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Title: Jaws by Peter Benchley, Garrick Hagon ISBN: 0-7531-0833-X Publisher: ISIS Publishing Pub. Date: 01 April, 2000 Format: Audio Cassette

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Average Customer Rating: 3.71 (102 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Forget the movie, this is the real deal.
Comment: I first read Peter Benchley's "Jaws" back in the 1970's, several month before the movie was released. The story gripped me at that time and I still find myself re-reading the book every few years. I like the movie also, but the book is a far different experience. All the basic characters and plot are in the movie, but the book has a vastly different pace and an a rather enigmatic ending that may confuse readers. The central portion of the book involves a love affair between oceanographer Matt Hooper and Chief Brody's wife and you'll wonder what this has to do with the shark, but keep reading. This is a mini morality play in the making. If you can keep an open mind you might notice that this story is far more realistic. The shark is slightly smaller, less acrobatic and not as vicious as its film version. And if the ending puzzles you, then re-read the book's first paragraph. It hints at what really happens to the shark in the end. No, this isn't "great" literature. There is no deep or hidden meanings here. But it is a great time-capsule of classic 1970's pulp fiction at its best.

Rating: 4
Summary: Not the movie, but still good
Comment: I read the book as a teenager before seeing the movie. They're very hard to compare. In the book, I liked the scientific input, as well as Hooper's discussion about the possibility of mega-sharks millions of years old surviving still in the deepest, most unfathomable parts of the ocean. I was enthralled all the way through.

What I didn't like: The characters in the book all seemed kind of sad (even before the shark came along!). None were particularly heroic, except maybe Hooper when he got in the underwater cage. Quint was just plain bizarre rather than crusty and eccentric as in the movie. Brody was a bit of a loser. Ellen was simply pathetic - Remember that dinner party she decides to give to re-live her days as one of the elite of the island? That was painful to read; it was just plain sad.

Ellen and Hooper's short-lived fling was stilted and, even as an inexperienced teenager, a lot of it struck me false. I actually wondered if Benchley himself had had much experience with women to draw on for this part of the book.

Anyhow, I'd recommend the book because there are some interesting facts about sharks and it gets into the heads (for their last few moments of life) of the people being attacked in a way that makes your blood go cold. The shark's demise was anti-climactic, though probably more realistic than the movie's dramatic explosion.

(And to the person below who referred to Hooper as a 'weasly jew college boy?' Nice. Real nice. Just what everyone needs.)

Rating: 5
Summary: SCREW ALL WHO HATED THIS BOOK
Comment: I saw jaws several times before i actually found myself buying the book, out of curiosity, to see the story in its original form. I was about 16 or so, and i couldn't put this book down. The characters were actually human beings, entailing that they demonstrated dysfunctionality. And secondly, the shark scenes did not force you to into seeing the great white as some 25 foot, gravity defying, rubber puppet like in the spielberg movie. Granted the book had no precedent or right to show sharks as mindless, vengeful, eating machines, at least in the book you were given enough of a break to inject some form of science into the whole situation.

And what is with these previous reviewers who were so offended by the relationship between ellen brody and matt hooper? Yeah hooper was a east coast rich weasly jew college boy, who didnt think twice when it came to coming onto brody's wife. But hey, things like that happen. Relax the grip you have on your bibles people, sex is not such a bad thing to have in a novel. I kind of thought ellen's character was a pretty decent break from all the scientific innacuracies this book was based on. As i raged over the innacurate and unscientific portrayal of the great white, I imagined Ellen soothing me with her soft touch, telling me that it was all gonna be okay. Ahhhhhh...

peace.