On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love read to me: When Eight Bells Toll, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Six Sacred Stones, Five on a Treasure Island, The 4-Hour Work Week, Three Wishes, Two Boys Kissing and One Shotin a pear tree.
Today, for the eighth day of my series The Twelve Reads of Christmas, I’m reviewing a book that’s nearly as old as I am, When Eight Bells Toll by Alistair MacLean.
This book is so old that my copy has pictures from the movie on the cover, showing Anthony Hopkins looking young and dashing. James Bond-like, even. I didn’t realise he was ever leading man material – I’ve only seen him play old or, at best, middle-aged characters.
The story begins rather like One Shot, with a detailed description of a gun. The writing is more lyrical and the sentences more traditionally structured than in One Shot, but there is still a lot of gun-related information. We are nearly at the bottom of a very wordy first page before it’s even mentioned that this particular gun is pointing right at the first person narrator.
Talk about burying the lede!
This is one of the things that make this book feel its age. It takes its time getting to the point of anything in a way that thriller writers these days just don’t do (at least in my limited experience). We don’t even find out what the whole point of the book is till about three-quarters of the way through. Till then our hero, a secret service agent on a mission in the remote harbours of Scotland, does a lot of secretive messing about on boats, but we don’t know why.
A couple of other things that date the book are pop culture references that mean nothing any more, and a rather wince-inducing attitude to women on the part of our hero.
The book is not without its charms, though. The narrator has a wry humour that’s quite entertaining. Discussing two dead colleagues, who in life had the still watchfulness common to men in their profession, he says “and I had no doubt they had gone on being as still and watchful as ever, but they hadn’t been watchful enough and now they were only still”.
But I have to admit, I wouldn’t have finished the book if I hadn’t been reading it for this series. The plot was well-structured, if a little predictable in places, but somehow the writing held me at a distance. I had trouble caring what happened to any of the characters, and could easily have set it down at any time. I freely admit I’m probably not the target audience, and I don’t read many thrillers, but it was more than that. One Shot kept me turning the pages all right. This one was perhaps too much of an intellectual puzzle, just not compelling enough on an emotional level.
Quite possibly the fact that we didn’t find out what was going on till late in the piece was part of the problem. If you don’t know what the stakes are, how can you care what happens?
I’d probably recommend you watch the movie instead. If nothing else, you get to see Anthony Hopkins with hair!
Coming up on the ninth day of Christmas: Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks.
Hi Marina, I love reading your blog – it is so lively and colorful. My you have been busy – I hope to have a chance to Attack of the Fairy Tales, and your dragon story. My writing is all on my blog or on short, sourced biographies of ancestors. I enjoy profiling people who lived 350 years ago and settled New England. My time studying the elements of good writing help more than I would have known at the time. One of my profiles won ‘Profile of the Week’ award – genuine joy! I don’t know how you read and wrote about all those books before Christmas, but I liked reading your thoughts on them. I have not taken time to read fiction in months, and sort of miss it, but finishing my tree calls to me more. If you ever decide to do your family tree, remember WikiTree. There are some wonderful members from Australia there, it has an international flavor. I have read some amazing stories about people who arrived on the convict ships and the lives they built, among other profiles. I wish you the very happiest year in 2014. all the best – Pandababy:)
Hi Pandababy! So nice to hear from you!
I only wish I had read all these books before Christmas, but alas, I’m not that organised. Hence the occasional day’s break between reviews, as I madly read (or in many cases, reread) in order to write my reviews. But I’m having fun! I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog.
Hope 2014 is good to you too. Maybe if you finish your family tree this year you’ll even write some fiction yourself? Here’s hoping!