Just finished Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin. What a book! An instant addition to the favourite's shelf. I've never seen the film, but I can understand why it's such a classic.
The novel centers around Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, a young couple who move to the Bramford, a 19th century Gothic building. It's a brilliant book - the pace, the style, the writing. Levin details each minute aspect of every day life and still manages to be untedious. The detail really grounded the whole thing, how petty and ordinary the dialogue was, the big grains of information sown in among all the little details.
It did take me a while to get in to. I wasn't gripped to it from the start, though there is something strangely transfixing about the tone. It builds very slowly, you could fit the plot into a much smaller book, but when it hits that peak it really hits it. I was open-mouthed gasping by the end.
I'd love to be able to write like that; so ordinary, so matter-of-fact, as if the story was always a story and had just needed to be gathered and noted. The back-and-forth mendacity made it very real and the mention of the Pope's visit, the newspaper strikes, the transit strike, gave it such time and place. It's a finicky sort of genre to write for as the tone has to be struck precisely perfect to be good, hit that exact balance so that it's neither ridiculous nor predictable. Levin certainly managed to do that.
If anybody has anything to add, any comments, I'd love to discuss it.
The novel centers around Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, a young couple who move to the Bramford, a 19th century Gothic building. It's a brilliant book - the pace, the style, the writing. Levin details each minute aspect of every day life and still manages to be untedious. The detail really grounded the whole thing, how petty and ordinary the dialogue was, the big grains of information sown in among all the little details.
It did take me a while to get in to. I wasn't gripped to it from the start, though there is something strangely transfixing about the tone. It builds very slowly, you could fit the plot into a much smaller book, but when it hits that peak it really hits it. I was open-mouthed gasping by the end.
I'd love to be able to write like that; so ordinary, so matter-of-fact, as if the story was always a story and had just needed to be gathered and noted. The back-and-forth mendacity made it very real and the mention of the Pope's visit, the newspaper strikes, the transit strike, gave it such time and place. It's a finicky sort of genre to write for as the tone has to be struck precisely perfect to be good, hit that exact balance so that it's neither ridiculous nor predictable. Levin certainly managed to do that.
If anybody has anything to add, any comments, I'd love to discuss it.
