The Postman Always Rings Twice
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season151 pages, about 3 hours: half the length of a typical book on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbA drifter thrown off a hay truck takes a job at a roadside diner and is drawn to the owner’s wife.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn 10 reviews from critics and book blogs, 7 credit the plot and 3 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesA book blog ranks Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, on the shelf at 229 pages, above it for detail and plotting.
The case for it
on the dialogue
“speaking with remarkably accurate, real dialogue”
five stars · ThriftBooks on the pace
“the story races with the speed and power of a cataract”
Harold Strauss · The New York Times, 1934 on the opening line
“drew a line in the sand as defiant as any in literature”
Steve Erickson · Los Angeles Review of Books, 2012 on the prose
“hits you like a machine gun, tight and clean”
five stars · ThriftBooks
The case against
on Frank and Cora
“two people with no redeeming features whatsoever”
four stars · a book blog on hardworking Nick
“none of them are really likeable, not even earnest, hardworking Nick”
three stars · a book blog on period attitudes
“There are nasty remarks about Mexicans”
four stars · a book blog on the narration
“it brought me closer to the distasteful story, so did not work well for me”
a book blog
