Single White Female

The only reason to read this is if, like me, you were curious about the source material for the 1992 movie and interested in what makes adaptations work. In this case, the answer to "what makes adaptations work" is "making any effort at all" because Don Roos clearly knew a few things about screenwriting and thought about how to build character and suspense, whereas this book reads as if Lutz just thought of the basic premise, wrote down the premise, and then wrote a few scenes of the villain being evil and the protagonist thinking about how New York is a tough place to live, and called it a day. The prose is always on the verge of coming off as a deliberate parody, like if Garth Marenghi tried to do a non-supernatural thriller, but it's show more not really as enjoyable as that and mostly comes off as Dan Brown if Brown had never read even one fake history book. Bad writing doesn't necessarily make me mad, but it does make me mad when the writer devotes more energy and space to filler material about apartments than to very basic questions like "this person we just met who is going to be the villain, what does she even seem like?" Seriously, in place of the movie's montage of potential roommates followed by Hedy finally showing up and being shy and giving our hero a sympathetic ear, the book almost literally just says "She interviewed some roommates, and eventually she picked someone named Hedy" with no description at all, and then about two pages later Hedy is doing super obvious evil things and is never nice or interesting or ambiguous in any way. The protagonist barely registers as a presence, and totally disappears from the book for quite a while near the end until she shows up again and we're just told in a few sentences about how she got out of the problem. About the best I can say for it is that Lutz doesn't try to actually show us the violence in the main murder scene, because even though the book really could have used more violence or more of something, I don't think that would have gone well. show less

I read this book before going to see the movie. I have to tell ya, i thought the book was great. When I saw the movie, I was disappointed. They left out A LOT. If you sorta liked the movie, then you will like the book much better.

A good page turner

SINGLE WHITE FEMALE belongs to a series of movies I call the "From Hell" films, thrillers which were popular in the late 80s and early 90s. They include FATAL ATTRACTION (1987), with Glenn Close as the adultress from hell, CAPE FEAR (1991), with Robert DeNiro as the ex-convict from hell, THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE (1992), with Rebecca DeMornay as the baby-sitter from hell, BASIC INSTINCT (1992), with Sharon Stone as the suspect from hell, and SINGLE WHITE FEMALE (1992), with Jennifer Jason Leigh as the roommate from hell. The movie has more stylish touches than you might expect from a film of this sort, and the first hour or so is terrific. Leigh and Bridget Fonda make a great pair and deliver solid performances. My only quibble is show more the slasher ending, but you can't really expect this type of film to end any other way; at least the killer does not wake up from the dead over and over. A box office hit back in the summer of 1992, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE is well worth the watch. show less