Sliver

First line~ It was a good Monday morning to begin with - the Hoffmans slugging it out again, Dr. Palme on the phone with a suicidal ex-patient, the Coles' maid getting it off with one of their vibrators, Lesley and Phil meeting in the laundry room - and then it got even better~I just finished [Sliver] by Ira Levin in three days. At 190 pages this was a fast read! I found this novel totally gripping!I appreciated Levin’s sparse prose, the way the words kept the action moving rapidly forward without sacrificing character development. Definitely creepy and I could not put it down. For 185 pages I was mesmerized. Everything seemed to me to be totally believable and then something happened 5 pages from the end that almost ruined the whole book for me. It just left the realm of plausibility and entered the realm of complete unbelievabllity.However, I have decided that the suspense of those first 185 pages was well worth the read and am giving this a 4.5 star rating since, honestly, I could hardly put it down. The ending keeps it from getting a 5.0 as one of my all time favourites, although it is certainly close.4.5 stars

[ 1st ed. at goodwill ]props for the voyeuristic component, but other than that the prose is lacking.

It took me a little while to get into the writing style. There are a lot of sentence fragments. Actually, nearly the entire book is written in sentence fragments. At first I thought it was just bad writing, but it really adds to the tension in the book. The entire book is about being watched, and when you're watching someone you don't think in full sentences. Once I got into it, I really liked it. Left me feeling uncomfortable and on edge.

Kay Norris, a successful single lady of thirty-nine, moves into the posh Upper East Side district of Carnegie Hill in Manhattan. The building she moves into is a slender, silvery high rise full of exclusive apartments. The building's landlord is personable, if slightly obsessive, but very solicitous of his tenants' various comforts. Only after she moves in does Kay discover that the tabloids have nicknamed her building "The Horror High Rise". Four unexplained deaths have occurred during the building's construction, and a fifth one is about to happen...I really enjoyed reading Silver by Ira Levin. It was a very intriguing story and I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes horror. I think that I saw at least part of the movie that was made in 1993, and starred Sharon Stone and William Baldwin. In my opinion, the book was much better than the movie. I give Sliver by Ira Levin an A+!