Last month, I told you I was challenging myself to finish two books that were over 600 pages long each. While I didn’t achieve that (lofty) goal, I did get through one and halfway through the other. Here’s my review of one of those books.
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Wait, that’s the end?
Marisha Pessl takes us on one LONG, wild ride in Night Film. This novel is a page turner without a doubt. The story opens with investigative journalist, Scott McGrath, indulging in a late night run at the Central Park Reservoir. He gets that eerie feeling that he’s being followed and immediately that reader is sucked into a story that is unendingly goose bump-inducing. He sees what he thinks is a woman in a red coat following him, ducking in and out of the shadows. He quickly leaves the park and heads home, hoping he’s escaped whatever it was that was stalking him in the night. The reader is given background on McGrath’s shamed career. He was investigating infamous filmmaker, Stanislas Cordova, when he receives a mysterious phone call telling him that Cordova is involved in hurting children. Rather than checking the authenticity of the call, McGrath goes on a talk show and slanders Cordova. The information was proven to be a hoax and McGrath’s career crumbles. Years later, he learns that Cordova’s daughter, Ashley, was discovered at the bottom of a freight elevator shaft in an abandoned warehouse in Chinatown, the victim of an apparent suicide. Ashley’s death strikes a long-dormant part of McGrath, pushing him to reopen his investigation of Cordova and to determine what it was that drove the girl to her death. He teams up with a coat-check girl named Nora, and a drug dealer named Hopper on a quest to uncover the truth about Ashley and Cordova. Each of these sidekicks has a unique connection to Ashley and along with McGrath, all have their own motives for embarking down the path to the truth. The novel takes the three investigators through several locations in New York where they uncover a bit more information about Ashley and Cordova. The plot is fast-paced and keeps you wondering what is lurking on the next page, delivering twist after twist.
That being said, the novel failed on a couple of levels. The first level is the length. It was way longer than it needed to be. As McGrath finally reaches the point where he learns the “truth” about Ashley and Cordova, he uncovers several superfluous explanations for the harrowing experience he’s endured throughout the novel. The story would have been completely satisfying if Pessl had closed the book with one of the explanations. I found myself rolling my eyes when the next plot twist came up. Additionally, there were some holes in the plot pertaining to how characters were connected to Ashley, particularly her relationship with McGrath’s daughter. The writing was not especially strong, but kept me going, much like a David Baldacci conspiracy theory novel would. In the part of the story when McGrath was at Cordova’s home called The Peak, the writing was so real that I felt like I was IN a horror film. Other than that, I wouldn’t call Pessl’s writing exceptional. The book had one uniquely cool aspect, however (and could be the direction that books are moving toward in the future). Various supporting media were incorporated throughout the story, from mocked websites to newspaper and magazine articles to photographs. The added media brought the words on the page to life and was a very new and interesting way to enjoy a book. I was surprised to reach the end of the book and to find out that there was an app I could have downloaded that further enhanced the added media experience. Additional content in the app included the ability to explore the websites depicted in the book, as well as see clips from Cordova’s film. It was unfortunate that I found this out after I finished the book, and because I read it on my Kindle had no way of knowing what pages the additional media were on, so I couldn’t go back and check things out. I assumed that this was a problem that applied to reading the e-book, but when I spoke to a friend who was reading the hard cover, she was unaware of the app. I thought the app was a cool idea and was a unique way to enhance a book, but I think the author and publisher needed to do a better job of making readers aware of the app.
Will I tell you that you NEED to read this book? No. I can think of several better ways to spend your time, but it was a solid read. I’m not disappointed that I did it.
What I’m Reading Now
The Book Club Selection
A Light Between Oceans
By M.L. Stedman
Tom and Isabel run a lighthouse on Janus Rock, an island situated a hundred miles off the coast of Australia. A supply boat comes once a season and they are granted shore leave once ever other year. One day a boat washes ashore on their island with a dead man and an infant inside. Isabel has desperately wanted a child for years and has been unable to have a baby. She convinces Tom to refrain from reporting the dead man and they begin to raise the baby as their own. When the girl is two, they return to the mainland with her and learn that their choice to keep the baby has unforeseen consequences.
