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duggimon 's review for:
The Secret History of Twin Peaks
by Mark Frost
I read the audiobook version of this, though I do also have the hard copy, and I expect I will read that before too long. I'm not sure this book is best experienced as an audiobook as the presentation of the physical copy looks like it adds a lot to it. That said, it was nice to hear so many of the original cast on the audiobook doing their bits.
The book itself is quite an odd collection of excerpts, reports and observations, assembled as an investigation by an agent into the circumstances around events in Twin Peaks, going all the way back to the days of the earliest white settlers and carrying on up to Cooper's investigation. There were a lot of additions to the mythology around it all that were interesting, but the book was still frustratingly light on any real details (as I suppose I had expected, it is in keeping with the way the series has handled it's underlying mythology from when it first began to be introduced) but it also rewrote and replaced some things in the histories (which I had not expected, and didn't particularly appreciate). Most notably, there is a long digression on the history of Ed, Norma and Nadine, which wasn't particularly important in the context of the rest of the book, but which is completely counter to Ed's telling of the story in the hospital when Nadine's in her coma. That's one of my favourite stories from the show and to completely excise it and replace it is a odd move, particularly since there seems no reason for it.
There's also a huge focus on a very minor character from the show, which felt quite odd and gave the book a feeling of being scraped and cobbled together, rather than an intrinsic piece of the overall story. It just made the book feel like it stretched a little bit too far and so fell somewhat short of what I hoped for, which was a key piece of the tale, bridging the gap between series 2 and 3 of the show. That said, I enjoyed the book a lot despite its flaws and would definitely recommend it to fans of the show, though not to anybody else. I can't imagine what anyone who hasn't watched the show closely would make of the book, I'm sure it would be bewildering and pointless.
I'll perhaps revise my rating upwards once I read the print version I have waiting for me but for now it's sitting at 3.5 stars. An interesting addendum to the show but a bit weak in its own right.
The book itself is quite an odd collection of excerpts, reports and observations, assembled as an investigation by an agent into the circumstances around events in Twin Peaks, going all the way back to the days of the earliest white settlers and carrying on up to Cooper's investigation. There were a lot of additions to the mythology around it all that were interesting, but the book was still frustratingly light on any real details (as I suppose I had expected, it is in keeping with the way the series has handled it's underlying mythology from when it first began to be introduced) but it also rewrote and replaced some things in the histories (which I had not expected, and didn't particularly appreciate). Most notably, there is a long digression on the history of Ed, Norma and Nadine, which wasn't particularly important in the context of the rest of the book, but which is completely counter to Ed's telling of the story in the hospital when Nadine's in her coma. That's one of my favourite stories from the show and to completely excise it and replace it is a odd move, particularly since there seems no reason for it.
There's also a huge focus on a very minor character from the show, which felt quite odd and gave the book a feeling of being scraped and cobbled together, rather than an intrinsic piece of the overall story. It just made the book feel like it stretched a little bit too far and so fell somewhat short of what I hoped for, which was a key piece of the tale, bridging the gap between series 2 and 3 of the show. That said, I enjoyed the book a lot despite its flaws and would definitely recommend it to fans of the show, though not to anybody else. I can't imagine what anyone who hasn't watched the show closely would make of the book, I'm sure it would be bewildering and pointless.
I'll perhaps revise my rating upwards once I read the print version I have waiting for me but for now it's sitting at 3.5 stars. An interesting addendum to the show but a bit weak in its own right.