This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. It only gets worse in the author interview tacked on at the end of my edition.Īll told, you'll enjoy this more if you read about the concept (which, admittedly, is very clever) and forget about trying to wade through the thing itself.įinished this one with bad grace.more There were sentences in there that did not make sense no matter how many books of the time you've read (and I've read plenty), there was way too much of being hammered over the head by the author's own views and convictions. Was I surprised to find that the novel was written by a 19-year old German ex-pat? No. A hundred pages in, the whole exercise felt like a slog. Loved the libel warning at the start, and the first few pages, but then the trouble started: there were jarring phrases, run-on sentences (aspiring to stream of consciousness?) that went nowhere and meant nothing. Was really excited to find and read this book since it has been hyped to the high heavens (by Julian Symons and his ilk) as an unrepeatable masterwork of crime fiction. A hundred page A book about a film editor who may also be a murderer, that was also a book in dire need of an editor. I couldn’t have put it better myself.Ī book about a film editor who may also be a murderer, that was also a book in dire need of an editor.
I’ll finish with something else Julian Symons said: that this book is ‘worth getting hold of at almost any price’. I can’t imagine reading anything so bizarre ever again. A little search online found that he eventually committed suicide aged 80, after an affair.Ī few weeks have passed since I read The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor and I’m still as astounded by it as I was then.
#Face on the cutting room floor full#
Why is it so incredible? Well, for a start it’s written in the most extraordinary version of English you’re ever likely to read (the author was a nineteen year old political refugee from Germany who by his own admission “could barely speak English”), full of tongue-twisting sentences, peculiar use of grammar (or sometimes lack of it – one paragraph near the start of the book I can remember doesn’t have a single comma or full stop in it), pseudo English/American slang and cliché, language so strange I re-read almost every sentence twice because I couldn’t believe what I’d read the first time secondly, there’s the plot itself, a murder/suicide story narrated by the author of the book himself who is then killed off two-thirds of the way through, a plot which doubles back on itself so many times that in the end you just have to admit defeat and go with it, with the last third of the book being written by an acquaintance of the victim, followed by a series of faked-up reviews of the book you have just read, quoting real reviewers from the time the book was published: reading this book, you feel that the author wasn’t just trying to break the rules of crime fiction (if that’s what he was doing), but also of fiction and language in general.įor years nobody really knew who ‘Cameron McCabe’ was, but when the book was reissued years later the author was revealed as Ernest Borneman, and in the most recent edition of the book to be published (sadly in the mid-80s), there’s a wonderful overview and interview with the man himself, a man whose life is as bizarre as the novel he wrote as a teenager – not only did he work with Orson Welles, Eartha Kitt and others he also worked in TV and films, later becoming a renowned sexologist. Julian Symons got closer than most: ‘the detective story to end detective stories… a dazzling and perhaps fortunately unrepeatable box of tricks’ The problem is, I’d struggle to describe it to you as it’s virtually impossible to do it justice. Julian Symons got closer than most: ‘the detective story to end detective stories… a dazzling and perhaps fortunately unrepeatable box of tricks’ Why is it so incredible? Well, for a start it’s written in the most extraordinary version of English you’re ever likely to read (the author was a nineteen year old political refugee from Germany w I’ve just finished the most incredible book I’ve ever read.
I’ve just finished the most incredible book I’ve ever read.
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