Marathon Man

What a brilliant book! Excellently drawn characters; plot twists and turns; murder, suspense and betrayal.

I've seen the film adaptation a few times, but lastly some years ago, so I had the dual advantage of Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier reprising their parts in my head (perfect casting) but couldn't clearly remember the plot, and got all the mystery, too.

The early chapters follow several seperate strands, building suspense because you KNOW that they are all connected. The way that Goldman gathers the threads together and delivers a wholly satisfying conclusion is just masterful.

Read this book and enjoy - but don't plan any dental work any time soon!

Avevo dei pregiudizi nei confronti di questo libro, che da una infinità di tempo girellava nella libreria.
A volte i pregiudizi sui libri sono fondati, altre volte no, e questo è uno di quei casi.
Teso, veloce, nerissimo, assai ben scritto, violento al punto giusto, pieno di sangue e morti, è il racconto disperato di una discesa all'inferno, della fine drammatica di una innocenza.
E adesso cercherò di vedermi anche il film :-)

"Is it safe? Is it safe?"

When I was eight or so (possibly younger), I strayed on the torture scene from the film of the same name on a hotel room TV. I've never quite forgotten it, and i don't think I'll ever quite forget this book.

Thomas Babington Levy is a struggling graduate student majoring in history at Columbia University and a marathon man, training to run in his first marathon. His brother ostensibly works in the oil industry, but is really an agent in a shadowy U.S. government operation called the Division. When Thomas's brother dies in his arms, Thomas ("Babe") finds himself unwittingly drawn into his brother's world, one of espionage and deceit. He's now in a battle of wits with a Nazi dentist and a rogue agent, and Babe show more finds he must draw upon the few resources he has to survive.

This book marked a first for me in that when Babe decided he didn't care whether he lived or died, only that he got his revenge, I found myself agreeing with him. show less

The first time I read Marathon Man was over the course of one day, but I didn't manage to finish it before I had to go out for the evening. As such, when I got back in, having been looking forward to the finale all evening, I was disappointed to find the ending an anti-climax but I wasn't sure if this was because of the manner in which I had read it rather than not liking the ending.

So here I am a few years later reading it again and... I'm still not that much of a fan of the ending.

I love the writing style. Goldman is brilliant with his sentences. It's a colloquial style, perfectly mimicking the way a person thinks, often with short statements and other times interrupting a sentence with a side thought or to reinforce the point with show more wit. And then during the shootout scene it's all one long run-on sentence because it's all happening at once for Babe. It's just incredibly smart and slick and beautiful. I could very much do without the racism though. The bad guys are Nazis, so sometimes we get their racist perspective, which I don't want to be in, and even when we're in someone else's perspective there are words used that make me uncomfortable. Meanwhile Babe is kinda misogynistic.

Also I must admit that despite having read the book twice I don't entirely understand the plot. I guess the point is that the bad guys are just super paranoid, but they seem to be putting certain things into action for no reason. Oh well.

So, it's witty and exciting and at times even moving. However the issue I had both times is that I love Scylla, he's my favourite character, and I don't much care for Babe, so that makes the second half of the book less enjoyable. And then, this ending. It just doesn't really do anything for me. I couldn't tell you what I want from the story. Maybe I just don't want this story. Maybe it loses me at the halfway point, not to say that it isn't very exciting and well-crafted beyond this, it's just that we're kind of all done with character-development and plot and are just running down to the showdown. Maybe the thriller genre just isn't my thing. Babe is hurled into a story that isn't his, if that makes sense, so there is no ultimately satisfactory way for it to go. It's also fairly obvious wish-fulfilment stuff, with a Nazi torturer getting his comeuppance at the hands of Jewish people, which might have been the overall point to the novel but from the point of view of the reader seems to come out of nowhere.

So ultimately, I love the prose and while I think the individual scenes are brilliantly conceived, the overall plot doesn't interest me that much. I have no intention of ever reading Brothers, the sequel, which is apparently not great and very weird, but I like to keep hold of the idea that Scylla survives his death in Marathon Man. show less

A classic thriller from the author of [b:The Princess Bride|21787|The Princess Bride |William Goldman|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51244A5RWML._SL75_.jpg|992628].

In the late 1970s my father had a rather serious heart attack. Neighbors thoughtfully brought over books for him to read while he was bedridden. Naturally enough, they picked the bestsellers of that time. I'm not sure if Dad read all of them, but I did. [b:Shogun|402093|Shogun|James Clavell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1191871792s/402093.jpg|1755568], [b:Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy|18989|Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy|John le Carré|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167175744s/18989.jpg|2491780], and Marathon Man were among them.

By an odd coincidence, all of those show more books have ended up being lifetime favorites for me.

In many ways, Marathon Man is quite dated. It was written in the early 1970s, and is very much a work of its time - both in the writing style that Goldman uses, and in the plot. A graduate student, the son of a celebrated intellectual who was destroyed by McCarthyism, finds himself caught up in a bizarre situation with Nazis, torture, family, love, and murder. And running, of course; he's a marathon man. Despite the early-70s feel, however, the book works.

Every reviewer talks about the dentistry scene. That's understandable, since it's very memorable. But good as it is, there are at least two other scenes in the book which are better than that one. And one of them has never yet failed to give me the shivers and make the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Even though I've read the book at least ten times in the past thirty years - and to be honest that's just a guess, I'd bet it's closer to twenty times - and even though that scene has always stuck in my mind, it still never fails to get me. If you'd like to know which scene I'm thinking of, read the book; if it isn't obvious to you after that, drop me a line.

A good book, well worth reading. I liked the movie too. show less

Reads like a movie, which was no surprise as I knew it had been made into a movie & writer William Goldman was a successful scriptwriter. Fast-paced, readable & suspenseful. The one plot twist happened about halfway and was somewhat easy to guess. Nothing terribly interesting near the end of the book.

Even though I've seen the film, Marathon Man will remain a gripping read. The story cracks along at a blistering pace, much like historian and marathon runner Babe, the central character. Babe's life is torn apart and we watch him put it back together piece by piece. The book has a little bit of everything, action, mystery, political intrigue, and a conclusion worth the journey. Read it, then watch the film.