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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
It took me a week to read this 600 pg book, which is really saying something about how fast paced it is. However, I found that the pace changed and the chapters got longer the further into the book I got, which was a little daunting. Pessl tells an intriguing story and writes good characters, I would read another book of hers.
Night Film is brilliant. Pessl displays genius storytelling.
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book is just wow. Except the ending was a little flat for me. The author left it up to your imagination, does he talk to the infamous director? Does his life go back to normal? Does he get an Interview? No, we don’t know. He sees him from across the room at his house on an island and his preferred bourbon is there. That’s it. And then a flashback to an interview the infamous director never finished in the 70’s. I can’t with this ending. The rest of the book was great. And a couple points in the book I thought Hopper or Nora were secret actors for Cordova. But I liked that I tried to keep guessing what was going on only to be wronged everytime! But the ending is why I gave this book 4 stars
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Just wanted to write my thoughts about writing in Night Film novel. The book is categorized under Mystery & Thriller genre but more than that I really loved the writing in the book. The book has nothing new to offer in terms of "mystery". The plot is pretty straight forward from start to end. But the writing is so good.
Right now there are lot of novels marketed as domestic thrillers with such mediocre writing. It's always "He said, she said, this happened, that happened". There's no interesting turn of phrase or anything. Or maybe domestic thrillers don't warrant such prose. But the writing in this book is so atmospheric.
The books follows 3 characters trying to find - What happened to Ashley Cordova (Is it really a suicide??), daughter of Stanislas Cordova, who is a fringe director/ enigma himself. We get bits of Cordova's family history being told by different people involved in various capacities. During these segments it feels like going into murky water where there's no up nor down.
The book is essentially a horror novel. There's a point where the lead character enters into a tunnel so dark and it's hiding secrets of it's own and the author phrases it as -
The redbrick walls are crumbling, the ceiling low, thick with mold. It looks like shriveled artery to hell.
Or during the same scene where it's too dark in the tunnel that he cannot see anything in front of him -
Only a few feet of the dark walls were visible before cutting out into a darkness so absolute it looked as if this part of the world has been left unfinished - a raw edge to the earth, which gave way not to simple darkness, but to outer space.
There's a character that's described as - oily shadow. Describing someone as a shady character is okay. But creating this sense of a person always lurking around somewhere in the mansion with the line oily shadow is creating something creepy. I won't remember this book for it's mystery but surely re-read it at some point for it's writing.
Meh
All characters speak alike; the forty+ year old, the 20+ year old, using expressions really limited to a 60 year old. I would say skip and gamble on another read. It’s two stars only because I think Cordova is a good idea but bad execution. It talks about daring to reach the edge of life. “Do you dare?” Suspense, and thrills we never get to experience are glazed over only so we can come face to face with mortality. The message is lost because we didn’t really get anything from anyone. It could have had potential under someone with writing skills.
All characters speak alike; the forty+ year old, the 20+ year old, using expressions really limited to a 60 year old. I would say skip and gamble on another read. It’s two stars only because I think Cordova is a good idea but bad execution. It talks about daring to reach the edge of life. “Do you dare?” Suspense, and thrills we never get to experience are glazed over only so we can come face to face with mortality. The message is lost because we didn’t really get anything from anyone. It could have had potential under someone with writing skills.
I truly thought I would love this book, but I could not even get halfway through it. The unnecessary and constant italics made my brain scream while reading this, and beyond that, the characters are flat AF and utterly uncompelling. Plus there’s some icky sexism and racism to contend with. The only thing redeeming about this book was the multimedia aspects which were kind of fun.
Very intriguing book as demonstrated by my reading it in about 24 hours. But I just wish our narrator was just...more. He seemed two-dimensional in comparison to the other fuller characters. Perhaps this was purposeful so that the reader could step in his place.
Ergh. I so wanted to be completely blown away by this book, to get so wrapped up in this intricate story that Pessl had created of films and plots and secret family histories and the pseudo-paparazzi attempting to break into this seemingly magical world created by the brilliant reclusive film director and the artists who attend his side. This is a book that I unconsciously have always wished to have been written, and have always wanted to read.
Perhaps my unknowing personal investment in the success and believably and fullness of this story is what turned me away from it with such disappointment. I did feel the necessity to read this one through to the end, seeing the time and effort I had put into it as far as I'd gotten without much payoff. A few quick points on my frustrations:
1) Too much and too little. As a thriller, there are very few thrills. Clues are laid out simply and delicately, and although there is a wealth of information and "evidence", everything is conveniently packaged to deliver our protagonists to exactly what they seek, and without much effort. The plotting is full of so much detail - background and minutiae about Cordova's films, artifacts from news media and fan websites littered throughout the book as "hints," even a separate app (which I couldn't get to install on my device) which added a multimedia element to the narrative - but so very bereft of any weight or feeling of cohesion. So we have a giant pile of facts and information and so what? It seemed, at times, that I could have been sifting through the apocryphal remains of every single one of the ideas of one writer that never were used.
2) So many italics! I appreciate the effort that was put forth to add emphasis to at least one word in nearly every sentence in the book, but I do not appreciate the assumption that I need to be led to understand that everyone is extraordinarily excited about everything they say. Quite the opposite from making me feel the excitement, it just felt overly bored and heavy with effort. These people needed desperately to convince me to feel excited about what they were saying and they pushed me just too, too hard.
3) All of our characters - even the elusive Cordova - felt flat, if not merely derivative and lazy. I couldn't have cared any less about seeing any of these individuals through to their goals; Scott was simple and self involved and not particularly bright; Hopper was James walked straight out of Twin Peaks and into New York City, still in love with his Laura Palmer/Ashley Cordova; an attempt to write Nora as lost, fierce, frightened, determined, and fated came out as a broken 11-year-old with a wacky wardrobe and no more reason than any of the others. Even Cordova was a cobbled together Kubrick-Jodorowsky blankness that felt more of an omission by mistake than mystery.
Perhaps my unknowing personal investment in the success and believably and fullness of this story is what turned me away from it with such disappointment. I did feel the necessity to read this one through to the end, seeing the time and effort I had put into it as far as I'd gotten without much payoff. A few quick points on my frustrations:
1) Too much and too little. As a thriller, there are very few thrills. Clues are laid out simply and delicately, and although there is a wealth of information and "evidence", everything is conveniently packaged to deliver our protagonists to exactly what they seek, and without much effort. The plotting is full of so much detail - background and minutiae about Cordova's films, artifacts from news media and fan websites littered throughout the book as "hints," even a separate app (which I couldn't get to install on my device) which added a multimedia element to the narrative - but so very bereft of any weight or feeling of cohesion. So we have a giant pile of facts and information and so what? It seemed, at times, that I could have been sifting through the apocryphal remains of every single one of the ideas of one writer that never were used.
2) So many italics! I appreciate the effort that was put forth to add emphasis to at least one word in nearly every sentence in the book, but I do not appreciate the assumption that I need to be led to understand that everyone is extraordinarily excited about everything they say. Quite the opposite from making me feel the excitement, it just felt overly bored and heavy with effort. These people needed desperately to convince me to feel excited about what they were saying and they pushed me just too, too hard.
3) All of our characters - even the elusive Cordova - felt flat, if not merely derivative and lazy. I couldn't have cared any less about seeing any of these individuals through to their goals; Scott was simple and self involved and not particularly bright; Hopper was James walked straight out of Twin Peaks and into New York City, still in love with his Laura Palmer/Ashley Cordova; an attempt to write Nora as lost, fierce, frightened, determined, and fated came out as a broken 11-year-old with a wacky wardrobe and no more reason than any of the others. Even Cordova was a cobbled together Kubrick-Jodorowsky blankness that felt more of an omission by mistake than mystery.