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A review by kathleenmcg
The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro, Daniel Kraus
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I did not expect to love this book so much. I am interested in Guillermo del Toro's work, but I have never quite recovered from the end of Pan's Labyrinth. So I did not see the movie, and when I came across this book at the library, I thought I could control whether or not the book was upsetting. Actually, the book is great. I was interested to learn that Daniel Kraus, and del Toro were on parallel paths, with the Creature from the Black Lagoon as a star. They met, and worked apart in the US and Mexico, and came to the decision for Kraus to right the book and del Toro the direct the movie. So the basic structure was there, but of course the book is has quite a bit more detail, and is imaginative about things beyond the film medium, at present.
A lonely young mute woman works the graveyard shift at a research facility in Baltimore, MD, in 1962. Her best friend is her gay neighbor, both living over a decrepit theater that has movies going on round the clock. She and a fellow janitor learn that there is something alive in one of the labs, after a man comes out of the lab bleeding from the loss of two fingers. The two janitors are ordered to go in the lab to clean up the bloody mess. So starts a story where she slowly gains the trust of the humanoid "monster" and falls in love. In the meantime, the Cold War is fully engaged, so the "monster" becomes caught in the machinations of the two super powers, the U.S.S.R., and the U.S. At the same time, the man who loses his fingers has a parallel journey, and the intersection of the two storylines is the source of most of the conflict. The story, itself, is lovely, with enough horror and politics that it would never be mistaken for an American romance. Still, with the romantic elements, the reader cannot help but pull for the janitor, and the "monster," to have a happy ending.
A lonely young mute woman works the graveyard shift at a research facility in Baltimore, MD, in 1962. Her best friend is her gay neighbor, both living over a decrepit theater that has movies going on round the clock. She and a fellow janitor learn that there is something alive in one of the labs, after a man comes out of the lab bleeding from the loss of two fingers. The two janitors are ordered to go in the lab to clean up the bloody mess. So starts a story where she slowly gains the trust of the humanoid "monster" and falls in love. In the meantime, the Cold War is fully engaged, so the "monster" becomes caught in the machinations of the two super powers, the U.S.S.R., and the U.S. At the same time, the man who loses his fingers has a parallel journey, and the intersection of the two storylines is the source of most of the conflict. The story, itself, is lovely, with enough horror and politics that it would never be mistaken for an American romance. Still, with the romantic elements, the reader cannot help but pull for the janitor, and the "monster," to have a happy ending.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Gun violence
Moderate: Homophobia