Robert Ludlum's books on Jason Bourne are now well-known due to the excellent films starring Matt Damon. Yet returning to the books after having viewed the movies leads to disappointment on many levels.
The plot of the book has very little to do with the movie - and several plot points in the film are completely contradictory to the book. But the biggest contrast, I believe, is in the speech and manner of the characters. In the movies, Jason Bourne/David Webb is reserved, efficient, deadly. Even though his memories are spotty, he doesn't sink into despair.
But the book - Ludlum's writing - is rife with doubt, emotion, despair, confusion... and the most annoying thing is the way Ludlum writes dialog. Everyone in his world speaks with an excess of exclamation points and italics that emphasize stress with every third sentence. It is extremely annoying!!! After all, what person really speaks as if every third word has to be shouted into the atmosphere!!???
Couple this clunky and unnatural dialog with a plot as convoluted as a bucket of spaghetti and, after a while, reading it becomes a chore. I put down this book four times in the course of reading it to dip into other novels that were actually more fun to read. No more Ludlum for me. I will see the movies again - they are fun. The novels are not.
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