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A review by cristi_ivan
Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
3.0
Beautiful horror sci-fi from the 50s with some deep political undertones.
As a façade, the book is about a parasitic alien life form that takes over a small US town, replacing the residents with almost identical duplicates. These duplicates have the memories of the humans they’ve replaced but are devoid of any form of feeling. Some people start to realize the things happening during the night, in houses’ basements and other hidden places, and paranoia infiltrates. You can’t trust your neighbors or even your family. Anyone could be an alien.
But, since the book was written during the Cold War Era, it’s pretty obvious that those nasty aliens are in fact commies. The Red Menace was at its height during the 50s and people believed that the communist ideology insidiously spread, like a virus, across US. Anyone could be a Communist and you had no mean to differentiate them from other people.
I liked the idea of the book, but I felt like the characters were underdeveloped and one-faced. Also, the book didn’t age quite gracefully in terms of scientific knowledge. So, 3 stars for me.
As a façade, the book is about a parasitic alien life form that takes over a small US town, replacing the residents with almost identical duplicates. These duplicates have the memories of the humans they’ve replaced but are devoid of any form of feeling. Some people start to realize the things happening during the night, in houses’ basements and other hidden places, and paranoia infiltrates. You can’t trust your neighbors or even your family. Anyone could be an alien.
But, since the book was written during the Cold War Era, it’s pretty obvious that those nasty aliens are in fact commies. The Red Menace was at its height during the 50s and people believed that the communist ideology insidiously spread, like a virus, across US. Anyone could be a Communist and you had no mean to differentiate them from other people.
I liked the idea of the book, but I felt like the characters were underdeveloped and one-faced. Also, the book didn’t age quite gracefully in terms of scientific knowledge. So, 3 stars for me.