Customer Reviews

Jaws

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Imagine it's 1975 and you're Peter Benchley. You've just published your first novel, a tale about a nasty shark that is an immediate success. Then along comes some guy named Speilberg, and suddenly its his "Jaws" everyone is talking about.

Talk about sharkbite. Ouch!

Making matters worse is that the book is very different from the movie, in many minor and a few major respects. People reading "Jaws" after seeing the movie may scratch their heads seeing the character Richard Dreyfuss played in the movie having a fling with Roy Scheider's wife, or how differently the final confrontation on the "Orca" turns out.

Steven Speilberg definitely improved upon it, but "Jaws" is still a good book, at times very much so. If you can set aside your memory of the movie and try to read this with fresh eyes, you will find yourself enjoying the book, and perhaps even feel, as I do, a little grateful it isn't just a novelization of what was on screen.

Speilberg had the best take on "Jaws" the novel when he said the characters in it are so unlikable he pulled for the shark. I think Benchley wanted exactly that effect. If so, he succeeds. The central character in the novel as in the film, Chief Brody, is lunkheaded if sympathetic. His wife, Ellen, feels shackled not because of the feminist urges then roiling the social scene but because she's a rich girl who married down and now has regrets about the Hampton cocktail soirees she passed up. The citizens of the town, named Amity perhaps ironically, are so cold-blooded they want the beaches kept open, shark or no, because otherwise they lose their summer trade. The mayor is in with the Mob.

As young people stretch out on the beach, Benchley describes the horny fantasies of the boys and their smug upper-middle-class satisfaction. "Privilege had been bred into them with genetic certainty," Benchley writes, before turning his attention to younger beachgoers with the scorn of a Puritan minister.

"The little children played in the sand at the water's edge, digging holes and flinging muck at each other, unconscious and uncaring of what they were and what they would become."

Nothing quite like a 20-foot Great White shark to knock the complacency from these sinful folk, maybe send a few to their early just desserts. Benchley sometimes presents this notion of the shark as instrument of divine judgment in a playful way, sometimes more seriously, but it lends an undercurrent to the story unique to the book.

Also unique to the book is Ellen's affair with Hooper the ichthyologist, which moves things quite afield from the shark hunt but has a good deal of suspense in its own right, as Ellen cold-bloodedly sets things in motion and worries more about the possibility of rejection then betraying the father of her three sons. Benchley here captures the social mores of the 1970s with Updikean ruthlessness, and perhaps suggests some of the preternatural reason for the shark's atypical presence off Long Island's southern coast.

Benchley doesn't catch every ball he tosses up, particularly with the mob subplot, and the final confrontation ends things on an abrupt and flat note. But he keeps you uneasily interested throughout, and his descriptions of the shark's attacks are especially well-written. The movie is better for its stronger focus and better humor, among other things, but Benchley's novel deserves credit for giving Speilberg's vision life, and for presenting an alternate fish tale you will enjoy reading, for its own sake as well as for comparison.

I loved "Jaws" when I first read it, because it broke new literary ground and it terrified me to think what could be deep in the ocean where I swam so often. Subsequent readings have disappointed, somewhat, and I gloss over the tawdry relationship between Hooper and Ellen Brody; which has nothing to do with the story and rather cheapens the book, IMHO. The SHARK is what we want to read about; HIS effect on this tiny community, and his fateful encounters with various unfortunates. The reader who first received "Jaws" as part of his daily assignment was fired on the spot when he dismissed the book with the comment: "Who wants to see a movie about sharks?" He was blackballed, quietly, and is now most likely selling vacuum cleaners door to door. The more astute reader who brought this to the studio's attention deserves rich praise indeed, because this was a blockbuster and continues to be, on screen. Not to denigrate the book too much, the shark encounters are fantastic, and the descriptions of the attacks are fabulous, and you really feel for the poor people trapped in the territory of the unseen monster...From the first chapter and the first attack, you are mesmerized, and on the run with Brody, Hooper and Quint (based on the real life shark hunter, Frank Mundus, who landed the largest Great White ever caught on line; 17 feet in length and almost 4000 pounds!!!!)

The REAL Quint:

"Frank Mundus, born in Brooklyn, NY in 1925, is the most famous shark fisherman of all time. Since taking his boat CRICKET II on it's maiden voyage in 1947, Capt. Mundus has caught some of the largest great white sharks on record. He pioneered the sport of sharkfishing and was the innovator of many of the fishing techniques used today. Although Peter Benchley has never publicly acknowledged him, it is generally known that he was the inspiration for the character "Quint". Much of the action in JAWS is based on Capt. Mundus' real-life experiences.

In 1961 Capt. Mundus caught a 3,000lb great white off the bathing beach of Amagansett (Amity?), NY. The following year he caught a larger great white off Block Island. His greatest claim to fame came in 1964 when, after a 5 hour struggle, he captured a 17 1/2', 4,500lb great white 10 miles off Montauk, Long Island. The shark required 5 harpoons, each attached to a beer barrel by a 400' rope, before it could be towed to shore. Benchley refers to this incident during his interview on the 20th anniversary edition of JAWS, but doesn't mention Capt. Mundus by name. In 1986 Capt. Mundus and Capt. Donnie Braddick caught the largest fish ever taken on rod and reel, a 17', 3,427lb great white. Capt. Braddick was the angler, while Capt. Mundus baited the shark, drove the boat, and supervised the capture of the shark."

The book, being the prelude to a whole new genre of shark books, and caused a simultaneous "shark ephiphany" world-wide, is the forerunner of such books since it's publication, and how glad I am it was published!

Well worth reading, if you haven't (how come you haven't?) yet had the expereince, and you can still enjoy it and be frightened by it even if you've only seen the movie...

JAWS the novel will never live up to JAWS the movie, but anyone who loves the movie would be more than rewarded for chomping into Peter Benchley's deep blue vision of a shark terrorizing the local holiday resort of Amity Island. Jaws topped the bestseller list for 44 weeks and had massive appeal. It is a well written horror story about a shark attack and a local cop, Chief Brody, who needs to restore order to a town that is quickly loosing its summer trade. There are many different plot elements not found in the movie, like the Amity rapist, the mafia connection, several variations in the shark attacks, Ellen Brody's character is more fully developed and she even tries to have an affair with Hooper. Vaughn is up to his eyeballs in dept. There is also the character of Whitman, the newspaper editor. Yes there are many elements in the movie that are not in the book and similar scenes are not played out as good. You are forgiven to pass on the lengthy dinner sequence or the Ellen Brody / Hooper after flirt. However the ending is so very different that it will have you extremely surprised in the final 30 pages that are just as shocking as the movie. In fact it is the variation in how it was originally conceived that should make any fan happy. There are some very shocking things that Quint gets up to in his boat with sharks and dolphins. The man versus beast element is very strong and the book is considerably violent in many ways other than just shark attacks. It is much darker than the movie which was aimed at a family audience. The book is a lot harsher and doesn't shy away from some stuff that will have you look away from the page. It is absolutely shocking stuff at times and so lives up to its hype.

It's easy to look down our nose at this book today and say it's not great but to do so is to totally ignore the perspective of WHEN it was written. In the early 70s, Jaws was totally original, totally fresh. The point of view from the shark had never been done before and to see it was exhilirating.

I agree with others who pooh-pooh this book for the cheap, soap opera-ish romance between Cooper and Brody's wife; even back then, this wasn't particularly well done, nor did it serve to advance the plot. That's why it was completely removed from the film version, so the movie could focus completely on how do we deal with the menacing shark.

Still, Jaws was and always be one of the great thrillers of all time - both as a book and a movie. Peter Benchely was a master who, ironically, ended up dedicating his life to shark preservation after villifying them with this book. How sad to learn of his passing earlier this year. But everyone should read Jaws! Book lovers and movie lovers alike; it gives us all a great sense of where the truly great stories come from.

I read this book over the winter break (actually I read it in a day while it rained outside) and I have to say that it was very entralling. Having seen the movie a dozen times over and never getting tired of it, I thought I'd check out the book because a friend told me that the book was different. How different? Well, let's just say that except for Quint (and even he's kind of different in the book) the main characters all seem very different from the characters in the movie. The Chief is not a NYC sophisticate, but is more of a former beat cop whose "dream" was to one day become chief of police in Amity. His wife is not as devoted as she is in the movie. Hooper the shark expert is also somewhat different and this book is interesting because the people are interesting, while the shark is sort of a looming natural threat like a hurricane or earthquake. The basic plot is similar as the washed up corpse of a girl is found on the beach, but then it totally veers off into a different story. And that's a good thing because it felt like I was reading an unpredictable book and not a retread of the movie. I probably would have stopped reading the book if it had been exactly the same as the movie because why bother if you know what's going to happen? I can see why this book was such a major blockbuster as it is quite fascinating to read. The knowledge about sharks does seem very dated (but then a quarter of a century will do that), but isn't that bad. I recommend this book because it is not like the movie in many ways and will surprise the reader and it's almost like a parallel world to the movie version which I appreciated.

Jaws is an easy book to get hooked on. Well-written and suspenseful (perhaps a little TOO much), the book provides readers with lots of well rounded action. Benchley really knows his readers, and he shows this through his writing. For example, the shark will appear and commit some sort of brutal attack on a swimmer, killing them with razor-sharp teeth. Benchley then forces you to wait a good deal of time, where not much seems to happen. Then, right when you can't take it anymore, and you find yourself saying out loud, "God! Where's the shark? Show up again already!" the shark suddenly shows up to commit another gruesome and/or violent act. This gets done perhaps too much, which makes the book somewhat tiring at times, but overall, this style tends to work for the novel.
I must say that if you've read the book but haven't seen the movie, or vice versa, neither plot is spoiled. The book and the movie are actually quite different from each other. Yes, there are the basic similarties such as characters and the initial plot (a shark terrorizing a coastal town and three men must hunt it down). Besides these similiarities, the novel and the movie are quite different. They're both just as good, but they aren't as similar as one would think. For example, the mayor of Amity is a lot less of a moron in the book than he is in the movie. I also found the characters in the book to be less likeable, like Ellen Brody, who cheats on her husband and has an affair with Matt Hooper (that part's a little boring, and it's not in the movie.) The ending is also different. I won't say the book ending for those of you who haven't read it, but I must warn you that if you're expecting an ending like the one in the movie, prepare to be disappointed. The book also deals more with the aspects and the whole point of view of the town, rather than those of just the characters Quint, Brody, and Hooper as the movie happens to do.
I've heard many talk about how "inaccurate" Jaws is. Believe it or not, this opinion is very, very exaggerated. Considering how old it is, Jaws is actually, pretty accurate. Of course, with its age come a few exceptions, such as the way the shark is depicted. Yes, great whites will attack humans if in the water with them, but once a great white realizes that the human they are attacking is not a seal, they will leave them alone a short while after. Also, in the book it is explained that there is no way to predict a shark's behavior, which leads to the fact that nobody can understand why the shark decides to hang around in Amity waters for so long a period. It's true, a shark's behavior is not always predictable, but a shark would not hang out in such shallow and/or coastal waters for as long as it does in the book, and Hooper also explains that nobody knows how long great whites grow to be. It has now been shown that they can grow up to twenty-six feet in length. Besides these few minor facts, however, the novel does tend to be rather accurate most of the time.
Overall, Jaws is pretty good. It's a little strange, but interesting and worth anyone's while. For those of you who haven't read it, go out and get a copy. I enjoyed it, and I think you will too.

I Have read this book about 3 0r 4 times.
I think this book is a classic as well as the movie.
the only thing that I did not care for in the book is that chief brody's wife has an affair with Matt hooper which does not happen in the movie. I like hooper a lot better in the movie in the book is a bit of a jerk.
anyone who liked the movie but has not read the book you should read it. it is as good as the movie.

It is difficult to give Peter Benchley's "Jaws" novel a proper review because a vast majority of people saw the movie before they read the book. Therefore, even if just subconsciously, the characters of the novel already have distinct faces, mannerisms, etc. before anyone even reads the first sentence. The fact is, the movie and the novel DO differ significantly, as the film is primarily a horror/slasher/suspense film (the only difference being that instead of having a human murderer, this time, it's a shark), whereas the book is basically a character study of human nature (love, lust, greed, trust, etc.). SO, my advice to anyone reading this book is this: Don't read it expecting to be satisfied the way you were when you saw the movie.-- This book and the film focus on different things. Also, although this may be brutally honest, this book has gained most of its popularity and/or cult following BECAUSE of Speilburg's brilliant movie. Standing by itself (without the movie next to it), this book is average. It didn't alter the world of fiction the way "Jaws" (the movie) revolutionized the film world. The book borrows elements from primarily Moby Dick, while throwing in some soap-opera-esque triangle-love conflict (which seems, admitingly, unnecessary and out of place). But, any true fan of the movie should read this book for the simple sake of comparison. Honestly, this is one of the few instances where the film is better than the book, but that should not stop anyone from wanting to read it. It's a good "beach read" (um...pardon the phrase)...lacking any real literary/academic value other than pulp entertainment, but interesting and provacative because of the legend and iconic status that has developed surrounding the "Jaws" realm (book, film, amusement park rides, etc).

The book Jaws is about a police officer named Brody. Brody lives in the small New England town of Amity, where nothing significant ever happens. It all changes when a massive great white shark begins a series of bloody attacks against the citizens. Soon, Brody is forced to make difficult decisions and do even harder tasks.

I thought that Jaws was a very interesting book. Peter Benchley does a very good job of keeping you interested by making the attacks come at unexpected times, keeping you on the edge of your seat. I think what made Jaws really good was that he managed to put enough shark attacks in the book to keep you interested, but not too much that they became redundant.

I read this novel largely because I found it on a list of the all-time 10 best-selling fiction novels. Others on the list that I've gotten 'round to reading include "God's Little Acre", "Valley of the Dolls", "The Exorcist", "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull", and "The Carpetbaggers."

Benchley's "Jaws" is the fastest-read thriller I've ever read. I would now have to rank it with "Jurassic Park" as one of my two favorite pure-entertainment novels. And I'm sure, over the years I will read it again, and again....

But there are enough interspersed thrills to keep this novel rolling. At 275 pages it is (by my slow reading skills) easily readable in a week, and many better readers than me could probably knock it out in a single day.

The tone of the novel is darker and more cynical than the movie. Speilberg's film opts for wonder and adventure, whereas Benchley's original is more brooding and angry. And as other reviewers have noted many of the chief scenes in the movie are not in the book. Nonetheless, "Jaws" the novel does stand on its own. It is a terrific read! Highly entertaining. Complete. And I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a taut, fast-paced thriller.

Stacey Cochran
Author of CLAWS available for 80 cents