People who are doing crime fiction!!! (1 Viewer)

[icedcoffee123]

anyone reading "skull benath the skin" find it a hard novel to get into and get confuzed easily like me?

 

[_muse_]

hey i read it and i really got into it. i loved it, theres so much foreshadowing and stuff. so sorry i didnt find it hard.

 

[tennille]

I reckon The Skull Beneath the Skin was a great novel, but I didn't use it in my HSC.

 

[55078]

I LOVED LOVED LOVED 'The Skull Beneath the Skin' but I can see how it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the language content in particular.

You have to understand that, like film noir, the appeal and intrigue lies in the psychology of the characters moreso than the crime(s). I am not saying that the crime is redundant, but you can see that PD James wanted the horror of the story to stem as much from the shifty characters as the foul murder itself. This is quite obvious when you take into account the fact that there is little action taking place in (at least) the first half of the novel.

Also, try to immerse yourself in the descriptions that Pd James gives of the various locations, as they are just gorgeous and they paint a very real picture of what England is like.

I hope this helps you to look at the novel from a different perspective and enjoy it as much as I did.

 

[black_man]

it seemed to me that the novel seemed very forced in it's portrayal of convention. the literary allusions and rigid structure seemed very excessive and ostentatious (excuse the spelling) James' descriptions were wonderful, and her ability to incorperate her clues was very intriguing, although i received a vibe that her style of writing was a touch pretentious.

 

[JimTheStampede]

dumb book

Hey icedcoffee. I know wat u mean by hard to get into. It is an alright book minus the description. I was kinda thrown off by the 7 pages describing the tiles but if thats wat floats ur boat... Anyways the book is alot easier to read if you skip chunks. The descriptive chunks. Most of them are at the start of a chapter. If you do that you will get through it alot easier and quicker.
Jimmy

 

[_muse_]

i think youll find that the descriptive bits are important... they help with foreshadowing etc which my class found very important at the end of the novel...

 

[djmattyd]

We've done our other two texts first because most of us found 'The Skull Beneath The Skin' so hard to get into...

I started reading it when we got our texts last year...and haven't gotten much further since lol.

 

[Pointy Ears]

Hey.
Considering the fact that i had really wanted to do Spec fiction (The Lord of the Rings....Y O Y couldnt i do it???), and ended up having to do CF, isn't it ironic that i was like, one of the first to bother to read TSBS?

Anyways, even though i dont like CF, i have to admit that once you get into SBS, it gets really interesting, and you sorta get immersed into it, and yes, it is VERY slow going at the beginning, but these seemmingly useless descriptions are vital to ur understanding of the story in terms of motives, and i suppose they help to bring a sense of authenticity to the values of the 80s.

So even though its hard to get into it, u just have to keep going, because ipromise you, it will get more interesting as you go.

 

[le baa]

I found it a really, really boring read - even by crime fiction standards.

it seemed to me that the novel seemed very forced in it's portrayal of convention. the literary allusions and rigid structure seemed very excessive and ostentatious (excuse the spelling) James' descriptions were wonderful, and her ability to incorperate her clues was very intriguing, although i received a vibe that her style of writing was a touch pretentious.

Agreed.

 

[Ath]

Skull Beneath Skin

its our set text, its not hard but i found it very boring and tiresome

 

[go_elizabeth]

Omg!

i am in a class of four, and the 2 boys read it, and us gals didnt, and acted like we knew what it was on about... then i read it, AND I LOVED IT! (but i can understand how ppl woodnt... im a bit of a crime fiction dork) ..
the descrtiptions are so good, as a critique, but as far as a quick read goes, NAAAA.... lol, its extension english after all, but reading that AND emma, was a little too much ahha...
anyway if u need sme help let me know, for sure cause i have like SOOO MANY NOTES! and dont midna sharing! hehe

 

[_muse_]

i am in a class of four, and the 2 boys read it, and us gals didnt, and acted like we knew what it was on about... then i read it, AND I LOVED IT! (but i can understand how ppl woodnt... im a bit of a crime fiction dork) ..
the descrtiptions are so good, as a critique, but as far as a quick read goes, NAAAA.... lol, its extension english after all, but reading that AND emma, was a little too much ahha...
anyway if u need sme help let me know, for sure cause i have like SOOO MANY NOTES! and dont midna sharing! hehe

may i take you up on this notes offer?

 

[Abbeygale]

Has anyone read the first Cordelia Gray book, An Unsuitable Job For a Woman? James seems overly fond of having Cordelia locked into places and left to drown.

 

[bEAbEA]

I'm about a quarter of the way through it, and its not that I'm finding it boring, its more the overload of descriptions that are annoying me. Does it get any better?

 

[black_man]

the book has a clearly defined structure, and if you're about a quarter of the way through (i'm guessing you've passed 'call to an offshore island'...have you started 'blood flies upwards'?) but yeah, it starts to pick up. the details of all the characters and settings are a preliminary for when the crime is committed and everything. it's perhaps a very good indication if you're not entirely bored by the beginning, because thats usually the hardest part to bore through until you reach the investigation and everything. but i think there's real division in the forum as to whether the book is good or not. i found it a little bit pretentious, but most people really really enjoyed it

 

[bEAbEA]

Yeah, well I've finished it now, and it was much better than I though it would be. Once I got past the first two parts, things started to pick up - so it was an enjoyable read. I can see why she put so much description throughout, because it really places the setting, and makes it so much more realistic.

 

[_muse_]

Yeah, well I've finished it now, and it was much better than I though it would be. Once I got past the first two parts, things started to pick up - so it was an enjoyable read. I can see why she put so much description throughout, because it really places the setting, and makes it so much more realistic.

yeah the foreshadowing and stuff.. u dont realise how important it is until you hit the end of the novel