Reading 1001 discussion

Rating: 4 Stars
Read: November 2016

This little book really packs a big punch. I was completely engrossed throughout the entire novel. I really didn't like the main characters very much (and certainly not what they did), but I still felt myself rooting for them all the same. I found this book highly enjoyable and extremely well-written.

I was interested to find that this book was the inspiration for many future novels, including The Stranger by Albert Camus.

4 stars
Good Noir. You find yourself rooting for people who are quite despicable, and there are several twists and turns.

I have no idea what the title has to do with the story, and this mystifies me.

read 2009, A crime novel and a quick, easy read.

Leni wrote: "4 stars
Good Noir. You find yourself rooting for people who are quite despicable, and there are several twists and turns.

I have no idea what the title has to do with the story, and this mystifies..."

See my review, Leni. I found something on Wikipedia.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Just finished and am entranced by this sub-genre - noir. Leni (above) says you find yourself rooting for people who are despicable. My reaction exactly

Reading 1001 gets another feather in its cap. I would never have read this book on my own. The 1001 list pointed me to it.

My review can be found here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

read Dec. 2020

This is a fast and snappy read. It is considered a hard-boiled noir classic, and I think at the time (1934) it would have been all that and more. Reading it in 2020, it is still very good, but not as shocking or hard as it would have seemed at the time. The pacing and the dialogue read like a screen play to me (which makes sense given that he was writing screen plays at the same time). The female lead, Cora, is a very interesting character that develops over the course of the (short) novel. I felt sorry for Frank, the narrator, he doesn’t seem to be in much control of his life. 3* If you are interested in Cain, I think Mildred Pierce is vastly superior.

Pre-2016 review:

***

A classic of the roman noir, this short story traces the relationship between Frank Chambers, a drifting tramp, and Cora Papadakis, a sullen, but beautiful woman stuck in a marriage which she wants to escape. They plan to murder the husband and, after failing once, succeed, but this leads them in the hands of justice and on a trail of possible betrayals, ending rather tragically. A rather entertaining read, with some unexpected and almost unbelievable twists.

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
3/5 stars

From the book jacket, “…is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder.”

Cain is described as “Master of the noir novel”. This is his first novel. Someone commented that it read like a screen play and I would agree.

Maybe I am too logical but I had trouble believing in the reasons for the murders. The two did not want to steal a car because that’s larceny but they had no problems with murder?

The title of this book is quite famous and by the end of the book I still didn’t know what it meant so I asked Google.

The title “The Postman Always Rings Twice” symbolizes the inevitable delivery of justice or retribution, reinforcing the theme of crime and punishment.

Amoral, okay, we are used to that kind of antihero by now so reading this feels quaint in a way, but the bigotry was hard to take. And then, the plot twist at the end was so contrived., and still more bigotry because the lawyer is clearly Jewish. So this is a god is dead kind of story with characters I didn't like but not exactly for the reasons that the author wanted me to not like them. I do not think people need to be reading this anymore.

This classic noir evidently kick started the whole genre. It was written during the depression and people were desperate for entertainment that both took them outside their struggling situations but that also reflected the frightening world that they found themselves in. Cain was a real journalist who picked up the basic plot outline from a real murder case. Unlikely Hammett or Chandler, there is no find line of what constitutes morality or the juxtaposition of justice and revenge, or even a high class swanky woman that actually was smarter than the men. Cain’s characters clearly earned their ultimate outcome. However, he is able to make you engaged in their thinking process if not in their beings. The cops and attorney general and even the “Jewish” lawyer are secondary players not the primary players. There is no hard boiled detective. The eroticism and the graphic violence made this a best seller but also got the publisher into legal issues. I can’t say that I liked it but I do like noir and I can appreciate this as a first even if it suffers from assumptions and prejudices from that era. Interestingly, in the book the woman is dark and alluring. Hollywood turned Cora into a bombshell blonde by casting Lana Turner and Jessica Lange.