The Postman Always Rings Twice

Some pages have pen marks where someone underlined things. One page has things out into boxes

This is a book you read once and can't stop thinking about. It's what I call a 'blue book', one that is soulful and strangely mellow. It actually makes me feel like I'm underneath a very shady tree on a sunny day. Reason being that the light is very blue green, so a 'blue' book. Before I try to make sense of this, let's continue.Frank Chambers is a young drifter who rolls into town, goes to work in a diner for Nick, a tough Greek, falls for Nick's young wife Cora, then decides, with Cora's help, to murder Nick and take over the restaurant. What should be simple becomes more complex. The first murder attempt fails, the second one is successful but easy to see through. With the help of a very smart and very crooked lawyer, both Frank and Cora are soon free. That, really, is where the problems start.Frank and Cora love and hate each other fiercely, speaking with remarkably accurate, real dialogue. Cain doesn't even attribute his dialogue, so pay close attention to who's speaking. The book is mostly just people talking, in very real language, full of slang and fragmented sentences. It's like listening to a REALLY interesting conversation.Frank and Cora are two very small, unremarkable, inconsequential people caught up in something too big for them to understand. They mistake happiness and hope for lust, hate, anger and even apathy. And just when things look alright, one little, honest accident washes it all away. This book shows us how fragile everything is, or at least how fragile it can be. That's what elevates this to the level of tragedy. This is something to live with and dwell upon, something you can never quite shake off, no matter how hard you try.(...)

When I was 12 I climbed on board something called The Texas Cliffhanger at Six Flags Over Texas. It was a small four or five person bench with a cage around it that lifted us something like five stories into the air. Then it pushed us forward and dropped us. The entire ride lasted maybe a minute, but I never forgot it and I by God knew I’d had a thrill. The Postman Always Rings Twice is no different. It is wild and one of the shortest novels I’ve ever read. But believe me, I know I’ve read a novel.Not only is the book short, its pace rarely relents. There is not an overabundance of description or other literary devices. It slams the door, straps you in and drives you to the end. And you get there fast with no detours and no fluff and nothing extra, just the point. You rip right through piles of mistrust and angst and murder and love and passion and lies and truths and you end in reality. And for Cain, reality is a cold floor and a long walk and a knotted rope swinging in the wind. I believe this novel started a whole line of fiction and movies that continues to this day. First and most obvious, the noir genre has its roots here. The colloquial speech, the first person narrative, the looker dames who are in where they ought not be – it’s all here. Second, the love triangle involving a drifter and a young woman married or indentured to an older, wealthy man.... I’d recommend this one wholeheartedly. Not just for its place in literary history, but for the pure joy of a good read. Lie back and let it take you for a quick thrill.

This novel was another stunner from Cain. Set out in a then country area of California, outside of LA in the early 1940s, most of the action takes place at a diner on the main highway. This too involves a wife very unhappy with her husband, Cora with Nick. She finds a possible way out of her life with this brutish husband when drifter Frank comes into the diner and hangs around doing odd jobs for them. The couple plot to kill Nick so that they can end up with the diner and each other. There was one movie version done by John Garfield and Lana Turner in the 1940s that was absolutely faithful to the book. There was a 2nd version in the 1980s with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange that deviated somewhat from the novel, especially towards the end. I enjoyed both film versions equally and would highly recommend them. A Cain novel is very hard to put down once you've started and the man used no excess words. He too was an expert at looking at the best and worst of people as brought out by crime and its punishment.

I finished reading The Postman Always Rings Twice a week ago, and i was astonished at how a short book could pack such power, you can read it in half a day...you could understand why he did what he did. Cora was beautiful,loving and longing for a way out of her desperate situation...Frank found in Cora his reason for living and dying...The prose in this book hits you like a machine gun, tight and clean; all of the supporting characters serve a purpose..Cain shows you how greed can affect anyone, not just the main characters...I've often wondered if a woman was worth dying for or even killing for..this book tells you what a man would do for love