Psycho

Há cerca de dois anos que queria ler esta obra contudo não o fiz antes uma vez que foi publicado em 1959 e tinha receio que a escrita fosse pouco acessível.
Considerei o início um pouco fatigante e achei aborrecido o facto de Norman Bates ser uma personagem desligada da realidade e com sentimentos antagónicos em relação à sua mãe. Entretanto começou a acção e resolvi ver o filme para esclarecer certos pontos e além de compreender melhor o enredo, deduzi que este é dos poucos filmes que se baseia de forma quase perfeita no livro.
O fim imprevisível fez com que aumentasse a pontuação.

We've all seen the movie, right? Well, the novel lends some interesting background to Norman's story. (Actually, the backstory is used in Psycho IV: The Beginning - cut me some slack, I watched in the Olden Days when you had to make due with what was on TBS to while away a Saturday afternoon!), and made much clearer to me Mary/Marion's motivations. It's also just a fun, quick guilty pleasure of a read.

Bloch's story is a weird collision of pop psych freakshow, character study, and Columbo-style murder mystery, with a soupcon of salacious material that probably had many boys hiding this under their mattresses in the '60s. But mostly it works, driven largely by Norman and Lila's characters. Like the film, the book wraps up with the odd doc-splaining of Norman's history and condition, which falls pretty flat, but being in Norman's head for much of the story is equal parts intriguing and repellent - but always interesting.

Definitely recommended, and the audio book was very well done - the reader does a great job at presenting the characters and accentuating the tension in the story.

I feel like this concept was huge for the time period, but lackluster for the current one. there was no question about the “plot twist”, it was an assumption/given from the beginning. (Perhaps I remembered the plot subconsciously from somewhere? But I have never watched the movie, so who knows..)