The Big Sleep (1939)

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler reeks in simile. The simile twinkles from every page with this brilliant technique. Death becomes the big sleep, and many characters plummeted into this sleep in this hard hitting and fast-moving detective story. The book opens with Philip Marlowe as he prepares to meet a new client, General Sternwood. What description of the Sternwood house? I can feel the heat forcing the perspiration. Can you just see Carmen Sternwood and her malicious innocence? The comparisons in the novel create laughs and build understanding of Marlowe. This explanation for poverty caught my attention “I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate”. The line about the woman in the bookstore builds an unique description “approached me with enough sex appeal to stampede a businessman’s lunch”. Every page taunts with these witty remarks and provides a comic relief to all the killings. Raymond Chandler’s style lightens the story and moves the reader too quickly through the novel. ( )

“As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style."

“Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead."



I am having a great time discovering Chandler. It is just great entertainment value. ( )

I’m not sure if I’ve read this book before. I know I’ve seen the film several times. Which meant some details were familiar but some weren’t and I couldn’t work out if I remembered them from the movie. The Big Sleep is Chandler’s first novel and its plot is as convoluted as any of the later ones, if not more so. Marlowe is hired to investigate a blackmail demand received by a wealthy retired general, but there proves to be more to the case. The general’s youngest daughter has been photographed nude, and the husband of the older daughter disappeared some weeks before and the general is keen to learn his whereabouts. The relationship between Marlowe and the older daughter generates sparks in the novel, but apparently Bogart and Bacall were much more so during the film shoot so they recut the movie to forefront their relationship at the expense of the plot. There are apparently two cuts of the film, one more faithful to the book, the other more of a Bogart-Bacall star vehicle. I’ve no idea which I’ve seen, the latter I suspect. The book at least has the canonical plot, and while it’s not Chandler’s best, it does demonstrate his style was pretty much fully formed from the start. It does not read like a novel written by someone finding their way. ( )

NA

Just great. The only thing that could have made it better would have been not knowing the story..... but even with the film and so many (excellent) BBC radio 4 readings and plays it's still a great plot! And the vivid language is fresh as ever. ( )