Peter Benchley's debut novel is perhaps almost impossible to seperate in ones mind from the Spielberg blockbuster of the same name. Both film and book cover the events of a few summer weeks on the island resort of Amity in which a killer shark chomps its way through a series of swimmers, leading three men to go to sea to in a man vs. beast showdown. So iconic is Spielberg's adaption in fact, that one can almost here John Williams' famous score when reading the passages in which the fish attacks.
However Benchley's novel differs from the adaption in a number of key ways; what's more, to be fair, Benchley's novel obviously came first and so should be judged on it's own merits.
On the plus side Benchley writes with a pulpy kind of urgency, carrying the story through at a brisk pace that catches the reader along with him. There's some nice passages of characterisation, and the neutral tone in which the shark attacks are described lends a chillingly amoral feel to the horror: this is, the argument follows, just a big fish feeding. What's more there are some nice tensions drawn out in the last 100 pages or so: is the fish just an unthinking animal, or is it a cunning, thinking adversary? Is it a tool of divine judgment on the corruption lurking in Amity (adultery, mafia deals, etc), or is it just a random coincidence? The fact that Benchley gives no answers to these questions is to his credit, and leaves the novels climax pleasingly unresolved and open to interpretation.
However, the problems with this book are extensive. Despite pacing his story well on the whole, there are some clunkingly bad sections of writing. Dialogue is reeled out in lengthy passages that lack authenticity, and character's voices are somewhat indistinct from each other. There are some repetitious and lame paragraph structuring that actually caused me to read it out to my wife in disbelief that something like this could be published. What's more Benchley misjudges some crucial moments. For instance (and although I'm somewhat loathed to compare the novel directly to the film, I'm going to do so anyway) in the scene when the shark finally appears to Brody, Quint and Hooper on their climatic hunting trip, instead of the "You're gonna need a bigger boat" line from the film, the characters launch into a 2-page debate about whether prehistoric megladons could exist which are even bigger than this shark. What we want is excitement: what we get is a natural history lesson. Spielberg also stated that he found the characters unlikeable, and whilst I would concur with this assessment I would say this is not necessarily a problem and may, in part, be part of the point.
Overall Jaws delivers cheap, trashy thrills with a smattering pleasing thematic tensions and compulsive page-turning. This is marred by some low grade, GSCE-level writing and some very poor dialogue indeed. Robert Shaw, who played Quint in the movie, said this book was a piece of rubbish, and whilst I mostly agree with that it is still very enjoyable rubbish. Just don't read it on the beach.