Jaws

By: Peter Benchley

Narrated by: Erik Steele

Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Jaws is the classic, blockbuster thriller that inspired the three-time Academy Award-winning Steven Spielberg movie and made millions of beachgoers afraid to go into the water. Experience the thrill of helpless horror again - or for the first time!

Jaws was number 48 in the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies, and the film earned the coveted number-one spot on the Bravo network's 100 Scariest Movie Moments countdown.

This timeless tale of man-eating terror that spawned a movie franchise, two video games, a Universal Studios theme park attraction, and two musicals is finally available on audio for the first time ever!

©2002 Peter Benchley (P)2009 BBC Audiobooks America

Good, but

What made the experience of listening to Jaws the most enjoyable?

A really good book, but one of the few times I would say the movie was better than the book. Proves how great Spielberg is.

What did you like best about this story?

The covert symbolism

Which scene was your favorite?

When Brody confronts the mayor.

Who was the most memorable character of Jaws and why?

Quint

Different but Good

It's different from the movie, but it's good. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the author's dialog style the most. Most authors seem to have trouble with natural sounding dialog, but Benchley achieves this well. His characters are also believable. Their actions, emotions, and thoughts are believable, which makes the story seem possible. In case you didn't live in the 70s, this is a fairly accurate representation of one part of society at that time. Enjoy it. The days of sans internet, cell phones, social media, and instant gratification hold a special charm now. It was the era of America's puberty, and Benchley seems to have captured it unforgettably in virtually every part of this social commentary turned cultural classic. Maybe this is one reason we are still enamored with this book. When will the story die? "When it's ready."

Not the movie by any means.

Great story about life and struggles against the unknown. A good quick listen and worth it.

Just different enough...

As advertised the novel that provided the basis for one of the greatest American blockbusters of all time is a taut and well-written thriller.
The biggest difference that you'll find from page to screen, is that the stakes of our shark hunt are raised under the pressure of Chief Brody's domestic insecurities. This can come as a bit of a shock if you grew up with the likes of Brody and Hooper as unimpeachable heroes, but is given just enough time to enrich conflict without bogging down the book.
There were also just enough departures between movie and book that I was kept guessing at a few key moments, which was very welcome. Although I think for the purposes of Hollywood, I defend every change Spielberg and co. made.

A simple, ‘the movie is better’

**the narration is good, but he does do your stereotypical male-doing-female-voices thing…


Full disclosure for this one, the movie is my grandfather and father’s favorite movie, I grew up on it, so the movie and its plot line have a very nostalgic pull for me. We used to rent the same house in Lavallette, New Jersey every summer, and watching Jaws on the first night we arrived was always the tradition.

With that being said, the opening of the novel felt like a very straight forward and true adaptation. The shark descriptors and kills were perhaps more gruesome, but the general feel was the same. I was very into it at this point. It was around a quarter in or so, where the differences started to show themselves, where I started to pull away.

To me, it feels like the author said…’well, how do you make a novel about a shark interesting??? You could simply stay out of the water right?’ This is where I feel like the movie simply made them enter the ocean sooner to do away with that point. Instead, the author added strange somewhat mafia-fueled political intrigue. The author also includes a subplot including main characters and adultery, toxic masculinity, and a REAL weird conversation about r*pe fantasies…seriously wth.

Part of me still really enjoyed the shark stuff and the nostalgic feels they brought with them. Although they don’t get on the boat until literally 75% through the story, I feel like the Orca, Quint, and the climax salvage the novel somewhat. Sharks are scary. Personally a 3/5* for me still, a very rare ‘the movie is better’ here.

Not as good as I hoped.

I was expecting the book to be better than the movie. I would recommend Jaws fans to read it.

Why All the Hate?

This book gets so much flak, I had to give it a listen. I have no idea why people dislike it so much, the Hollywood adaptation was truer to the book than most projects end up. We got a few new storylines and some events slightly altered. I liked it.

Excellent narrator but silly story

I liked the reader’s voice a lot but the story was only mildly entertaining. The movie holds up much better than the book. The casual racism and sexism was jarring.

unexpected

narrator gave great energy!

unexpected subplots!
Truly left me on edge. I literally screamed in the car while listening, it was that emotional.

Good but with POV problems (spoiler)

I loved the story and all the different characters. I was fine with everything except for Ellen. Had Ellen been written from the pov of someone else, much like Quint was entirely written thru the eyes of Brody, it may have made me cringe so much. But I was severely aware of this being another case of male authors not knowing how to write women or how they really think. Maybe a more interesting approach would have been to write the affair from Hoopers POV, not Ellen's. Especially since he is the one who ends of being confronted about it.