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It does get a bit sick here and there. But the Movie.
Can the Movie. One big let down.Read the book.
THis is one great read. what a read.
I hope someone makes the movie over and does it right. And it did keep me going.
But Wow.
It's whole cloth characterization. It's a lot of introspection and repetition and torture porn, none of which develop the characters or move the plot. Nevil Shute did a noble thing when he micromanaged details in "On the Beach," but this vine, my friends, is much less moving than nuclear war. I know: suspension of disbelief. You could say that the Mayans were in on the whole thing, using the tourists as a sacrifice, but not because of any implications Smith makes.
He spends a great deal of time dying, just like everyone else.Skip pages 200-480, if you're reading the 500-page paperback. Anyway, they couldn't just block Amy in there. That really intriguing part. They're dying on a hill in Mexico - what are they supposed to do, soliloquize.
Everyone had to die. You may think he'll go somewhere with that, but no. Spoilers follow.Enjoy this book thus:Read the first 200 pages or so, until they pull everyone out of the mineshaft the first time. The ending. Really.
You'll find yourself wondering whether Pablo and the other Greeks are pulling shenanigans, because of this weird secretive quality Smith gives them at the beginning of the story. She was the one who stepped in the tangles first. His prose is quite nuanced in some places, particularly while they're in the shaft for the first time. Remember the tunnel in the shaft's wall with the train tracks in it.
In the first half he manages to build his characters admirably (Pablo notwithstanding). Let me be clear: NOTHING will be explored to your satisfaction. He builds suspense well. That subject wasn't even approached, not even to say that nobody could be allowed to escape and expose the ruins, or whatever. You'll be doing all the work here, and in this case, unlike in most mainstream lit, this is a bad thing, because not only does the ambiguity frustrate rather than enrich, I'm pretty sure it's unintentional.To be fair, though, there are good things to be said for Smith's book, hence the two-star (rather than one-star) rating.
I didn't have any problems with the dialogue, though I've heard people complain that it's wooden. Smith also has a real knack for foreshadowing, even though he uses the word "foreshadowing" while doing so. Overall: read it, enjoy it for what it does right, but don't be too disappointed over what it does wrong. Eric is a pretty good character until he goes nuts and turns to cardboard.
Don't think on that too much; it doesn't show up again.Actually, skip the first fifty pages. It's the only conclusion you can reach without assuming the Mayans to be monolithically stupid. I'm pretty good at that, but I did roll my eyes when the plants started "talking." Ditto, how the Mayans ran around all feeble when the tourists walked into the vines but became an impenetrable curtain of vigilance when it came time to make sure they died in there nice and slow. You know what Pablo does.
Ho hum.And the plot holes.
things happen to them. In this particular novel, a group of people get stranded in the jungle and bad. very bad. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I won't give anything away, but suffice it to say it will keep you on the edge of your seat. Scott Smith is a master at creating suspense within unique and interesting plots. This is my second book by Scott Smith, and I'm off to browse for more as soon as I finish this review. Another reviewer described him as a cross between Stephen King and Michael Crichton, and that is a great description.
Although THE RUINS deal more with physical conflicts, the main problems the characters (Amy, Jeff, Eric, Stacy, Matthias the German and Pablo the Greek) face here are psychological. Although it dragged and some plot points were a stretch but there was a fantasy aspect to THE RUINS, a sort of UNDER-THE-DOME (sound familiar)., that was palpable and fun. This book has many allegorical aspects which I liked and I feel it falls into the horror playing field rather well. And hit his literary stride he did, Smith has an almost compulsive style that compels you to read more and more as the story progresses, even though his prose isn't exactly the prettiest. While I do agree he should have cut many of those scenes out because it did drag at some moments, but I can see where Smith was going with this; he's making us feel the desperation of the characters and, in a way, building up a scenario where we can feel their lives slowly slipping away. The characters here experience a huge spectrum of feelings from isolation, paranoia to pain and claustrophobia.
Like it for what it is. As Stephen King pointed out, Scott Smith's refusal to look away from the issues he holds dear is indeed admirable. And the issues Scott Smith often chooses to tackle aren't very happy ones. Things go downhill fast but the story grinds as well and in between the big intervals we get parts where they are just doing stuff and passing time on that wretched hill.
And it is when they are trapped there where things gets increasingly uncomfortable and their relationships suffer as a result. That's what happens to Eric when he encounters a strange presence on the hill they are trapped on, as is every single one of them. If you came to this book thinking you're going to get Dickens or Austen, you're not thinking straight.
In a way, that feels oddly soothing to me. He also has a way of making even the simplest of sentences resonate within the story. THE RUINS is all about people put into extraordinarily tough, and fatal, situations and the bad choices they made under pressure. Smith likes the nitty gritty, the uncomfortable conflicts between his characters' self interests and the interests of others.
That suffocating nature is what makes this book so interesting and enjoyable. Like in A SIMPLE PLAN, Smith has that knack for taking the most basic of premises and turning it into a stomach churning morality tale where every action, or inaction as it is in THE RUINS, brings the characters deeper into the web of problems they are already in. It seems it is when his characters are pushed to the wall, pushed to their absolute limits that Scott Smith truly hits his literary stride. There were a few truly great lines in the book though but, ultimately, Smith's style isn't about great lines.
Alternately, I'm 100 pages into my next purchase, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage), and it's VERY promising. I really enjoyed Smith's A Simple Plan and saw Stephen King's glowing review in Entertainment Weekly, so I was looking forward to this book. I didn't find it to be very compelling and wouldn't recommend it.
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