Psycho

It says a lot about a book that can keep your interest even when the punchline is as well known as this one. Even if you haven't seen the movie you'd know the beats from cultural osmosis. Despite this, this is good enough to draw you in. The way Bloch uses ambiguity and makes you second-guess the inevitable conclusion is great, and reminds me a lot of The Exorcist. The use of a logical, skeptical progression and people doing what seems rational rather than the usual horror genre bollocks of characters having a temporary stroke that makes them come to insane conclusions or do the dumbest actions imaginable, is the key ingredient in this book, The Exorcist and virtually all great horror novels I've read.

The contrast between this and this show more year's Halloween Challenge nadir Midnight Mass is like night and day on that point specifically. show less

Reading *Psycho* more than sixty years after the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s film creates a strange problem for the novel. The book itself is strong—tight, psychological, and sharply written—but it has been overshadowed so completely by its own adaptation that much of the suspense no longer functions the way Bloch intended.

At the time of publication, the story’s structure depended on uncertainty. Robert Bloch slowly builds unease around Norman Bates, the isolated owner of a failing roadside motel. The novel carefully layers clues about Norman’s relationship with his mother and his fragile psychological state. For an original reader, the final revelation would have landed as a genuine shock.

Modern readers, however, approach show more the book with decades of cultural memory already in place. The ending is one of the most famous twists in cinema history, and it has been referenced, parodied, and discussed endlessly since the release of Hitchcock’s 1960 film. Because of that, the central mystery of the novel is almost impossible to encounter fresh. The reader is not discovering the truth alongside the characters—they are simply waiting for the story to reach a destination they already know.

That familiarity changes the experience significantly. Instead of suspense, the novel becomes an exercise in watching the mechanics of a twist slowly assemble itself. The tension that Bloch carefully constructs feels muted because the outcome is already part of popular culture.

This is unfortunate, because *Psycho* is genuinely a strong piece of psychological horror. Bloch’s version of Norman Bates is closer to the real-life inspiration behind the character, Ed Gein: middle-aged, socially isolated, and trapped in a decaying motel that mirrors his deteriorating mental state. The book leans more heavily into Norman’s internal world than the film does, which gives the story a colder and more unsettling psychological edge.

The result is a paradox. *Psycho* is an excellent novel that has been partially undermined by its own success. The film adaptation became so iconic that it permanently removed the element of surprise that originally powered the book. What remains is still well written and historically important, but it is difficult to read it today without feeling that the story’s greatest weapon—its revelation—has already been taken away by sixty years of cultural exposure.

In that sense, *Psycho* is a rare case of a great book being weakened not by the quality of its adaptation, but by the sheer cultural dominance of that adaptation. show less

Wow. What a great read! I of course saw the movie when I was a kid, but it was great to read the book. I thought Robert Bloch did a good job with the "twists" in this one and I like how he develops all of the characters in this one from Norman, his mother, sisters Mary and Lila, and a man that is close to Mary, Sam. I will say that things that happen in the movie are not things that show up in the book. Also the Norman in the book is overweight, has acne, and needs glasses.

"Psycho" follows motel owner Norman Bates. Norman is stuck running a motel that he didn't want, but his mother insisted on. Now the two of them live in a home together behind the motel with Norman growing resentful of his mother, but also realizing that he doesn't show more know what to do without her to command him. When a woman comes to the stay at the motel on a rainy deserted night, things change forever for Norman.

I definitely pitied Norman while reading this one. It's hard to come into this story cold, so many readers are going to already know what will finally be revealed. I have to say that I liked the way it was done in this one.

Mary I also felt sorry for since we know how close she could have been to getting the life that she wanted. I loved how she is developed in Bloch's story so you can see why she took the chance she did.

I know that a lot of readers could not stand Lila, but I did. I liked how she wasn't going to be pushed aside anymore when Mary goes missing and she decides she's not going to keep letting a lot of men tell her to just wait.

Sam...I did like him. He seemed too soft I think at times and though the book ends in a certain way we are supposed to guess at what happens next, I think readers saw the signs there earlier in the book.

I think the writing in this one was great and the shifting perspectives of Norman, his mother, Mary, Mary's sister Lila, and Sam really added to the story. The flow works really well too.

The motel feels like such a desolate place. Reading the first part of the book with things happening on a dark and deserted night made me want to keep rechecking my door. It doesn't help that it has rained in VA for the past 4 days. I miss the sun.

I read this book for the "Classic Horror" square. You also could read it for a few other squares too like "Pysch", "Mystery", "Genre: Suspense", "Film at 11" and "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night". show less

It’s rare to be able enjoy a book and its movie adaptation equally. The characters are so wonderfully drawn, it’s impossible to not have strong feelings about them all, from the skin-crawling creepiness of Norman Bates to anger and impatience for the complacently incompetent sheriff. The story and the pop-psychology it depends on is a little dated now, but not enough to detract from the fun.

Sometimes the best part of a thriller is the big reveal at the end. No doubt Psycho has an excellent one, for the .0001% of readers who don’t already know. But for the rest of us, there’s no loss in reading pleasure for already knowing the book’s secrets. The author has so many tongue-in-cheek references to it, that it’s almost designed show more for re-reads. Every time I came across a seemingly innocent remark or reference with a double-meaning, I genuinely laughed out loud.

Audiobook, via Audible. Paul Michael Garcia’s narration is fantastic – his Norman gave me shivers, but he voiced every character and their POV perfectly. At only 5 ½ hours of audio, Psycho is just short enough to go on my annual Halloween reading list. show less

Roughly three decades after my first viewing of Hitchcock classic cinematic adaptation of Psycho, I finally managed to get around to reading the original source material. Having lived through so many sequels, prequels, remakes, and re-imagined takes on Hitchcock’s original film, it’s almost a struggle to read Robert Block’s novel without letting the cultural impact of what is now an entertainment franchise influence the experience. Luckily, Bloch’s Psycho has an inherent timeless built into the deviant catalyst of its story, despite how dated other elements of it might be over a half-century later.

The Norman Bates of the novel is different than the lanky, awkward cinematic persona made famous by Anthony Perkins, but many of the show more differences are understandable when translating informative text into informative visuals. Bloch’s Norman is overweight and middle-aged, potentially an alcoholic (his alcohol consumption is actually linked to violent appearances of “Mother”) and in addition to his taxidermy hobby he is an avid reader. In fact, Bloch uses Norman’s library comprised of metaphysical, historical, pornographic, and occult tomes to paint a more complex psychological profile that doesn’t necessarily replace his oedipal issues with his mother, but at the very least lends a bit more reasoning to some of his delusions and behaviors.

Of special importance to any true crime fan is Bloch’s two references to Ed Gein, whose grave-robbing, necrophilia, and eventual killing of a local woman five years earlier inspired countless horror novelists and filmmakers, Bloch included. First there is the opening of the novel, in which Norman is reading about native tribes turning a corpse into a weird kind of body drum, which is a spin on Gein’s fascination with stories of shrunken heads. Then there is the direct mention of Gein at the end, in which it is stated that news coverage of the events at the Bates Motel were fueled by comparisons to Gein’s crimes.

Reading a book you already know the details of can be a challenge, but Bloch’s writing is straightforward and engaging, and there are enough differences between Bloch’s text and Hitchcock’s vision to keep the narrative fresh for those of us looking back. The most intriguing aspect to me of Bloch’s novel was the inclusion of an epilogue that involves an evolution of Norman’s psychosis that would have resulted in a totally different franchise if Hitchcock had used it in his film.

Long story short, it takes a great literary work to withstand the effect that cultural awareness can have on a reader already familiar with the story, and Bloch’s Psycho easily withstands this test. If you’ve seen the film but never read the book, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot. show less

"You're a Mamma's Boy. That's what they called you, and that's what you were. Were, are, and always will be. A big, fat, overgrown Mamma's Boy!"

I didn't even know Psycho was originally a novel until very recently, but since I wanted to watch the film this year in the run-up to Hallowe'en I thought maybe I should bite the bullet and read the book as well!

By now most people know the basics - Norman Bates, lonely motel, a girl murdered in the shower, a psychotic mother - but it was interesting for me to go back to the original and fill in the gaps before I watched the now-iconic Hitchcock movie. The rest of the story was new to me! It opens with Mary Crane stealing forty thousand dollars and taking off, with the intention of passing it show more off as inheritance money and giving it to her fiance Sam, who has refused to get married until he has finish paying off his late father's debts. Losing her way en route to Sam's town, she ends up at the Bates Motel, where she meets overweight, bookish Norman, who runs the motel and cares for his sick elderly mother despite her constant venomous nagging. That night the supposedly infirm old woman, jealous of Norman's attraction to their pretty guest, kills Mary, sparking off a chain of events that will pull Norman deeper and deeper into darkness and put everyone Mary loves in danger too...

It's actually quite a gripping little novel despite its age - it was first published in 1959 - and if the twist wasn't now so famous it would have been even more effective as a thriller. Of course, the film has now eclipsed it almost entirely, and in my mind I read the whole thing in that half-English-sounding posh movie-star American accent that is so ubiquitous in old black and white movies. The psychology behind the villainy is quite fascinating - Norman seems to know quite a bit about it already - and Norman's inner monologues have a kind of intoxicating, brutal poetry to them as he rattles through his conflicting thoughts and emotions. It was a quick read, but I'll definitely be keeping hold of it to reread again in the future. show less

Read in 2020
I thought knowing the big twist would ruin this book for me but that wasn't the case, thankfully. I really liked Bloch's straightforward approach to a story that is equal parts crime thriller and horror story, as it kept it from being melodramatic and gave it, instead, a rawness. It's a better peek inside the mind of Noman Bates that you may or may not have ever wanted, with some very outdated psychology (hence just four stars). I can easily see why this horror classic stuck with Hitchcock.