Chuck

I didn't see the movie version of this until I was an adult, and I really disliked it. After reading the book, I have more sympathy for the filmmakers, since it sure SEEMS like there's enough imagery in it to make for a great movie. But in reality, everything that makes the book great is unfilmable — it's all the passages where Bradbury rhapsodizes about youth in small town America; or explains the sense of indescribable loss that comes from being reminded of your age; or sets the stakes for a tense scene not just as the fate of a young boy or his middle-aged father, but a battle between good and evil that goes back for millennia.

I was surprised to see in Bradbury's afterword that the story spent so much of its life in the form of various screenplays, since most of its essence seems to be in Bradbury's flowery descriptions (which were at some times overwrought, which along with some period-appropriate but still unfortunate sexist mentality, are my only complaints about the book).

I loved this book not just for delivering everything I wanted out of an old-fashioned whodunnit, but also for being a virtuoso performance by an author delivering a defense of the genre that's never defensive, didactic, or self-conscious.

What impresses me the most is that there are a hundred ways that this could've ended up insufferable or even just disposable. Descriptions of the “nesting doll” murder mystery-within-a-murder mystery made it sound like the literary equivalent of the “Scream” movies: self-aware meta-interpretations of a genre that work perfectly well, but don't end up “saying” much of anything apart from “we're all in on the joke.” But Horowitz includes an implicit defense of whodunnits while acknowledging the criticisms of them. He acknowledges that they're the literary equivalent of comfort food, then challenges anyone to explain why that's a bad thing.

Horowitz changes voice frequently throughout the book — not just for the two mysteries themselves, but for different characters throughout both stories, and for excerpts from other novels. There's never a sense that the inner mystery is “simple” or somehow less literary than the outer mystery, just that they have different voices. And what's more, he includes lengthy examples of BAD writing, a crutch often used by insecure writers to make their “real” writing seem more accomplished by comparison. Here, though, they're an implicit defense of readable, unpretentious writing and clear, confident storytelling.

I do wish that I were in a book club or something, because I can't shake the feeling that there are clues I still haven't identified, and threads that were left hanging. The downside to such a meticulously-constructed puzzle box is the sinking suspicion that there are always layers of the puzzle left unsolved.

I think I should've read my friend Rain's review first, because it was accurate: this starts out as a really intriguing and original concept but then quickly turns into just another story about zombies. It was pretty well-written, but I was almost never surprised by any of it after the initial setup. I'm very glad I chose the audiobook for it, since the narration by Finty Williams was excellent, and she was a surprisingly perfect choice for the material. Her voice is similar enough to Dame Judi Dench's that it felt like several hours riding through Spaceship Earth, if Spaceship Earth were about zombies.

It's a classic and it's easy to see how influential it was and how intelligent it is, and it's refreshing to read actual science fiction after spending a lifetime surrounded by science fantasy. But man is it dry and corny! The science is probably timeless, but the book feels like it must've been dated even when it was written.

I couldn't actually finish it. It's been sitting in my queue forever. I even abandoned it, felt guilty for abandoning such an easy read, picked it up again, and read for about 30 pages before I realized I'd already read those 30 pages a month ago. I can't really blame the author; they had the thankless task of writing a bridge novel where nothing of substance could actually happen, but it's amazing how much nothing happens in this book.