(.) I counted one decent joke and one half-sentence of thoughtfully imagistic description' - Steven Poole, The Guardian (.) This is not an unremittingly bad book. 'The task of describing Cordova's own films in such a way that they justify the awestruck epithets heaped on them by the novel's characters, however, is too much for the author or at least Scott: they sound comically dull.(.) The trouble, though, arrives in the last 50 pages, with so many fake-out endings, it's hard to tell what happened, even in a literal sense.' - Melissa Maerz, Entertainment Weekly '(I)t looks like Marisha Pessl has strung the story together from little scraps of jotted-down ideas - ambitious ones, mostly, about the power of myth and the need for magic in an ordinary world, but also a few crazy ones (.) Assuming you don't mind a little crazy, the first 400 pages of Night Film make for a masterful puzzle.

Yet for all its faults, Night Film is an engrossing yarn, full of twists and cliffhangers.' - The Economist Worst of all is Ms Pessl’s penchant for italics, her constant need for emphasis undermining all subtlety. (.) Shrewd storytelling is marred by convenient confessions high-octane thrills tempered by relentless exposition.

'Ms Pessl swiftly veers from the standard whodunnit to deliver a more inventive, reality-warping tale about family curses, black magic and the manipulative influence of film.

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Night film by marisha pessl