Dennis's Reviews > Jaws

In 1974 Peter Benchley’s Jaws became a major bestseller and also paved the way for the first summer blockbuster in the history of cinema.
Both the novel and the movie scared the hell out of people. And some would never go swimming in the sea ever again.

Unfortunately it also made shark hunting a popular sport and the great white shark nowadays is considered as vulnerable.
It’s up for discussion how much of that is actually down to Benchley’s novel and I don’t really want to get into this. Because it is impossible to tell.

In any case, the novel is highly inaccurate in its depiction of the great white and Benchley later stated that it would be impossible for him to write it the same way again.

There are two major reasons for its inaccuracy. One is that, although Benchley did some extensive research, we just didn’t know all that much about the great white back then. Jaws also made oceanography way more popular and subsequently led to an increased knowledge of sharks.
The second reason is, despite Benchley mentioning the real life event of the 1916 shark attacks in New Jersey, this book is still fiction. And that’s what I took it for.
It’s a highly enjoyable fictional horror story.

That’s because the character of the fish (let's call him Bruce) is perfectly suited for a horror novel. Bruce gets described as unthinking and therefore unpredictable. He knows no fear. He is impossibly big and strong. A predator who’s only goal is to hunt, kill, feed. And he can not be found, he only ever finds you. Also, let’s face it, being a great white he just doesn’t exactly look like this:



And rather more like this:



All the scenes including Bruce are very suspensfully written and absolutely terrifying.
But there have to be humans also, and at one point we go about a hundred pages without encountering the shark. Generally that’s okay with me, because I don’t want to have one shark attack after the other until I don’t care anymore. Also, Benchley‘s prose flows quite nicely. It is not deep, mind you. But enjoyable to read.

But there are also some major problems.
None of the characters is very likeable. I liked Chief Brody in the movie. But I didn’t like him here. Some of his decisions seem very irresponsible. And not only because he gets pressured by Vaughan (another unlikeable character). I also didn’t like how he reacted towards some of the towns people.

His wife Ellen is an absolute bitch. Sorry for the language, but it’s true. There’s one chapter that’s especially horrifying. And unfortunately it also includes Hooper. The only character (apart from Meadows, maybe) that had the potential to be likeable. But that gets completely ruined in one terrible encounter with Ellen.

This leaves us with Quint, who was sensationally portrayed in the movie by Robert Shaw. Quint is not meant to be the most likeable character in the first place. He still might appeal to the reader in some sort or form. But then he started killing sharks for the sheer fun of it. And I’m not talking about Bruce here, which he was actually hired to kill. Just some random sharks he didn’t even try to catch. I know this may be a reasonable part of Quint's character. But it’s just not a likeable trait.

The other problem I had with this book is the ending. For all the suspense Benchley was able to build up, the very end felt kinda anticlimactic to me.

So, that’s 3.5 Stars in the end. I round up to 4. Because it was a qick and thrilling read. Really good entertainment most of the time. And that’s what I’m looking for in those kind of books.

Still, I prefer Spielberg’s blockbuster movie, which scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.
Sometimes people have to remember that it is more likely to get struck by lightning than it is to be attacked by a shark. But it’s not easy to do after watching Jaws. It is not easy folks.