours.

The missing-parrot mystery disappears for long stretches. Maria’s mirrorism theory is important, but its full relationship to the family recordings and the title does not become unmistakable until extremely late. Several side stories introduce their own casts, tones, conflicts, and themes before the reader has fully processed the previous ones.

The shifts between conventional prose, stage-play dialogue, philosophical discussion, comedy, family drama, song lyrics, and disaster storytelling add to the disorientation. Rather than one theme becoming steadily clearer, readers are repeatedly asked to stop, change formats, follow a different character, and enter another lane.

We also question how much of the philosophical unity is naturally communicated by the story and how much must be constructed by readers after the fact. A thoughtful audience can connect Maria’s academic conflict, Marcus’s criminal entrapment, the assumptions about Pock, the hummingbird group, the Good brothers, and the discussions of semantics. However, the book rarely pauses long enough to develop one connection fully before introducing another unusual event.

There is a difference between complexity and obscurity. Complexity rewards attention by gradually revealing an organized design, while obscurity leaves readers uncertain whether the design exists at all. The Pilot and the Parrot sometimes achieves the first, but too frequently drifts into the second.

This is particularly unfortunate because the underlying ideas deserve serious consideration. The influence of repeated messages, the construction of identity, the manipulation of language, the power of authority, the danger of stereotypes, and the difference between inherited belief and independent thought are all worthwhile subjects. A more focused narrative could have made those ideas significantly more powerful.

The story did not need to explain everything directly or remove all its eccentricity. Krause’s imagination, international perspective, academic curiosity, and willingness to experiment are essential parts of the production’s identity. However, stronger organization, fewer competing subplots, a clearer central protagonist, and earlier thematic signposts would have helped readers appreciate the philosophy without first having to excavate it from beneath so much randomness.
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Perhaps that is the most accurate way to describe the book: it is not meaningless, but overloaded with meaning. Krause appears determined to transform nearly every character, word, historical reference, family conflict, cultural difference, and bizarre event into another opportunity to examine how human beings think.

We admire that ambition, but we wish the production had trusted a smaller number of carefully developed ideas to carry its message. After all, a pilot may know exactly where the aircraft is heading, but the passengers still need to understand the flight plan.

Ok, so we got to the content and the hidden meaning of the book, but what about the audiobook version? Well, James Allan Krause does an admirable job narrating this book, the same as he did with Wetion. Narrating your own book is not easy, but Krause achieves it. He has a very friendly, bard-like tone, as if he's constantly trying to tell you a tricky, metaphorical story. He even does some accents which are pretty good! It's hit-or-miss when he voices female characters, however. That's probably normal. It's hard being a dude and trying to voice a female in a respectable way.

The less we say about the music between each chapter, the better. We don't think the music needed to be in this audiobook. We didn't find any of it particularly pleasant. It sounds like experimental sound-jumble music with a male singer, presumably Krause, speaking words while the background music rushes ahead. It often sounds off-beat, like the singing can't keep up with the background music. There are times when guitars and trumpets sound like they were incorporated, likely via electronic/computer means judging by the sound. We had the same thoughts about the music in Wetion: it really didn't need to be in here, and the audiobook probably would've been better off without it.

Whether read in paperback or experienced as an audiobook, The Pilot and the Parrot may test your patience and leave you wondering which narrative freeway you are on, but it ultimately rewards close attention with an original meditation on how words, labels, and repeated messages shape human lives. We may not have enjoyed every mile of the journey, but we respect Krause for building a road unlike any other.

Check it out on Amazon!