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A review by kimberlyf
Psycho by Robert Bloch
5.0
*new comfort read unlocked*
I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times.
I will skip the synopsis on this one because, well, come on… It’s Psycho… And I may be biased but I f*cking loved this.
I followed the timeline of Psycho adaptions completely backwards. When the television series Bates Motel premiered in 2013 on A&E, I was there watching and I obsessively consumed each ensuing episode. When my father saw me settling down in front of the TV to watch, he remarked that this wasn’t an original story; it came from the film Psycho, of course. So off I set to watch the 1960 classic film. Fast forward to this year where an itch began to grow on me to watch the film again and to where I realized that it had never occurred to me to see if the film was based on a book (most great movies are). Now here we are, present day. Psycho is a very short read at just over 200 pages and nearly 5.5 hours on audiobook.
I didn’t have any expectations going in to the book except for the excitement I felt to reunite with some of my most beloved television characters, Norman and Mother. This book delivered. You can feel the unease and dread swirling in the air, the prose luxuriously horrific and dripping with trepidation.
I was surprised to learn that the original Norman Bates, the one from this book, is 40 years old as the television adaptions of Norman portrays a young man in his 20s. This didn’t take away from the story in any way but was an interesting change that I didn’t know about. Apparently Hitchcock wanted to make Norman more of a boy-next-door type and give him a persona that people could sympathize with and he thought making him younger would do just that.
If I had any complains, I would say that I actually wanted the ending to be drawn out more. The last pages are ultimately an explanation of everything but it was too concise and straight-forward; a perfect example of an author telling the reader instead of showing.
Overall, it’s a horror classic—one that I loved and will return to. As another user mentioned “easy to read, hard to put down”.
I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times.
I will skip the synopsis on this one because, well, come on… It’s Psycho… And I may be biased but I f*cking loved this.
I followed the timeline of Psycho adaptions completely backwards. When the television series Bates Motel premiered in 2013 on A&E, I was there watching and I obsessively consumed each ensuing episode. When my father saw me settling down in front of the TV to watch, he remarked that this wasn’t an original story; it came from the film Psycho, of course. So off I set to watch the 1960 classic film. Fast forward to this year where an itch began to grow on me to watch the film again and to where I realized that it had never occurred to me to see if the film was based on a book (most great movies are). Now here we are, present day. Psycho is a very short read at just over 200 pages and nearly 5.5 hours on audiobook.
I didn’t have any expectations going in to the book except for the excitement I felt to reunite with some of my most beloved television characters, Norman and Mother. This book delivered. You can feel the unease and dread swirling in the air, the prose luxuriously horrific and dripping with trepidation.
I was surprised to learn that the original Norman Bates, the one from this book, is 40 years old as the television adaptions of Norman portrays a young man in his 20s. This didn’t take away from the story in any way but was an interesting change that I didn’t know about. Apparently Hitchcock wanted to make Norman more of a boy-next-door type and give him a persona that people could sympathize with and he thought making him younger would do just that.
If I had any complains, I would say that I actually wanted the ending to be drawn out more. The last pages are ultimately an explanation of everything but it was too concise and straight-forward; a perfect example of an author telling the reader instead of showing.
Overall, it’s a horror classic—one that I loved and will return to. As another user mentioned “easy to read, hard to put down”.