Night Film by Marisha Pessl
My rating: 5/5 cats
good lord, remember marisha pessl?? she of Special Topics in Calamity Physics fame?? remember the immense fawning hordes of fans and the praise surrounding that book?? you might not, it was 7 years ago and all. but it was a Very Big Deal at the time.
and it was a book that i personally thought was just okay. i am a tough judge of books that claim to be like The Secret History. i might have said this once or twice or a dozen times on the internet. and i thought special topics was fine, just a little too cheekily stylized for me, and a little hyperactive and referential in its prose.
so when i was handed this ARC, at first, i was a little, “her?”
and then i flipped through it.
and it was full of pictures and screenshots and case notes and just a real explosion of visual literacy.
and then i read what it was about.
and the first thing i thought of, because of the mixed-media approach, and the dark tones, was House of Leaves.
another book i found overly gimmicky that everyone else loooves.
but something about this made me want to dive right into it, despite those two books being lodged in my mind and making me hesitate.
and wouldn’t you know it…
to borrow the phrase of a very enthusiastic man,
this book is everything.
everything except easy to review, that is.
it is a minefield of spoilers.
there is a sentence in this book, where a character is talking about his life, but it also serves as the most succinctly perfect description of the experience of reading this book:
Just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom, you realize you’re on another trapdoor.
the basic plot revolves around scott mcgrath, a disgraced investigative journalist drawn to the mystery of a beautiful young woman who has apparently committed suicide.
she just happens to be the daughter of stanislas cordova, the very same reclusive film director who was responsible for the “disgraced” adjective on scott’s CV. cordova’s films are scary-dark pieces whose fans share a cultish devotion, especially since the films are only distributed through unconventional, underground channels. cordova’s life is surrounded by mystery – very few photos of him exist, mysterious deaths, madness and disappearances accrue in his wake, his actors refuse to speak of their experiences working with him, but they are forever changed.
and scott’s going to find out what really happened to ashley cordova, and maybe uncover some dirt on stanislas himself and restore his own reputation.
ooorrrr issss heeee???
trapdoors upon trapdoors upon trapdoors.
i do not want to say anything that will mar your reading experience. but i will say that it is pleasantly creepy, very well-executed, and genuinely gripping.
and not at all cheeky.
the praise for this one will come, and this time, i will be amongst the cheerleaders.
