Body of the Snatch Invaders! (Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Jack Finney)

Member Name: andrewl

Product:	Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Jack Finney
Date:	19/06/06 (285 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Plausible, nice build-up

Disadvantages: The central character is TERRIBLE.

Forgive the crude and tasteless title, it's been a long day at work.

So, Invasion of the Body Snatchers eh? The novel I picked up second-hand a few days ago was published in 1978, an expanded version of the short story from the 1950s so famously adapted by Hollywood.

A heroic doctor by the name of Miles spends about 160 pages phoning people up in the middle of the night to laugh at them before trying to convince them there's an alien invasion on in the small Californian town of Mill Valley. For some reason he doesn't have much joy convincing people.

Miles is an odd one all right. When he's not getting people out of bed to panic at them, he's carrying on with one of his patients, and getting freaked out by people talking in a sarcastic tone of voice.

But that's not too much of a worry, as his buddy is a best-selling writer with a hysterical wife. Jack gets his kicks by dragging people out of cinemas to see his corpse in the basement.

You might get the idea I didn't like this book much. That's not quite true. The writing is uninspired but workmanlike, and the leisurely build-up to the revelations about what is going on in Mill Valley provides a lot of room to let characters develop and interact.

Growing feelings of paranoia and helplessness are deftly handled, and although I found Miles too smug to sympathise with, his girlfriend Becky is at least resourceful and capable and generally a bit more convincing.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a book that probably hasn't been best served by the passing of time. The film, and many like it, were thinly disguised allusions to the Red Menace during the worst years of the Cold War, even if the novel does make explicit reference to the delusional aspect of witch hunts.

It is perhaps worth noting that all the heroes of this tale are nice well-to-do professionals: a doctor, a novelist and a psychologist are the three main protagonists. They are all of course fighting against the infiltration of aliens who largely happen to be ugly poor people. But this reading is a little weighty to be ascribed to a fun piece of pulpy science fiction.

In fact, it's much more fun to have a bit of a giggle at the outmoded sexuality on display. Although Miles and Becky appear fairly sexually liberated, Miles makes constant reference to various gestures from both Becky and Jack's wife Theodora as 'the sort of gesture a wife will make when..' and so on. Women are silly things in this world, to be dragged along behind the heroes and display all the emotions while the man of the moment is being decisive and stuff.

Although to be fair Becky's resourcefulness towards the end is quite nice.

Recommending this book is a tough call really. It's old-fashioned and clunky, with a downright annoying central character, highly repetitive prose and very confusing flashbacks. Plus, I had a quick look and it seems to be out of print, so you're going to have hassle getting hold of it, and I'm frankly not sure it's worth the effort.

On the other hand, it's fast-paced and exciting, in spite of the slow burn, and although we are now all too familiar with all the themes of infiltration, possession and invasion right down to the EVIDENCE that disappears the second an establishment figure wanders along to take a look, this ageing iteration of the concept takes its cliches seriously and so, for the length of time it takes to read this slim novel, so does the reader.

Summary: It's silly and sexist and utterly nuts but it's only 170ish pages and rollicking good fun!