Guardian Newspaper 1000 Novels discussion

Here is the thread for this month's War and Travel read, Deliverance by James Dickey.

I have it from the library and will start probably mid-month. Who all is joining?

Probably not as I have a full plate this month but I am prone to changing my mind!

Me! (since I nominated it, suppose I better had! ;o) )

just need to finish up another G1000 book first (The Sheltering Sky)

ok, cleared the decks for this now
will start in the next day or two...
anybody else reading this this month...?

I just started this morning!

I've read the book.

Oh man, I LOVED this one. The story was quite...well, I had no idea what it was about before picking it up other than it was a camping trip that went wrong, and this is really a good description.

The writing, though? Oh man. With writing like that, who cares what the story was about? I have never read Dickey before and thats going to change right now. I am currently scouting amazon for his collected poetry, because if this man can write a horror novel like THAT I can't wait to read his poetry.

He somehow very subtly built suspense into the first half of the novel, making me nearly cringe at every turn of the river. I was also blown away by his mastery of the english language. His writing was so tight and spot-on...descriptions were really incredible, ranging from those of the river and the landscape to the feelings of Ed. Quite the impressive showing.

I immediately finished this book and picked up the movie because I wanted more, and, sadly, even though the movie was nearly exactly the book (down to the characters lines), it was no where near the same because it missed all of the in-betweens...all of the spaces in between the dialogue where Dickey just took over and lit up the page.

Kaycie wrote: "Oh man, I LOVED this one. The story was quite...well, I had no idea what it was about before picking it up other than it was a camping trip that went wrong, and this is really a good description.

..."

You have never seen the movie?? So famous (and excellently done)!

Leslie wrote: "You have never seen the movie?? So famous (and excellently done)!"

I have now!!! It was excellent, and I was VERY surprised to see how close it was to the book (and to see Dickey's cameo!). It was missing the oomph of the writing, though.

I was wondering if part of the suspense I felt was that I knew SOMETHING was going to happen in the book because the movie is so popular and pervasive in our culture, though somehow I missed exactly what the plot was about when I had heard talk of it before!

finished this recently
was initially attracted cos I'm a big fan of the movie, and the actual plot/action is almost shot-for-shot as per the movie, but it is basically a text-book example of how a book should always be better than a movie i.e. because of the extra dimensions of the characters' inner thoughts/author's poetic descriptions etc etc

the main coup for me in the book was the way that action sequences were told in extreme detail without seeming to spoil them by slowing them down - in fact they were somehow enhanced!

I loved the way that the experience subsumed Ed and left him changed/haunted (as it did me!)