Titles, unless they’re Fall Out Boy songs from 2006-2009, are rarely so long or descriptive, so this one caught my eye. Right from the outset, Russell gives us
setting. We are in 1979, in Strong Beach, and a seagull army has descended. While we don’t yet know the significance of any of these pieces of information, the tone for the story has begun to be set, and the question of what’s implied by the army of seagulls and what their effect on the town will be. This choice on Russell’s part, to include so much information in the title, establishes setting, and while we later learn that the fact of the enormous seagull “army” is not the main driving point of the story (or is it?), they are still an incredibly significant part of the narrative.