Reviews

Vertigo by Thomas Narcejac, Pierre Boileau

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arytaco's review against another edition

5.0

The story is best known for the Alfred Hitchcock film from 1958, but a surprisingly similar novel from the Boileau-Narcejac writing team that predates the movie is difficult to overlook. As opposed to sunny San Francisco, "Vertigo," also known as "The Living and the Dead,"is situated in wartime Paris, France, which weights in on this tale of a lawyer's obsession with his friend's wife. The war creates the illusion of hopelessness, which influences Roger Flavieres' behavior. The two authors were growing disinterested in British whodunits and American private eyes, allowing them to create a new kind of mystery. The two weave a narrative of twists and turns, with enough variations from the Hitchcock film to engage those who have seen it. Flavieres is lost in his obsessive behavior, and he cannot escape it until his last breath, driven by solitude, jealousy, spite and selfishness. Hitchcock enthusiast or not, the original "Vertigo" is highly recommended reading.

claire_s's review

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No

3.0

justinkhchen's review

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3.75

The book exists so we can get an iconic Hitchcock film out of it. It has been awhile since I saw Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo, with an art house cinema in town about to show it on the big screen later this month, I thought it would be prime time to check out the source material. Overall, reading the original story by Boileau-Narcejac was a compelling experience—at how diverting the journey is between the 2 versions, even though the plot is essentially the same.

The sequence of event is familiar: a retired cop whose past trauma caused him to be afraid of height, was hired by his friend to investigate on his wife, who seemed to start thinking she was a dead relative reincarnated. There was a twist at the end I have completely forgotten about (it was also in the movie), so that was a nice surprise to encounter upon, as it threw me for a loop on a story I thought I already knew from start to end.

It took me a long time to finish this (it's not even 200 pages), mainly because it was very exhausting reading solely from the detective's POV. His constant pessimism and perpetual self-questioning was intense, and quite suffocating to absorb. If the book version was a full-on tragedy about the psychological collapse of a tortured man (the book also contains a lot of war imagery), the film version was a lush melodrama, with added humor, additional character perspectives for more context (and sanity), and the detective being portrayed as more of an anti-hero; given some sense of hope as the story came to a close.

Judging purely from personal enjoyment, I would say Vertigo the novel is a little too bleak and depressing, but to give credit where credit's due, it has the dream-like, hazy atmosphere, and a series of excellent twists and turns the adaption simply took verbatim. Overall I'm glad I checked out the original, and it will for sure deepen my reading of the film when I re-watch it.