Night Film. Marisha Pessl, (2013)I love when books keep you awake during the night, when you feel you have to read another page, finish another paragraph, then another chapter. Night Film plays with its readers exactly like this. It is built on many different layers which makes it accessible to every kind of reader. There's the detective story (which people who have loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy will adore), there are the film-experts quotes, there's New York as setting, there are mysterious places, and the book's format is modern and close to our reality which makes us get lost in it even more.
I am glad I found out a new writer whose words can be like knives, and who interplays with different media in her stories: Internet, newspapers, television, films in all their forms, blogs, everything.
Remember that when you are reading it almost nothing is as it seems, be ready to be surprised and puzzled until the very last page.
Favourite quotes:
"Will you curl up with your eyes closed and die? Or can you fight your way out of it and fly?"
"I looked like I wasn't at a cocktail party but an airport, waiting for my life to take off. Infinitely delayed."
"All of them walking around with holes where their hearts should be, wondering where they belong, what side they're fighting for."
"For the impenetrable prison with the impossible lock is your own head."
"There might be a Starbucks on every corner, and an iPhone in every ear, but don't worry, people are still fucking crazy."
"Scientists look for aliens in the universe, but they're here. Aliens who pass for men. They've already invaded. For our own safety we should leave them be."
"It meant deep-diving love, a love that excavates you. It's something you have to have before you die in order to have lived."
"She told me her father taught her to live life way beyond the cusp of it, way out in the outer reaches where most people never had the guts to go, where you go hurt. Where there was unimaginable beauty and pain. She was always demanding of herself, Do I dare? Do I dare disturb the universe? From Prufrock. They were always reminding themselves to stop measuring life in coffee spoons, mornings and afternoons, to keep swimming away, way down to the bottom of the ocean to find where the mermaid sang, each to each. Where there was danger and beauty and light. Only the now. Ashley said it was the only way to live."
"We are nothing without our shadows. They give our otherwise pale, blinding world definition. They allow us to see what's right in front of us. Yet they'll haunt us until we're dead."
