Reviews

The Getaway by Jim Thompson

pipoprime's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

bread_mountain's review against another edition

5.0

Jim Thompson's best books are so very strange. The end of this is a bit surreal. It reminded me of a Coen Brothers movie.

anti_formalist12's review against another edition

5.0

Real nightmarish stuff. As harrowing and as introspective as any of the better known "greats." "The Dime-store Dostoevsky" was a well earned moniker.

paul_cornelius's review against another edition

5.0

I suppose I am like many others who came to this novel after seeing the film. The Steve McQueen version, I should emphasize. What is remarkable is that both film and novel are masterful in their own, separate and distinctly different ways. It is the last part of Thompson's book that is so different and so abstract as to divert the reader from the film completely. Its description of Doc and Carol on the run and their hideaway among Ma and Earl makes for one of the most harrowing and claustrophobic passages in contemporary literature. But then Thompson does himself one better with the final chapter, where Doc and Carol make their "getaway" to El Rey, which turns out to be the world's most sophisticated and luxurious charnel house. No other work in this genre turns on its protagonists so utterly and viciously. At novel's end, metaphor and reality merge in an indecipherable way. This book is a masterpiece.

carlamaeshep's review against another edition

dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

crabdaniels's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

katieejayne's review against another edition

3.0

I can't quite say I enjoyed this one. It was a fast read but it wasn't that good. At least in my opinion. The first sixty or so pages was fine, a typical bank heist and after that it just got very confusing and difficult to figure out what was going on. The final chapter in particular was just a mess of all sorts of random things. I couldn't puzzle out what was happening, who was alive anything. All I knew was what I had been told in my lecture, that the final part of the novel went very Dystopian. I'm talking Terminus in the Walking Dead if you catch my drift...

The only reason this has a rating of three stars is because I really enjoyed the bank heist aspect and how Doc and Carol interacted. They had such an interesting dynamic. Neither never quite knew what the other was thinking and so they were always a little on edge around each other. But at the same time completely besotted with one another.

I'm glad I've finally read a Jim Thompson novel but I can't say I'll be massively inclined to pick any more up in the near future.

www.a-novel-idea.co.uk

wagstaff's review against another edition

fast-paced

3.5

bizzerg's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

cmcrockford's review against another edition

5.0

Maybe Thompson's greatest and most purely moralistic novel, terrifying in how it explores a singular question - Can I trust the person I love? - better than any post-Updike NY'er story. The horror of the book is that those two qualities aren't mutual here, and that's what grounds the final, nightmarish El Rey passages: two people realizing that they are evil.