Book Review: Jaws by Peter Benchley

 

 Hello, Fellow Book Worms and Book Dragons!

  When I was a child I saw Jaws, and to this day I am weary of going into the water at the beach. But Jaws has been a staple in my yearly movie-watching experience. I love it and always wanted to read the original source material. Taking up this decades-old novel, I set upon a journey that was very different from Steven Spielberg's version.

  Jaws is Peter Benchley's 1974 novel, which enjoyed over forty weeks on the national best-seller list after its release. It is currently published in paperback by Ballatine Books, an imprint of Random House Publishing. In it, we are brought into the lives of the residents of Amity Island, New York. Chief Martin Brody does his best to keep the tourist town running smoothly under the watchful eye of Mayor Larry Vaughn. Then a young woman goes missing after swimming in the ocean near the island. Soon her remains are discovered and ruled as a shark attack. But the evidence seems off. Water temperatures are wrong for a shark to be in the area. And it appears that the fish is staying close to Amity Island as two more victims are taken by the jaws of their unseen attacker. Brody wants to warn the residents and close the beach, but Mayor Vaughn forbids it. Brody is suspicious of the mayor's intentions and does his best to look into why the mayor is determined to keep tourism open even if it means the people being eaten. Soon, Matthew Hooper, an Ivy League Ichthyologist, is brought in to offer information on the shark that is terrorizing Amity Island. After several attempts to catch the fish, an expert fisherman named Quint is brought in to end the shark's reign of fear over the island's residents. But what they find is no ordinary shark. This is a monster Great White with only one thing on its mind: feeding.

  We all have seen the story of Jaws on the silver screen, but the book is incredibly different from the film, that it is almost a different story.  I did not like any of the characters in this novel. Vaughn was a man in debt with the mob who did not seem to care if his residents lived or died as long as he made money enough to get the loan sharks off his back. Martin Brody was a moody, aging man who drank too much, and was constantly in jealous mode around his wife. Matthew Hooper was a brash and often arrogant man who did not think twice about sleeping with Brody's wife. Ellen Brody was also very different from the film. She was fed up with Martin's drinking and seduces Hooper to make herself feel better and younger since she had once dated Matthew's older brother. And on several occasions, Benchley shows us random residents that either have little or no importance to the story. I assume it was his way of making the reader feel more attached to the town. But ultimately served no purpose in the overall story.

   I admit to having gone into this novel with only the big-screen knowledge of the characters. It may have clouded my judgment a little. But the sheer contrast of personalities within these characters was staggering. I found myself not rooting for anyone, not even Quint, who is a shadow of what Robert Shaw brought to Spielberg's film. There is even a part midway in the novel where Benchley's story seems to turn into a steamy romance novel as he writes Ellen's narrative. It seemed like he felt the book would not appeal to women, prompting him to write an encounter with Ellen and Matthew. I am happy that co-screenwriter, Carl Gottlieb, and Peter Benchley changed the characters' personalities for the movie. The ending is also quite anti-climactic and short, making me wish that Ellen's almost thirty-page arc had been sacrificed for a better ending.

  I read this novel in part with the narration of actor, Erik Steele. His even and excellent presentation of the novel kept me on track as I read Benchley's story. His reading of Quint was my favorite part of his work on this audiobook. He took a novel I was not enjoying and made it a lot better.

  Jaws was a three-star read for me. I was not engaged in the lives of these characters. Nor did I like their selfish and often narcissistic nature of them. I rooted more for the shark than I did his would-be victims. The middle lagged with Ellen's seduction of Matthew, leading to a flat ending that left me feeling like it had been rushed. I usually never say this, but the movie is better than the novel.  

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