Customer Reviews

Psycho

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Great story if you've seen the movie this is better and you get that missing insight of Norman Bates mind. The story is page turner Bloch is good writer and has plotted the story well no sentence is wasted or boring. After reading Darkly Dreaming Dexter I thought I would try and get into rambling mind of a different kind of killer. Bates is obsessed with his mother wants to be like her And wants her to be part of him. Only read below if you know the story.

In the end alot of detail is left out in the movie that touches on the state of mind of Bates. He was transvestite schizophrenic who in blind range of jealousy killed his mother and her lover so that he could have his mother to himself. In the end out of guilt tried to revive his mother from dead having conversation with her skeleton and pretending she was alive until in his split personality she literally became part of him. He would become semi drunk and have and split where she became the driver and killed until he gained control again, then he would assume he just passed out asleep when she was in control. He was reading into satanism and metaphysics which is probably where he got the idea that he could bring back his mother from the dead and decided to unearth her body from her grave.

Psycho is my first experience with Robert Bloch (as I'm sure it is with most people). It's tough to review this one fairly because it is so tied to one of the most famous movies of all time. Getting Hitchcock's images out of my head while reading is a near impossible task, especially since the movie was such a faithful adaptation of the book. In fact the two were so close that the book almost felt like a novelization of the movie that overshadowed it.

But man the book is compulsively readable! I wish I didn't know what was coming, because the book is very well written. Bloch is a clever writer who managed to easily build tension and foreshadow just enough without ever going over the top. Knowing the twists that are coming muted the suspense, but I still looked forward to reading more of it.

I started the book in the morning on a work day and only read on breaks and at lunch, but was a hundred pages (or about half way) in by the end of the day. I read the rest the next morning in a marathon session.

Though everything from the famous movie is also in the book, Bloch goes into a lot more depth about Norman and his relationship with Mother. And knowing what I know, seeing how it was handled is very impressive.

I've already ordered another highly rated Bloch book: The Kidnapper. It will be fun to see how he does when I don't know the story ahead of time.

I have been reading this book and have only a little more than 23 pages to the end. However, so far, I have been bowled over by the strong use of language and the way themes and concepts are introduced! This is one book that I think could (and possibly should) be assigned to read in junior high or high school. That's how moved I am by it. The human condition is one of the central threads of the tlae and you and I being human can certainly relate to that if I'm not mistaken.

Approximately 40 years ago I picked up a hardback copy of Bloch's "PSYCHO" and can honestly say it has been my favourite book of all time. Not long afterward I became an on-again, off-again correspondent with Robert Bloch that continued up until the late-eighties. He was very kind and responded regularly to my lettres and inquiries, affording me personal information about the genesis of "PSYCHO" as well as many anecdotes regarding his own interests. I have saved and bound the hundreds upon hundreds of of his handwritten lettres and will cherish them always. "PSYCHO" is, in my opinion, the ultimate "horror" story because of its unique handling of the grusome for its time (1959) and it is one book I never tire of re-reading. I highly recommend the tale to lovers of terror.

I have read Psycho since I am more than a horror film buff (I'm obsessed) and I have found that Psycho may very well be the best book I have ever read. It was an excellent read, and it kept you interested the whole way through. It is a whole lot better than the movie, and I will most likely read it more than once.

I read this book twice. If you've seen the movie, it's very close to it. It's a relatively thin book. Even if it weren't it'd be a fast read. If you haven't seen the movie or had the privilege to find a copy of this, the book is claimed to be about the real-life serial killer Edward Gein from Wisconsin, but there are no similarities other than Mr. Gein had a little hang-up with his mother. The book is about Norman Bates, owner of the Bates Motel - a lonely place off the highway. Norman keeps his mother in her room in the house on the grounds, and Mother doesn't like Norman feeling any attraction toward women, so she does away with them. When Mother kills one young woman, people come looking for her and find out what Mom has done and the secrets Norman has managed to hide for many years. A must read.

An awesome book,a not-so-complex plot,quick read.The chacterisation of Norman Bates is a treat for the book-lovers.It is the only point where the book scores over the movie.Everything else is equally wonderful in both movie and the book.

And that makes it squarely average. Bloch was never a great, but always good writer, and Psycho as a book is simply a semi-interestingly told story. Yes, the film was fairly faithful, but the book had its differences. Worth reading if yoiur interest is there. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Psycho is that it was the first work of fiction, written or filmed, based on Eddie Gein's sick handiwork....

I read this book through in a few short sessions, and I could certainly see reading it in full in one longer sitting. It's an American classic in horror as we all know, but having seen the film I could not help but make continuous comparisons to the film.

Often I prefer the book to the film, "The Shining" comes to mind, but here it's the opposite, I think anything left out of the film that was in the book was almost always the right thing to do. Some of the slower parts in the book helped to add proper atmosphere I suppose, but I still feel they could have been left out. Furthermore, the character of Norman Bates is more interesting as the tall, thin, shifty Anthony Perkins than the fat, be-speckled fellow we meet in the book.

Let me just brag a bit and say that when I first saw the film, the ending was unknown to me, I'm probably one of the few people still around who can say that, and it did make the film a lot more frightening at the time. That being said, if you're like I was, I'd recommend the movie first, read the book later, it will be a much more memorable experience. I did enjoy how Bloch subtly handled Normans interactions with mother, and that's all I will say.

First off, I was a fan of the movie before I read the book. There's no doubt that the movie is a classic, a must-see for any fan of the horror genre and one of the scariest films of all time, but the book is a classic in itself. Essentially, the plot in the book is the same as the movie, but there are big changes in dialogue and in several other details (Ex. The character Mary Crane is named Marian in the movie, Norman in the book offers Mary coffee to go with her food while Norman in the movie offers Marian milk.)

The biggest difference is that Norman Bates in the book isn't the clean-cut kid that we see in the movie. Anthony Perkins was great as Norman, but the Norman in the book is someone that a lot of people can level with: Anthony Perkins plays as the twenty-something mama's boy, Norman in the book is a 40 year-old pervert with a lot of personal problems that are pretty much out in the open for the reader to see (he's an alcholic for one thing.) With the movie, it is difficult to see how Norman deals with his struggles with Mother, and we see him as someone that we can easily sympathize with because aside from his anger towards his mother, and his willingness to protect her after the murders began, he still seems to be a pretty nice kid until we discover the truth that he is his mother. The original Norman that we see is a chilling portrayal of a sexually-repressed psychopath(with more than one personality, of course.) When it comes down to it, the Norman we see in the book is grittier and more true to life than in the movie, which is not to insult Hitchcock or Perkins.

The book itself is fast-paced and an easy read, not all good books need esoteric prose or footnotes at the end of every sentence, and although the movie has definitely outlived the book, the book is where the idea came from in the first place; if not for Psycho the book, Psycho the movie would never exist. We also shouldn't forget that this novel was written by Robert Bloch, a master of the horror genre, respected and loved by the best writers in the field (if you don't believe me, check out Appreciations of the Master by Robert Bloch, edited by Richard Matheson and Ricia Meinhardt) For me, Psycho is good read that is worth re-reading at no great cost (it only took me a day to read the darn thing for goodness sake!)