Jaws

Jaws by Peter Benchley

It is absolutely impossible to read and review this book without thinking about the movie and the differences.  What many people don’t know, is that this book was a number one best-seller when it was written a year before the movie came out, and many people fell in love with it before the film was ever released.  Still, though, books don’t quite stay in the minds of most people as much as blockbuster movies, and we must remember that unlike post-1975, it was still possible to go swimming in the ocean without the thought of a shark ever entering one’s mind.

Our story takes place in a small ocean front town in the Northeast called Amity.  This is one of those beachfront towns that survive for the whole year based on how good the business is for the summer months when the rich people come to live for a few weeks.  If the summer isn’t a good one, the town struggles for the entire year with businesses shutting their doors and many going on welfare.  So when a giant killer shark rears its ugly head and kills a young woman right before the summer season starts, the powers that be in the town want to keep things quiet.  Why scare everyone away when a seemingly random incident happens to kill one person?

The chief of police in this town, Martin Brody, has other ideas. In his mind, the beaches must close, and the shark must be found and killed.  He’s pretty much alone in his opinion, yet finds out that just because he’s chief of police, that doesn’t mean he can do what he thinks is necessary.  It seems like there are too many powerful people pulling strings in this town, some backed by shady investors, and they refuse to let the town die because of a couple of freak accidents.  It’s amazing what the threat of a dying town will do to people.  Even though Brody is successful in some of his efforts to curb swimming, he’s viewed as a villain by everyone in this town.  When he does temporarily close the beaches, he puts the town one step closer to extinction.  When he can’t permanently close the beaches, however, then the family members of those killed by the shark view him as an irresponsible murderer.

Fortunately, Brody’s wife Ellen seems to stand by him.  Most of the time.  Here’s where this book falters.  You see, when Brody and Ellen got married (years before the book begins), Ellen was one of those rich summer people that Brody wooed away into marrying him.  Ellen must now live her life without the extravagance of the wealthy that she once knew.  She seems ok, until Matt Hooper comes into town.  Matt is a young, spoiled, good looking Ichthyologist that shows up to help discover how to stop the shark, and it just so happens that Ellen dated his older brother years ago.  So Ellen is suddenly driven into mid-life crisis mode, and is unintentionally smitten with Matt Hooper.  She even manages to sneak away with him for a romantic diversion.  This whole episode is sad, disturbing, and completely unnecessary.  As Steven Spielberg said when he read the book, the characters were so nasty, that he actually rooted for the shark.  I’ll bet he had Ellen and Hooper in mind when he made that statement.

Well, adversaries Brody and Hooper, along with an expensive shark killer named Quint, finally have no other alternative than to charter Quint’s boat and go after the beast.  The scenes in the movie during this final act of the play were quite brilliant.  In the book, however, the action is only so-so.  The ending of this book was about as anti-climactic and rushed as I’ve ever read, and it manages to bring the whole book down several notches.

This was still a very good, quick read.  Don’t expect it to be anywhere near as good as the movie, and don’t expect many of your favorite scenes to be here, either.  On its own, it was still a pretty good book, and quite unique in its subject matter - at least at the time.