Tony and Susan: Now the major motion picture Nocturnal Animals

I saw the movie Nocturnal Animals a few weeks ago and loved it so I decided to check out the book. If you’ve seen the movie but not read the book, the movie is very close so the book, almost too close and at times I felt like I was reading the screenplay for the film. Tony & Susan is a cracking read nonetheless. I’ve never actually read a book with a proper story-within-a-story premise. I might read more because I liked the way it played out in this book. I preferred Tony’s story much more to Susan’s. Each time we took a detour or a flashback into Susan’s life I was keen to get back to Tony’s story. To be honest, the book lost one star because Susan’s story just wasn’t as compelling and felt like filler at times. The book would have been much stronger if it had just been about Tony and a bit longer. Tony & Susan is hugely enjoyable and a bit different.

Although I got to the end it was a struggle, I’m none the wiser about what the book was trying to convey. As plots go, well, writing two books together and switching between them both didn’t encourage continuity of the story. I haven’t seen the film and quite honestly if it’s as muddled as this book I won’t be. Even the grammar and sentence construction was poor. I can’t recommend it but maybe there’s someone out there who enjoyed it.

First I have to say that although I have an eclectic taste in reading, this probably isn't my favorite genre. Also, I only paid 99p as from memory I think it was a Kindle Daily Deal, but I would have been disappointed had I paid full price.I won't go into the story line as it has a good synopsis as well as lots of varied reviews but it definitely wasn't a classic for me.I'm not sure even, whether downloading a sample would be of help, because the beginning starts off exceptionally well but for me it goes downhill, probably around the middle, and I only carried on reading in the hope it would pick up. The book within a book didn't work and I found myself becoming bored with Susan's reading excepts, but of course these where crucial to the plot so I had to read them. I found reading it at bedtime soon had me feeling tired (so some good there)!For me, although the Tony and Susan relationship was thought provoking, the book would have been a very good thriller without it.

This book was dull, the story within a story did not work. The characters had no substance. Would not recommend.

From reading other reviews, I get the impression that this is a 'love it or hate it' book. I loved it and hated it at the same time. The parts about Susan were (I imagine deliberately?) written with no heed to grammatical conventions whatsoever. For some this may make it 'incredibly well-written', but for me I found it a complete distraction. The book-within-the-book started well; gripping! Loads of 'this could really happen', and 'what the heck would I do in this situation?'. It then suffered a severe slump midway through, and improved towards the end, before an ending which left me incredibly unsatisfied. As for the 'Susan reading the novel and reflecting on her own relationship' part? For me they were dull, but at least they were consistent, never involving a single page-turning moment.

I really liked how full of suspense this book was. There are some things that are frustrating (ie lack of technology) but you have to bear in mind when the book was written and suspend that frustration.The structure in parts was a little contrived but it was interesting overall and the actual story was really good.

It's little wonder that this book was not a million seller with such an uninformative title, giving no clue to how good it is.Wright created a world within a world with the two stories combining to make a thoughtful examination of many aspects of human nature.The writing may seem spare to some readers but I didn't think he wasted a word throughout the text,it also has the best death scene I have ever read.I only picked up on this book as it was on the kindle daily deal and am glad I did, but I just wonder how many books of this quality are waiting undiscovered due to a lack of publicity or in this case an uninspiring title.

As a story within a story it is a well written believable and capturing read with character depths that are superb. The two stories are so well developed and leave you strangely sated yet craving more.