![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The small-town doctor is well-educated, of course, and as a lifelong resident, he has the good general practicioner's eye for detail and tolerant understanding of human behavior, along with an intimate knowledge of the residents, geography, and history of the city of Santa Mira, California, population 3,890. Miles Bennell is the perfect character to deliver this story. Point of view, style, and setting here work together to make the unbelievable seem completely possible. Jack Finney's 1955 The Body Snatchers is an exquisitely terrifying story of alien invasion which, despite the basics of its plot having become cultural tropes in the succeeding decades, remains as suspenseful as the day it was released. In any event, below is the review I posted at Goodreads: I gaped when, after finally having captured a cop ’s service revolver, the protagonist ends up throwing it away because he cannot carry it inconspicuously -Come on, Doc, no jackets in 1955.? Really, though, every sidestep and piece of self-doubt made perfect sense, and it simply set us up all the better for the time when the baddies trot out the fuller explanations. ![]() I frowned at their attempted rationalizations of the unbelievable things they had seen. I cringed whenever the main characters ventured out of each other ’s sight. Some time ago at The Reading Place in Charlotte, Michigan, I picked up a nice 1963 Dell reprint of Jack Finney ’s The Body Snatchers -no “invasion of” in the original title, apparently. ![]()
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