On the Shelf: Night Film

NIGHT FILM | MARISHA PESSL | RANDOM HOUSE | AUGUST 2013

On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley’s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova—a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than thirty years. For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova’s dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself. Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova’s eerie, hypnotic world.

Writing a review for Night Film is difficult. The book is filled with clues and plot twists. Even after reading, it's impossible to decide what is a spoiler and what is safe to tell future readers. I fell into the story after reading the first scene and Pessl held my attention until the very last page. The pages of Night Film are covered with fascinating words and visual clues in the form of websites, magazine spreads, photographs, and handwritten letters. All these things create the story of Stanislas Cordova and his family, a bloodline made so real by Pessl's imagination that you'll soon believe they exist in our contemporary world.

This was my first time reading Marisha Pessl. I love the way she writes. At times, the story is simple and to the point. Other sections are more literary, filled with philosophical dialogue and thoughts. She uses italics way more than any other writer I've encountered, adding emphasis to speech and narration in all the right places. Night Film casts a spell on the reader. It was like time stopped as I read the book over a few days. All that I could think of was getting lost in the story once again.

On top of the excellent writing and fast-paced story, Night Film is also interactive. Random House has made an app for the book that emerges the reader even further into the story. I've read some negative feedback about the idea of apps and books merging into one, but the multimedia component of Night Film is so discreet that one can easily read the book without ever knowing an app exists. However, for those who do take advantage of the bonus content, prepare yourself for music, speeches, movie posters, and documents that make the story more tangible and less fictional.

I want the Cordova family to be real. I want to watch the cult horror films and attend the underground screenings. I want to purchase the movie posters and hang them on my apartment walls. I wish the Cordova family really did have a house in New York where the strangest rumours originated. I'll take their reality television stories over anything actually on cable. Marisha Pessl has created a deeply layered story so powerful that I'm tempted to think of her as the Cordova of our time - all negative connotations aside. Read this book.

"My films are just stories. But that's all we have.

The stories we tell others and the stories we tell ourselves."

- Stanislas Cordova