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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
medium-paced
slow-paced
Fair warning there are major spoilers and major rants ahead. I would give this book less than zero stars if I could.
Jaws is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's just about goddamn perfect, I watch it every summer.
This book is perhaps one of my least favorite books of all time. It's a goddamn mess.
It starts off so promising. The first quarter or so tracks closely with the movie: skinny dipper gets killed, cops get called in, Brody struggles against the mayor to shut down the beaches, more attacks, etc.
Then Hooper arrives, and from there things basically take a 180 into Boring Interpersonal Drama Town.
There is a SIGNIFICANT portion of the book with absolutely no mention of the shark. That plot ceases to exist entirely. What shark? Dead bodies who? We have to sit through *excruciatingly* boring dialogue, including a nearly hour long dinner party (in audiobook time) where the topics of conversation include gazpacho recipes and undercooked lamb. Gag me.
AND THEN IT SOMEHOW GETS EVEN WORSE. This is obviously a spoiler, but I think everyone deserves to know: Ellen Brody, who is barely present in the movie, has an affair with Hooper. It is *horrendously* awkward. Ellen and Hooper go to a restaurant and spend nearly 30 minutes discussing their sexual fantasies which are terrible and awkward and not AT ALL sexy. Ellen admits that she fantasizes about being a prostitute and being raped. Hooper asks her IF HER VAGINA IS "BIG". WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??? And that's not even the worst of it! I set the audio speed to 2x and it still took waaaaay too long to get through. This is prime "woman character written by a man" territory and it is ultimate cringe. I would give the book negative 10 stars based on this horrifically long interlude.
I very nearly gave up there, but THEN WE FINALLY GET BACK TO THE SHARK PLOT, 2 HOURS LATER. At this point we're 60% into the book and we haven't even MET Quint yet. Nearly SIX HOURS into a 9.5 hour story before we get to the meat of the plot.
And when we FINALLY get the men out on the ocean in Quint's boat they spend a bunch of boring dialogue arguing about shark fishing and other assorted macho dick measuring. Good lord I wanted to throw them all in the ocean and let the shark have them.
And speaking of... just when I finally thought it was getting back to the good stuff HOOPER DIES??? WTF. And Ellen's reaction is "oh well, that's too bad"!!!!!! Everyone is fucking terrible. Why couldn't Ellen get eaten too.
And then Quint dies, Brody lives, and it's over. What an anticlimactic mess.
Oh and to top it all off, the best scene in the movie, Quint's tale about the Indianapolis, never even happens. Without that character motivation he's just a salty old jerk, and they never establish the begrudging camaraderie that they share in the movie. Instead they all seem to hate each other, and I don't blame them.
Look, I know others have read this book and claim that it's an examination of class tensions and economic disparity in tourist towns, and about interpersonal drama and feeling trapped in your life. Which is FINE, but don't promise me an action story about a shark and then put that plot in the background!
And even then, if we agree that's the meat of the book, it's *not well written*. The characters are incredibly thin -- Ellen arguably gets the most characterization and motivation (rich girl who married a townie and now feels dissatisfied with her small life), but even she feels barely two dimensional and mostly comes off as selfish and self-centered. There is so much dialogue that adds nothing to the story -- I vividly remember the waiter asking Ellen what kind of dressing she wants on her salad and listing off options. In another scene Ellen describes a dance contest from decades ago in detail, down to the name of the song she danced to. WHY??? There's just so much clutter, if that's really the story he wanted to tell then it could have used a hell of a lot of editing to tighten things up.
God bless those screenwriters who managed to shine this absolute turd into a diamond (from what I understand Benchley was involved but Spielberg basically threw out his whole draft). I can't even imagine if they had tried to film the mess Benchley actually wrote.
I hate the dynamics of the book and miss the camaraderie between Quint, Hooper, and Brody in the movie. I miss the focus and tension. Events are spread so far apart in the book that it loses all sense of tension.
Overall I guess I'm glad to have read it only because it makes me appreciate the movie so much more. I'm going to try my best to scrub it from my brain and pretend it never happened.
Jaws is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's just about goddamn perfect, I watch it every summer.
This book is perhaps one of my least favorite books of all time. It's a goddamn mess.
It starts off so promising. The first quarter or so tracks closely with the movie: skinny dipper gets killed, cops get called in, Brody struggles against the mayor to shut down the beaches, more attacks, etc.
Then Hooper arrives, and from there things basically take a 180 into Boring Interpersonal Drama Town.
There is a SIGNIFICANT portion of the book with absolutely no mention of the shark. That plot ceases to exist entirely. What shark? Dead bodies who? We have to sit through *excruciatingly* boring dialogue, including a nearly hour long dinner party (in audiobook time) where the topics of conversation include gazpacho recipes and undercooked lamb. Gag me.
AND THEN IT SOMEHOW GETS EVEN WORSE. This is obviously a spoiler, but I think everyone deserves to know: Ellen Brody, who is barely present in the movie, has an affair with Hooper. It is *horrendously* awkward. Ellen and Hooper go to a restaurant and spend nearly 30 minutes discussing their sexual fantasies which are terrible and awkward and not AT ALL sexy. Ellen admits that she fantasizes about being a prostitute and being raped. Hooper asks her IF HER VAGINA IS "BIG". WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??? And that's not even the worst of it! I set the audio speed to 2x and it still took waaaaay too long to get through. This is prime "woman character written by a man" territory and it is ultimate cringe. I would give the book negative 10 stars based on this horrifically long interlude.
I very nearly gave up there, but THEN WE FINALLY GET BACK TO THE SHARK PLOT, 2 HOURS LATER. At this point we're 60% into the book and we haven't even MET Quint yet. Nearly SIX HOURS into a 9.5 hour story before we get to the meat of the plot.
And when we FINALLY get the men out on the ocean in Quint's boat they spend a bunch of boring dialogue arguing about shark fishing and other assorted macho dick measuring. Good lord I wanted to throw them all in the ocean and let the shark have them.
And speaking of... just when I finally thought it was getting back to the good stuff HOOPER DIES??? WTF. And Ellen's reaction is "oh well, that's too bad"!!!!!! Everyone is fucking terrible. Why couldn't Ellen get eaten too.
And then Quint dies, Brody lives, and it's over. What an anticlimactic mess.
Oh and to top it all off, the best scene in the movie, Quint's tale about the Indianapolis, never even happens. Without that character motivation he's just a salty old jerk, and they never establish the begrudging camaraderie that they share in the movie. Instead they all seem to hate each other, and I don't blame them.
Look, I know others have read this book and claim that it's an examination of class tensions and economic disparity in tourist towns, and about interpersonal drama and feeling trapped in your life. Which is FINE, but don't promise me an action story about a shark and then put that plot in the background!
And even then, if we agree that's the meat of the book, it's *not well written*. The characters are incredibly thin -- Ellen arguably gets the most characterization and motivation (rich girl who married a townie and now feels dissatisfied with her small life), but even she feels barely two dimensional and mostly comes off as selfish and self-centered. There is so much dialogue that adds nothing to the story -- I vividly remember the waiter asking Ellen what kind of dressing she wants on her salad and listing off options. In another scene Ellen describes a dance contest from decades ago in detail, down to the name of the song she danced to. WHY??? There's just so much clutter, if that's really the story he wanted to tell then it could have used a hell of a lot of editing to tighten things up.
God bless those screenwriters who managed to shine this absolute turd into a diamond (from what I understand Benchley was involved but Spielberg basically threw out his whole draft). I can't even imagine if they had tried to film the mess Benchley actually wrote.
I hate the dynamics of the book and miss the camaraderie between Quint, Hooper, and Brody in the movie. I miss the focus and tension. Events are spread so far apart in the book that it loses all sense of tension.
Overall I guess I'm glad to have read it only because it makes me appreciate the movie so much more. I'm going to try my best to scrub it from my brain and pretend it never happened.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Good book, definitely worth a read. I hate to say it for the film is better
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Boy, oh boy am I glad I have watched the movie a million times before reading this book. That's not to say that the book itself is bad, its just radically different than the movie.
The big shark that is wrecking havoc around the small summer town of Amity is overshadowed by adultery, political agendas and mafia influences. The characters that you know and love in the movie are totally unlikeable in the novel.
I can see where for its time Peter Benchley wrote something that was new and exciting to everyone, but in todays society it would never hold up.
Not many people would tell you to go see the movie instead of reading the book, but this is one instance I would say to go run to the theater!
The big shark that is wrecking havoc around the small summer town of Amity is overshadowed by adultery, political agendas and mafia influences. The characters that you know and love in the movie are totally unlikeable in the novel.
I can see where for its time Peter Benchley wrote something that was new and exciting to everyone, but in todays society it would never hold up.
Not many people would tell you to go see the movie instead of reading the book, but this is one instance I would say to go run to the theater!
The movie is better, let's get that out of the way. So please don't go into this book with very high expectations. There are three mayor plot points in this novel and none of them are resolved in a satisfactory manner.
The first one is the human-eating shark, at the end is not even clear if it's dead. No big explosion like in the movie. The second is an affair between two characters that is not in the movie. It's there to make drama but it somehow fails at it. The third is how the town is going to die without tourists, we never learn if that indeed happened. The whole book feels so unfinished, it needed other 200 pages.
The first one is the human-eating shark, at the end is not even clear if it's dead. No big explosion like in the movie. The second is an affair between two characters that is not in the movie. It's there to make drama but it somehow fails at it. The third is how the town is going to die without tourists, we never learn if that indeed happened. The whole book feels so unfinished, it needed other 200 pages.
fast-paced