Straw Dogs (Bloomsbury Film Classic) [Paperback]

Gordon Williams (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bloomsbury Film Classic | Publication Date: October 6, 2003

In the same year that Man first flew to the moon and the last American soldier left Vietnam there were still corners of England where lived men and women who had never travelled more than fifteen miles from their own homes. There was a dark side to this corner of England ...American academic George Magruder and his English wife Louise have left the city streets of Philadelphia in search of a little tranquility. At Louise's wishes, they have rented an isolated stone house in England and are spending an icy winter in the remote Cornish village of Dando. But their arrival is greeted with suspicion - and hostility. Their first shock comes when their little daughter Karen stumbles across an odd object in the snow. Discovering first a piece of tabby fur, and then a leg, she finds their pet cat: strangled. Something is seriously amiss. And when Henry Niles, a convicted child murderer, escapes across the moor and a local girl goes missing, the Magruders become the unwitting targets of a primitive and brutal violence. STRAW DOGS is a disturbing evocation of how an insular, xenophobic society can react to an outsider. It is also a shocking expolration of the violence at the heart of even the most mild-mannered of men, asking the question: how far will a man go to protect his family and his home?

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Gordon Williams was born in Paisley and is the author of over twenty novels, of which FROM SCENES LIKE THESE was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written extensively for television, and has worked as a journalist, and as the commercial manager of Chelsea FC.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks (October 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747566038
• ISBN-13: 978-0747566038
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,509,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Misleading Cover but Great Book, November 16, 2007

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Straw Dogs (Bloomsbury Film Classic) (Paperback)

I hate it when publishers put images from the movie on the cover of a re-released book, especially when all the image scenes used from the film are not even in Gordon Williams' classic novel. For starters we have photographs of Amy (played by actress Susan George), a character who isn't even in this book. George Magruder's wife in the book is named Louise, Louise is a lot older than the Amy character from the movie (35) and has dark not blond hair. Plus Louise never fights any of the attackers so why use an image of Amy fighting an attacker on a bed. Plus there's not really any shotgun action from the character George (in fact he questions the whole anti having a gun for protection stance in the book) so why use Hoffman holding a shotgun on the cover?

Apart from the misleading cover, (and I have just read this cover version as I thought that maybe Williams had gone back and done a written version of the film with the new characters) the story is exactly the same as when it was originally published back in 1969 under the title The siege of Trencher's Farm. Those who are huge fans of the Straw Dogs movie may well be disappointed if after being mislead by the cover expect to read a written version of that film.

If you haven't read the book the basic plot is an American professor George Magruder is writing an English style book, and so he can be inspired, has agreed to his wife's request to relocate to rural England so she can show their daughter the kind of childhood she had. They rent and old isolated house known as Trencher's Farm in the area of Dando. George is a quite shy and reserved and when the local tavern patrons make it clear they don't want him around decides to make no real effort trying to get to the know the locals. Amongst the small town population are a number of uneducated, racist bigots who have never gone more than a few kilometres out of town, let alone seen the world (except a few that had to go fight in World War 1 but have dismissed the outside world). Since they can't see George doing any work they assume he is a rich snobby American and the fact he has an attractive wife only makes the situation worse. Meanwhile Niles, a convicted child killer with the mentality of an 8 year old, finds himself on the lose when the ambulance he is in crashes in the snow on route back to the mental asylum. George unfortunately hits the nearly frozen to death Niles with his car, and when asking the tavern to call an ambulance for the man, instead receives on his doorstep drunk locals wanting to torture and kill Niles, who they wrongly assume knows the whereabouts of Janice Hedden, a mentally disabled girl who has gone missing. George knows there is no way Niles would have had time to kidnap the girl as he was hitting him with his car moments after the girl went missing, but this explanation falls on death ears of the men too drunk or brain dead to listen. What follows is a test for George, for himself Karen and Louise to survive he's going to have to go against all his beliefs, embrace violence and become the very type of man he despises!

Those who haven't seen that movie but plan to (and you should it's not a bad movie) may wish to skip these final paragraphs as I obviously will give away a few of the film's spoilers pointing out the other main differences to the film. Obviously since Amy is not in the book there's none of the flirting with the male townsfolk building the shed outside (in fact there are no renovations, George and Louise are renting Trencher's Farm) and Louise has no scene that Amy did (which is what most of the controversy of the 1971 movie was all about) where her ex boyfriend arranges alone time with her by his friends taking George away hunting for birds where he puts on the moves and tells her he doesn't want to rape her but he will, or the subsequent scene where she is raped at the end of a shotgun by a second man who decided he wanted some of the action too while her ex comforts her, but holds her down.

In fact George and Louise have never met any of the siege participants before (the movie has the town being Amy's home town it is not Louise's in the book) and only know who one of the men is because Louise had visited his house and talked to his wife in an effort to stop the bullying by an older child of her daughter Karen. Yes in the book the couple have a daughter, they don't in the movie, it is Karen's cat who is strangled and left on the front lawn. The book gives you a lot more background on the siege participants and there reasons for being there. Amy takes a lot more hands on involvement in the siege than Louise in the book, Louise pretty much just comforts her daughter and angers George. The Amy character from the movie was a probably a lot more likeable than Louise but I think the overall story especially the siege is a lot better done in the novel.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars watch the movie instead, July 15, 2004

By 

David Group (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Straw Dogs (Blue Murder Series) (Paperback)

Re-issued as part of Blue Murder's series of overlooked crime classics, STRAW DOGS (aka THE SIEGE AT TRENCHER'S FARM) would seem to be a likely candidate, being the basis for the controversial Sam Peckinpah film. Reading the novel, however, was somewhat of a letdown, and I got the feeling that Peckinpah bought the rights because he saw what he could do with the story, much like Hitchcock would sometimes turn a second-rate novel into a first-rate movie (FRENZY, for example). It's been a couple decades since I've seen the movie, but there seem to be considerable differences between it and the novel and, despite the flaws of the film version, I would definitely say that this is one of the few cases where the visual image is superior to the written word (e.g., THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY?, JAWS, THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1-2-3, HANNIBAL).

It is a bit hard to say exactly where this novel falters, exactly. It's like watching a piano player who hits all the right notes, but doesn't quite have the skill to transform the music into something special. A little more background details about each of the characters would have helped to make them more real (It was hard to sympathize with any of them-- a near-fatal flaw in any story), plus a little more tension, a little more suspense in bringing out the animosity between the townspeople and the professor and his wife. Though most of the last half of the book deals with the locals attacking the professor's house, there is insufficient psychological depth to really make the violence as gut-wrenching as it should have been. The fact that some of the writing is awkward doesn't help matters.

In the end, this comes across as an uneasy cobbling of DELIVERANCE (which, I know, this novel predates) and THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, not really worthy of revival.